It can really be a chore to track down old papers. While many journals have digitized their collections and placed them online, a subscription is often required to access old papers (even from the 19th century!) ...
Enter Google Books. While many of the papers by naturalists like T.H. Huxley are cordoned off behind subscription walls, there used to be a practice of collecting the complete technical papers of scientists and publishing them in a series of volumes. ... These books are hard to find outside of libraries today, but thanks to digitization projects many of them have wound up as free pdfs on Google Books. Because they are so old, the copyright on the books is expired, allowing anyone to download the complete scientific works of a number of important researchers. ...
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 9/21/2008 07:30:00 PM.
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.
