Actually, not anymore. Scientific publications, at least in the West, are increasingly stipulating that they have complete, EXCLUSIVE rights over the paper (even though the researcher pays THEM to publish it). That would mean that as soon as they sign the contract to publish, the researchers themselves distributing that paper is illegal. It's total bullshit.
In my circle people share their papers freely with anyone who asks. You can probably call (yes call) any researcher and have them email you a paper. They wouldn't care and they aren't worried about getting sued. The problem is that widespread sharing isn't done and laypeople don't feel like it is appropriate to do that.
every day you learn something you don't want to
If papers start sueing scientists, they can only lose.
If a real human emailed me about a paper I have on the arXiv I would probably be thrilled even if it was just dumb trolling.
i dont get it
Arxiv is a web archive where authors can publish their scientific papers, usually preprint.
The joke is you usually hear : "email the author to get the paper" but arxiv is not like a journal: it has already the PDF freely available.
Its not the peer reviewed version though, right?
Yep the article is not reviewed. Anyone can publish a pfd there.