Here’s a diversion – as I am sat watching England lose to New Zealand… (Note that I read this without University access as it’s easier to realise what it’s like not to have it).
I’m interested in how easy or difficult it is to find crystallographic structures in various publishers and I’ve turned to Tetrahedron – an Elsevier journal. Tetrahedron does not allow -or at least does not seem to encourage – its authors to expose their crystallographic data as supplemental information. I wrote to them last year asking if they would consider doing so. After all RSC, IUCr and ACS do. None of the five editors replied. Well – I’m only a reader.
Anyway I turned to the latest issue. No luck (I didn’t expect any). But there was one “article” of interest:
Corrigendum to “The potential of intermolecular N
O interactions of nitro groups in crystal engineering, as revealed by structures of hexakis(4-nitrophenyl)benzene” [Tetrahedron 63(28) (2007) 6603–6613]
Page 7650
Eric Gagnon, Thierry Maris, Kenneth E. Maly, James D. Wuest
Preview
Purchase PDF (68 K) | Related Articles
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PreviewMaybe I can find a (corrected ) structure in the corrigendum. After all, that is free…
… oops…
The corrigendum will cost me 31.50 USD.
I have to pay 31.50 USD to read the original article and then another 31.50 USD to find out it’s wrong. I’d never have thought of such a clever way to make money.
I wonder how many words there are in it. If there are less than 31 (excluding the author rubric) then it’s over a dollar a word. Perhaps someone can give this information in a comment (I don’t want to get sued for comparing the price of articles.)
Other than the title, author list and so on … the article comes in at 71 words – to say that a 19 word sentence should be replaced by exactly the same 19 word sentence but with CH3COOC2H5 replaced by (CH3CO)2O.
Oh and the section in which the offending sentence occurs.
Don’t forget the 6-word apology.
(1), (2) Thanks
It *is* another PDF which has its editorial costs. What worries me that Elsevier does not provide these corrigendums part of the package deal. For what I care, they make each article it more more expensive (say, one corrigendum in 100 papers, so 31,83 USD). Publishers are supposed to publish Science, not PDFs. If Elsevier is reading this (or, feel free to relay this question), I would like to know how Elsevier thinks that extra charging for a corrigendums is helping Science move forward.
(4) Here is an angument that is consistent with PRISM axioms
* “Open Access” publications (i.e. free to read) are “junk science”
* unless you pay to read the science is “Open Access”
* therefore you have to pay to read.
Real logicians migh haggle over the actual deployment of the syllogism but the main problem is the first axiom.