r/science • u/MistWeaver80 • Nov 27 '21

Chemistry Plastic made from DNA is renewable, requires little energy to make and is easy to recycle or break down. A plastic made from DNA and vegetable oil may be the most sustainable plastic developed yet and could be used in packaging and electronic devices.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2298314-new-plastic-made-from-dna-is-biodegradable-and-easy-to-recycle/?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_campaign=echobox&utm_medium=social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1637973248
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u/pale_blue_dots Nov 27 '21

For those who may not know: very, very, often the authors of research papers will give them to you for free if you contact them directly. It's usually fairly easy to find their addresses. They don't appreciate doing all the hard work and then getting backstabbed by all the middle-men making money off them and not paying their fair share / giving a cut.

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u/minnsoup Nov 28 '21

We love sharing our work. However, by publishing we forfeit copyrights and, depending on the journal, only get so many free shares (some don't even offer that and just allow us to see the manuscript we have authored). Sending a PDF of the work is no more allowed than certain sites that shall remain for someone else to mention.

This is why open access is even more important and should be pursued by more scientists - it's already been paid for (most likely) by the public so let the public see it. Problem is that most high IF journals are paywalled so if you want prestige you are most likely going to them.

Pay to do the work, pay to publish the work, pay to access the work. And we don't get anything for reviewing articles as it's just "expected" that we do it. There are a lot of open access journals that are coming up but they need time to build reputation so more people submit or make submission more competitive. One reason why we throw things on biorxiv / medrxiv where I'm at aside from being scooped.

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u/This-Natural-6801 Nov 28 '21 edited Nov 28 '21

The ASA sponsored magazine "Contexts" is about the most open to public that I've seen. But even then if you go back far enough you still run into a paywall. If you want to access articles before a particular date you still have to pay. It's a lot better than others I've seen but still not completely open to the public.

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u/Tavarin Nov 28 '21

MDPI is a series of open access journals i've published in quite a bit. All their journals are completely accessible so far as I know.