Technically they don't refuse to answer the question, they just write it like that in their message (in the book / on the website?). If you'd like to be really sure, send them an email to ask. If you show you're just including the citation for educational purposes they might easily change their minds.

I think educated people might be more prone to the DK effect, but mostly on topics that they're not actively learning, but just expect to understand from parallel or general knowledge.

A) That's why I write maybe. Maybe it's more, maybe it's less. Either way, not a lot. B) I don't depend on publishers, publishers depend on me. When all the closed access only publishers disappear, we still have all the open access guys left, as well as things like Arxiv and whatever will take the place of Nature. Don't forget that a lot of Journals are not published by companies like Elsevier, but by associations or societies that could run on other sources of income.

Relevant article: linkedin.com/pulse/…

You can search for citing papers that at least mention x. This should narrow it down quite fast.

I'd always suggest to call before applying, and this is really a case where you have something important to ask.

@j91: I still think it's much more important to actually encourage good documentation behavior. If you're in an academic group, you're probably not even attaining any sort of quality standard. Are you absolutely sure that all lab journals are complete and up to date? Does all your code have sufficient documentation? Is your equipment regularly calibrated and do you have records for that? Can you trace all your raw data from the source to the output? Unless all of this is 100% in place, putting in rules for communication is really a step too far.

Let's be a bit realistic here: maybe the purchasing of individual articles accounts for 1% of the publisher's revenue. How is that going to hurt me as a researcher? It's not like I'm getting paid for reviewing or editing anyway.

I think it's good for American students to take a look at the European system regarding time frames: potentially a 3 year bachelor, 1 year master, 3 year Phd at an institute where everyone is pushed to finish on time with perhaps 1 in 10 students having a 3-month extension.

+1, there are really no reasons to stay there doing your masters. Finishing up and volunteering in the same lab would already be much better. But staying there for two years while you could be earning $80-100k as a tech is ridiculous. It's real time you're wasting.