High school student here...
I came here to ask this question since it seems geared more towards academia and I normally spend my time on Math.SE. Anyway...
I have a huge passion for math, I read about it and work on problems every day. At this point in time I'm even considering going into academia for math research (although it seems incredibly difficult to land professorship based on the things I've read here.) In my ongoing research, I've noticed that there are very few places to freely read mathematical papers. I tend to turn to the arXiv so this isn't so much a problem - except for the times I come across a paper with a particularly interesting abstract, only to find its host site asking for one of two things:
- An association with an institution or research group
- Monthly payment
So my question is do any of the academics here have any insight as to why that is? Are the authors of the papers compensated with part of the payment received by the journal?
(Sorry if this question comes across as very naive but, admittedly, I am.)
