Sshhh, I'm Downloading
"In a frank discussion, Howard Dess, Librarian at Rutgers University revealed how he was informed by the American Institute of Physics (AIP) that one of their workstations had been used to download an excessive quantity of material from online AIP journals." - Quoted from the ChemWeb.com member newsbulletin, Vol 5, Issue 24, 18 June 2002.
The article describes two science libraries which have been warned about excessive downloading of content in their buildings. While both libraries have taken steps to inhibit such activity, perfect control is not possible and repeated incidents could cost the library its access. I see the relevance to the FOS movement in that it points out one of the faults with the subscription model for distribution of scholarly research; a few abusers can cost thousands of people their access to that information. It is also possible that a researcher could need a certain large set of articles for their research (OK, maybe not 639 papers, as quoted here) and set them up to download together. ChemWeb.com is free, but requires registration.
Posted by
Marcia at 6/18/2002 05:49:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
