One year subscription to the scientific journal Nature for $36 (82% off MSRP $200)

Quote from nanotube : Hold your pitchfork~~~ that bill was defeated. NIH funded papers are still free. And again, taxpayers get access to the research in other formats. Publishers don't claim the research, only the publishing rights of said journal paper because they have costs. If you argue ANY and ALL forms of publication of data must be free, what do you say when they charge you for copy of a PhD thesis from a university library?

Sharpen the pitchfork. That was just one battle in an ongoing struggle. Just because they lost that round doesn't mean they haven't kept on trying. That's why thousands of scientists world wide are boycotting Elseveir publications now.

That's the price of making a physical copy. For even government services, there's a cost if you want a physical copy of something. If you can live with looking it up online, then it's free. Same with a PhD thesis. You can make the library to make you a copy. Or you can look it up online for free. Many people will put their's up on their personal websites for any and all. As it should be. Why should the people who paid for something be denied access to the product of that work?

for the layman, this isnt a magazine per say. its a journal..... god knows how badly i want to publish there or in Science.. but alas, PNAS is my highest impact journal

Quote from nanotube : Dream big, dude, it won't be too far away. For many years I dreamed "if only i can publish a frontpage deal now......" and look ma, I did it.

slickdeals referees arent as scrutinizing as nature's. convincing nobel laureate editors to rep you isnt as easy as a TU on here

Quote from phenolholic : for the layman, this isnt a magazine per say. its a journal..... god knows how badly i want to publish there or in Science.. but alas, PNAS is my highest impact journal

A first author PNAS is good! Although it is trending down recently, IF is still around 9-10.

Quote from mathlete : A first author PNAS is good! Although it is trending down recently, IF is still around 9-10.

as a graduate student, any authorship on PNAS is good. now as a postdoc, i'm aiming for first author.

So these many researchers are researching the SD instead of their project..

Quote from Kg0z : Does this magazine have comics or cross-word puzzles?

No, it doesn't have comics or cross-word puzzles. but it has book reviews related to science (eg. linguistics, epigenetics) that are very interesting and news summaries.

Quote from travfar : There's no reason why there can't be peer reviewed publications online for free. The scientific community just has to embrace it and forego the "honor" of being published in the likes of Nature. The internet revolution has yet to hit the sciences.

I'm pretty sure all PLoS publications are online for free (to read, not to publish): http://www.plos.org/

But of course if you can get published in a journal like Nature or Science you will do so, because it's kind of a prestigious thing for a researcher. Looks good on the resume, grant applications, etc.

Anyone know if the other Nature journals have similar impact factor discounts (e.g., Nature Geoscience)?

It appears they have run a similar sale in the past, including subscriptions to their other journals for their respective impact factors (http://slickdeals.net/f/3452480-N...act-Factor).

Quote from travfar : Sharpen the pitchfork. That was just one battle in an ongoing struggle. Just because they lost that round doesn't mean they haven't kept on trying. That's why thousands of scientists world wide are boycotting Elseveir publications now.

Yep, they charge libraries for bundles and sometimes some journals may cost universities thousands of dollars per article.

So I paid for everything and bought a subscription, it even shows up under my account subscriptions page. But I haven't received a confirmation email and I can't view any of the articles. It just says to buy a sub for $199. Also their iPhone app looks to be complete crap. Anyone wanna tell me what's up?

Quote from travfar : Here's the rub. Most research in the US is funded by the federal government, NIH/NSF. That research is published in the likes of Nature and then people are required to pay to get access to it. So the taxpayers are forced to pay for something they already paid for.

Publications from the research funded by NIH are always free at PubMed Central. NSF should follow the suit in making the publications freely accessible.

Quote : The scientific community just has to embrace it and forego the "honor" of being published in the likes of Nature. The internet revolution has yet to hit the sciences.

The problem is that it does cost to publish even for an online only model (people, site maintenance etc.) and someone has to pay for it. Most open access journals have page charges for articles. Now, if you pay the journal to publish your article, it also falls in the gray zone when it comes to "honor" of being published.

hahaha, as a reseacher myselft, I just can't believe that I will see a Nature deal go FP in my lifetime, 99% of people on SD probably never heard of Nature

Quote from ubuntu_guru : The problem is that it does cost to publish even for an online only model (people, site maintenance etc.) and someone has to pay for it. Most open access journals have page charges for articles. Now, if you pay the journal to publish your article, it also falls in the gray zone when it comes to "honor" of being published.

And there are plenty of websites that publish vast amounts of information, yet charge the users and content providers nothing. Think wikipedia. If they can do it, why can't the scientific community? In the end it doesn't cost that much. All universities run their own websites. If they just all contributed a tiny slice of their resources to a common effort, it would be paid for by the noise in their budgets.

It's not like publishers like Elsevier contribute that much. They don't peer review the papers. That's done by third parties. Those same parties can just as easily peer review for a free public site. The big hold up is not cost or logistics, it's mindset. The only power that Nature and Science have is that which the community has given them. The only thing preventing them from switching that glory and awe to a community effort is themselves.