I agree with the metadata notion to some degree, but that may only be true when open access is more ubiquitous.
I end up browsing the the ACM Digital Archive a lot because there are many papers I can’t get a copy of freely. To be fair, many of them are older, but I don’t find many journals I follow to be open (maybe I don’t know what I’m doing!). Although I can still download the paper, it’s more work than it should be when going through my university’s library system remotely. (Let’s just say that browsing the archive through the library’s proxy is s-l-o-w.)
With the abstract, I like to see some degree of clarification of just what the paper is proposing. This usually entails summarizing the approach or the results. On the other hand, that may be what sells it.
In short, they are intersecting concerns. The abstract is a weird hybrid of metadata and hard information. I would agree that you have to sell with the abstract, but you shouldn’t hype too much.
I doubt you can be fully productive if you have a hard time getting access to the PDFs.
I do research exclusively at home and UQAM‘s proxy is fast enough.
Have you tried Google Scholar? It can often find a free version of the papers. I love Google Scholar
Interestingly, you often can get access to the papers without paying, see my post Get into pay sites for free as a Googlebot.
I agree with the metadata notion to some degree, but that may only be true when open access is more ubiquitous.
I end up browsing the the ACM Digital Archive a lot because there are many papers I can’t get a copy of freely. To be fair, many of them are older, but I don’t find many journals I follow to be open (maybe I don’t know what I’m doing!). Although I can still download the paper, it’s more work than it should be when going through my university’s library system remotely. (Let’s just say that browsing the archive through the library’s proxy is s-l-o-w.)
With the abstract, I like to see some degree of clarification of just what the paper is proposing. This usually entails summarizing the approach or the results. On the other hand, that may be what sells it.
In short, they are intersecting concerns. The abstract is a weird hybrid of metadata and hard information. I would agree that you have to sell with the abstract, but you shouldn’t hype too much.