Join the Collective: Papester 1.0 - How to reply to #icanhazpdf in 3 seconds

Table of contents:

Short version: How to join the Collective and start serving requests

Long version: How to join the Collective and start serving requests - Complete Install instructions:

Yesterday my friend Hauke and I theorized about a kind of dream scenario- a totally distributed, easy to use, publication liberation system. This is perhaps not feasible at this point for several reasons^[1]. Today we’re going to present something that will be useful right now. The essential goal here is to make it so that anyone, anywhere, can access the papers they need in a timely manner. The idea is to take advantage of existing strategies and tools to streamline paper sharing as much as possible. Folks already do this- every day on twitter or in private, requests for papers are made and fulfilled. Our goal is to completely streamline this process down to a few clicks of your mouse. That way a small but dedicated group of folks - the Papester Collective - can ensure that #icanhazpdf requests are fulfilled almost instantly. This is a work in progress. Leave comments on how to improve and further streamline this system and join the collective!

Short version: How to request a paper

Tweet “#icanhazpdf http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4568-12.2013”

Show your support for the papester collective by tweeting: “Thanks to #papester, my #icanhazpdf request was fufilled in seconds! Join: http://bit.ly/papester #pdftribute”

Anybody can give back by replying to the next #icanhazpdf request. Anybody can access papers by signing up for a free Trial with DeepDyve (article rental): https://www.deepdyve.com/signup”

For more detailed version see below.

Long version: How to request a paper

Short version: How to join the Collective and start serving requests

If you can help with programming a more efficient software implementation get in touch or do it!

Instructions and software required:

Twitter: Monitor #icanhazpdf (eventually it would be great if every mention of say ‘sciencedirect’ gets an immediate response
Zotero and zotero browser plugin: after clicking on DOI link or abstract page just click on 'Save to Zotero' button to auto-grabs PDFs
Zotfile: automatically copies new Zotero pdfs files saved to public Dropbox folder
Dropbox: Cloud storage system to seamlessly share files with anyone without access
Dropbox linker: automatically adds links from public folder to your clipboard
Reply to request tweets: paste URL from clipboard and if you want #papester

Long version: How to join the Collective and start serving requests - Complete Install instructions:

Long version: How to request a paper

Just tweet everything inside the brackets:

[ #icanhazpdf #request ARTICLE_URL ]

[ #icanhazpdf #request http://dx.doi.org/DOI ]

It is best to find the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) of the paper and add it after http://dx.doi.org/ - this keeps everything standard.

If the paper doesn’t have a DOI try to post the URL where you see the abstract of the paper e.g. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30071673

Where you copy the article URL from Google Scholar or whatever academic search engine. So for example, lets say I search google scholar for a paper on dichotomous fish breeding:

We can see that the first result has no associated PDF. Perfect for a request. If I wanted the second article, I wouldn’t need a request as the PDF is already available from google:

Now we click the article, taking us to the abstract page. The URL from the abstract should always work- if you have a problem, try copying the DOI address onto the end of this URL: http://dx.doi.org/ , then use that in your request:

JSTOR example (JSTOR doesn’t use DOI):

We tweet:

#icanhazpdf #request http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2407880?uid=2134&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=21101538732123

DOI example:

We tweet:

#icanhazpdf #request http://dx.doi.org/10.2527/jas.2010-3814

Once your request is fufilled, you can help the movement grow by tweeting:

“Thanks to #papester, my #icanhazpdf request was fufilled in seconds! Join: http://bit.ly/papester #pdftribute”

Long version: How to join the Collective and start serving requests - Complete Install instructions

It’s simple. Follow our easy instructions listed below- you just need to download a few applications you probably already use (dropbox, zotero, zotfile, & tweetdeck). You’ll use tweetdeck to create unobtrusive alerts for requests on the #icanhazpdf channel. Folks making requests will simply format them as follows: e.g. “#icanhazpdf http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4568-12.2013”. You will then click the link, click the Zotero get PDF button , the paper will be downloaded, you configure Zotfile to copy the PDF to your Public Dropbox folder and Droplinker automagically copies the URL to the file to your clipboard- now just paste the dropbox URL to the response tweet. That’s it. The entire process takes two mouse clicks and less than 10 seconds to complete, once you’ve set up your tools. If the requestee wants to thank the collective and help it grow, they simply respond “Thanks to #papester, my #icanhazpdf request was fufilled in seconds! Join: http://bit.ly/papester #pdftribute”

Install instructions/links: Follow each link- most are straightforward to setup. See additional instructions below.

Install dropbox:

https://www.dropbox.com/install

Install Zotero:

Set-up zotero following the normal instructions. Once it is setup properly, you should be able to automatically download PDFs by clicking the button in your browser (at the end of the Address bar).

(firefox):

http://www.zotero.org/support/installation

http://www.zotero.org/support/3.0#downloads

(chrome or Safari):

http://www.zotero.org/blog/zotero-standalone-alpha-with-chrome-and-safari-support/

Install and configure Zotfile:

Installation instructions: http://www.columbia.edu/~jpl2136/zotfile.html

In Zotero go to ->Tools -> Add-ons -> Zotfile Options -> change the ‘Location of files’ to custom location: C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\Dropbox\Public\icanhazpdf

Install Dropbox Linker to automatically monitor any new dropbox files and copy them to clipboard:

http://dropboxlinker.codeplex.com/

You can use a twitter account created especially for replying to requests and put it into tweetdeck.

You can also remove watermarks easily by using this software:

http://www.iwesoft.com/pdf-watermark-remover

Disclaimer: Please make sure you only share papers with friends who also have the copyrights to the papers you share.

[1] The fundamental problem: uploading huge repositories of scientific papers is not sensible for now. It’s too much data (50 million papers * 0.5-1.5 megabytes together make up ~ 25-75 Terrabytes) and the likelihood for every paper to be downloaded is more uniformly distributed than with files traditionally shared like music. For instance, there are 100 million songs x 3.5 mb songs, and it is difficult to find exotic songs online - some songs have decent availability now because there are only a few favourites - not so with favourite papers. Also, fewer people will share papers than songs, so this makes it more even more difficult to sustain a complete repository. Thus, we need a system that fufills requests individually.