American Scientist

When I learned recently that a profile of me had appeared in a library journal, I wrote the author to request an offprint, being curious to read what she might have said about my career as a book author. By return e-mail she sent a link to what she must have thought was the article in portable document format, more familiarly known as a PDF file. I clicked on the link, which led to an abstract and a “first-page preview” of the article; it contained the same abstract and the first half of the article’s first sentence. When I clicked on a link labeled “Download full text,” I was informed that I did not have access to the article. Without an individual or institutional subscription, I could read no further. Alternatively, as a nonsubscriber I could gain access to the full text of the nine-page article by paying $37. This concept of an offprint is quite alien from what I experienced as a young researcher.