Scientist Must Pay to Read His Own Paper

Glyn Moody writes "Peter Murray Rust, a chemist at Cambridge University, was lost for words when he found Oxford University Press's website demanded $48 from him to access his own scientific paper, in which he holds copyright and which he released under a Creative Commons license. As he writes, the journal in question was "selling my intellectual property, without my permission, against the terms of the license (no commercial use)." In the light of this kind of copyright abuse and of the PRISM Coalition, a new FUD group set up by scientific publishers to discredit open access, isn't it time to say enough is enough, and demand free access to the research we pay for through our taxes?"

The document is free to read

[LiquidCoooled]

The document is available to read as both text and pdf.
I understand his worrying, but to me the biggest WTF is:

He works for one Cambridge university, he published his document to its biggest rival (Oxford) and they expect US dollars for a totally English transaction.

I say, off with their heads.

Re:Two Ideas

[Bazman]

I'm guessing you've never seen an academic's desk before...

Re:UbuntuDupe Untangling Squad

[mbrod]

I think Slashdot should actually do it.

"scholar.slashdot.org"

You could do a number of interesting things to entice the scholarly community to use the service.

Re:So do what Don Knuth did and leave them.

[megaditto]

claiming that your academics will suffer if work has been published in a journal and you don't reference it.

You are absolutely correct: if you are smart enough you don't need no stinking references. Or as my advisor used to point out, two weeks or research in the lab can save you two hours research in the library.

Re:And

[Scrameustache]

not quite as sinister as it appears.

Well, from your quote, this appears to be a sorting mistake on the website which is being corrected by the responsible party once it has been informed of their error.

Now how are going to get a good flamewar going with this kind of rational attitude? The people want to pick a bad guy and to ridicule him, either the author who wants his rights respected or the publisher who wants to collect money for their output... if they're both in agreement over the error and they make it right, then we can't pick sides and argue endlessly! We might *gasp* have to go back to our own jobs!