Distribution of Academic Literature

Here’s how I get my academic literature these days:

  1. Let a teacher e-mail me a Microsoft Word file with references.
  2. Print the file
  3. Go to the library, look up the titles and wait an hour before fellow students return them.
  4. Copy the required pages on dead tree (single-sided).
  5. Go home and scan in the dead tree.
  6. Archive the digital article on my computer, ready to read from screen.
  7. Throw away the copied articles.

Now, I know insisting on reading articles from screen rather than from paper is considered overly geeky, but the solutions for tagging, zooming, searching, portability and annotations make this a no-brainer for me. Regardless, it seems to me this whole process could be a lot simpler, cheaper, quicker, less frustrating and above all consume a lot less paper.

Here’s what I propose:

  1. Teacher copies links to works to a course website, rather than manually adding them to a Word file.
  2. Through the University’s volume discount program students purchase the articles in PDF for a small fee from the publisher.
  3. Those that want to read stuff from paper print it themselves, saving the rest of us a lot of time and money.

It doesn’t sound ridiculous to me.

Notes