Folding Forum

The five new papers that were posted (110-114) don't have any links from the table of contents down to the abstracts, and none of the listings has a link to the actual paper (114 has a link to the Stanford press release, which links to the paper, but there's no direct link from the FAH Papers page). Are 110-113 not available online yet?

Also, it appears that some of the links to the OS stats page aren't showing the correct active client count. If you go to the Home page, or the main Teams & Stats page, they currently show 176,068 active computers (which is slightly misleading, as that's the number of active clients), while right now the actual stats page says there are 174,323.

Finally, and this has been bugging me for a while, why are the PS3 servers still up, and thus causing the PS3 projects to still be listed in PSummary? I'm not sure how many new people would actually dig that deep, but having those listed as active projects suggests that one can still contribute with their PS3, when that hasn't been the case for over a year now. I realize that the PS3 FAQ says it's ended, but I guess that makes it somewhat conflicting information.

As I recall, many of the papers are behind a paywall for one year, then they become freely available.

Yeah, but there isn't even a link to a paywall.

Zagen30 wrote:Yeah, but there isn't even a link to a paywall.

FAH is non-commercial. Linking to one of many paywalls would be showing a preference when there is no preference. Maybe they can find something more generic to link to, like a papers search link.

A fix for the missing links in the Table of Contents has been posted. It will become public in about 30 minutes.

Perhaps this is my ignorance showing. I assumed that there'd only be one paywall per paper, that of the publication in which the paper was published.

That might be a good compromise. Link to the paywall of the publisher.

Let me get this right: I provide my computer power for free and Stanford sells the papers it writes as a result?

No, that's not how it works. A scientific paper is submitted to a journal, and if it passes the peer-review process, it is published in one edition of that publication. Stanford does not get paid for the paper. The publication has the print rights to that paper for some period of time, usually a year. During that time, if you want to read the entire paper, you will have to pay the publication one way or another, by buying either a hard copy or a paid online subscription. After that period of time, the papers enter the public domain and are free to access by anyone.

Wasn't the WorldWideWeb invented to allow scientific cooperation and review? Publication etc.? Scuse me for being ill-informed but my understanding was that Stanford's scientific discoveries were in the public domain. Is this not right?

From what I've read there are online publications with varying levels of openness, some of which actually charge the researchers for their publication to get published so as to make up for the lack of subscription fees. I'm not sure how prestigious they are; none of them are likely as prestigious as Nature, Science, etc.

The results are in the public domain after the publication's rights expire, and from what I've seen it looks like most of PG's results are public after a year.

Zagen30 wrote:Perhaps this is my ignorance showing. I assumed that there'd only be one paywall per paper, that of the publication in which the paper was published.

As I work in an university library, I am aware of there often being multiple services providing access to the online versions of some journals. The library pays subscription fees to all of these services, and thus library users have access to the papers subject to whatever limitations the database subscription comes with. Sometimes that includes an embargo period of as much as an year or more in which just the abstract can be downloaded. A different service might not include an embargo period.

HaloJones wrote:Let me get this right: I provide my computer power for free and Stanford sells the papers it writes as a result?

No, the journal the paper is published in gets an exclusive rights period in which it can sell the journal issues and their contents and hopefully recoup its expenses related to publishing the paper. After that Stanford and the other universities can distribute the paper as freely as they want, usually subject to guidelines established by the funding sources such as NSF grants.

Wasn't the WorldWideWeb invented to allow scientific cooperation and review? Publication etc.? Scuse me for being ill-informed but my understanding was that Stanford's scientific discoveries were in the public domain. Is this not right?

ironic eh?

From a business perspective...really useful technology often is just kept proprietary. It is often just faster to take advantage...faster to implement by avoiding the hassle and delay of patent. Sure...there are shed loads of patents...but more and more they are merely defensive.

anyway...just saying...the process of per review is closer to the last century academia than the next century progress as you might have hoped.

HaloJones wrote:Let me get this right: I provide my computer power for free and Stanford sells the papers it writes as a result?

Absolutely NOT!

The paper is published in a journal. The Journal still prints articles, and so as mentioned earlier in this thread, many have a 1 year time restriction before the paper is made public on the internet.

And as always, those papers behind a paywall are STILL free if you visit a municipal library or local college library that subscribes to these journals.

Please don't jump to conclusions without a little inspection.

mdk777 wrote:

Wasn't the WorldWideWeb invented to allow scientific cooperation and review? Publication etc.? Scuse me for being ill-informed but my understanding was that Stanford's scientific discoveries were in the public domain. Is this not right?

ironic eh?

From a business perspective...really useful technology often is just kept proprietary. It is often just faster to take advantage...faster to implement by avoiding the hassle and delay of patent. Sure...there are shed loads of patents...but more and more they are merely defensive.

anyway...just saying...the process of per review is closer to the last century academia than the next century progress as you might have hoped.

The transmission of the paper to the reviewers is nearly instantaneous now, as is the feedback after the review is done. And the team of reviewers can discuss it via Internet Video conferences. Same instant to post the results online.

We no longer have to wait for the Pony Express Riders or Trans Atlantic Ships to make a round trip. Or for the reviewers to exchange written correspondence via snail mail. It's all email or online chat. No longer do you have to ride in the back of a wagon for 30 miles to get in to town to get your copy of a the journal. You just download it like a song on iTunes. Ya, sure... real last century stuff.