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I know this is both controversial and brave of me to say, but I really hate the "two-column paper" format. {lastname}%y.pdf why are you like this.
If we lived in the parallel universe where Zefram Cochrane doesn't shoot the Vulcan, this would all just be hypertext! Just HTML with a tasteful stylesheet. Oh, that reference to another paper looks interesting? Just click on it and have a lookaroo
@aeva You know, it's kind of crazy how much everyone has been convinced to give useless citations and/or references. Compare and contrast how many times you've gone through looking up a citation versus clicking a hyperlink.
@TheZouave it's a friction thing. With a hyperlink, I click on it and the information is there. For a paper citation, I have to google the name of the author(s), year, and title, wade through a bunch of paywall seo and then find a dead link to a ~ directory on a university website that now redirects to the a generic page full of pictures of smiling twenty somethings doing group work, try archive.org instead, but it's not archived, and then go back to the seo to fish for a doi identifier and
@TheZouave if I'm lucky, what falls out at the end is pdf with OCR text from a scan of a bad photocopy of paper from the late 20th century, and it is inexplicably partially written in greek.
@aeva @TheZouave
As a tip: paper authors are usually happy (delighted!) to send you a copy of the paper if you ask. If the citation is somewhat recent you'll at least get a good, crisp pdf, not a third generation photocopy.
But yes, papers are all created for print, not the web. Online repos (biomedcentral, arxiv, journal web sites) often do have a separate list of citations, and sometimes (as for biomedcentral ) links directly to the paper.
@jannem @TheZouave I will give up before I have to cold call email a stranger. "hey sorry I cyber detective stalked you to get your email I swear I'm not a creep I just want your research."
@aeva @TheZouave
Most research is paywalled, often even to other researchers. I have published papers that I myself don't have access to. It's absolutely ridiculous. That's why Sci-hub is thriving for instance.
So it's absolutely normal and expected to ask people for papers. I absolutely understand that it feels awkward if you're not used to it though.
@jannem @TheZouave ok so maybe I'm not understanding your point here but I've heard this advice before and *it's not a solution it's a crappy bandaid*
@aeva @TheZouave
I agree; it *is* a crappy bandaid.
But it's a crappy bandaid that even researchers have done for decades, because all incentives point toward keeping this crappy system and no incentives point away.
Again, the first thing needed would be a modern replacement for pdf *files*, one that does things so much better it's worth the pain of switching. The main audience for papers is other researchers and web pages don't work.