Access to science
A long-simmering battle is underway between advocates of "open access" and the for-profit scientific journals. The first group is pushing for legislation that will put papers from publicly funded research online, while the journal publishers fear that their revenues will be affected. The front line is not geology, but the medical journals versus the National Institutes of Health. Peter Suber, a scholar at Earlham College, produces a blog focusing on open access, where he reports on a new lobbying group for the publishers (PRISM) that calls open access interference and censorship.
My own view is that taxpayer-funded science should be readily available to taxpayers, and that people who need subscriptions will not stop subscribing. Moreover, ready access to certain papers in major "open literature" journals like Science and Nature will help defuse some of the distortions they bring to the popular news cycle. As a serious consumer of science, I favor open access and find that PRISM's arguments don't hang together. But don't take my word for it, check out the warring parties. (h/t to Andrew Sullivan of Salon)
Tuesday August 28, 2007 | comments (1)
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