Pierre Lindenbaum has written a javascript bookmarklet to scan an online article for the first email address and send a request to that address for a digital offprint. Alf Eaton suggests that the message should ask for the URL in case the author has already self-archived the article.
Comment. I like this idea but perhaps not for the same reason that Lindenbaum likes it. To me, it's less useful as a way to gain access to someone's article than as a way to prod the author to self-archive the article and make it accessible to everyone. Authors should only need to get one of these queries before they see the efficiency of self-archiving, which takes about as much time as sending a single copy to a single colleague but makes the work available to every researcher and search engine on the planet.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 8/14/2006 10:27:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
