You should frame it.  I thought I read somewhere that it's against copyright at most publishers for people to send out electronic reprints.  But I could be wrong

I guess your right until that embargo comes off or the point becomes moot when the article goes open access through PubMed.  At which point they can download it themselves.  I guess this guy just really is hankering for a hard copy with color graphics.

I would guess it has to do with the "copy" part of "copy right". You're allowed to copy an article for study reasons but not allowed to print it in the "class material" afak. And once you send pdfs, it's harder to keep up with "buying pdfs".

After all, asking for a hard copy of a reprint from yourself being sent means that they have really put in an effort to find you and the paper, right?!

As for "OpenAccess through PubMed"; not sure what you mean there GR? Not all articles are accessible through pubmed, it depends on what your institute has for deal with the publishers... even old articles can be blocked if you don't have an agreement.

Agreed. PMC is still lacking a ton of manuscripts.  It's heading in the right direction but it's not perfect yet.  I'm not sure how the new "must make everything publically available after 1 year" law affects previous publications.  is it retroactive? If it is, there's a huge back catalog of papers that need to be uploaded.

Early in my grad school, I was getting loads of these. And I was sending loads of these as well (so did my PI). After a while, it slowed to a trickle, mostly from developing countries. And we ourselves switched to digital downloads, asking for PDFs via e-mail, etc. Now I just ask on Twitter and get seven copies within the first two minutes.

Bora, its the same for me, I put out a tweet to get the paper or do institutional interlibrary loan service.

JSD, I don't send those out anymore since we have great institutional access here and I get papers as soon as they come out on my weekly pubmed auto-searches.  But for friends and collaborators, I'll pump out a quick email congratulating them on their paper being published.

To Brian Krueger,

With respect to your comment that appear in GenomeWeb's reference to this blog in which you state:

"I really appreciate the link back, but I think it's proper blogging etiquette to ask the content producer before you cut and paste an entire comment into your blog. Just linking back to Genomic Repairman's post isn't sufficient. You're more than welcome to paraphrase the above comment, but copying it without asking both Genomic Repairman and Dr. Pelech is crossing the line."

It is unclear to me why you are so concerned about GenomeWeb's reference to your blog with a direct quotation from it. In the scientific literature, it is unnecessary to obtain permission from an author to quote their work provided that it is properly referenced.

My understanding of the purpose of blogs is to get ideas widely disseminated and stimulate discussion. This is why it is feasible to add comments to blogs. I am not sure what you are particularly offended by with respect to my comments to your blog. I do not have a connection to Genome Web, but I do find The DailyScan helpful to find out what other scientists may be thinking about that may of interest or concern to them. I am sorry that you are distressed by my comments.

If you're okay with what was done, then that's fine Dr. Pelech. I just wanted to be sure that everyone was alright with what was done with the comment.  I thought it was kind of lazy to just cut and paste it.  Please point me to a place in the scietific literature where things are copied word for word with no further comment or analysis.  I think most editors would reject such practices without getting permission.  I know I would.

Ciara thanks for stopping by.