In the November 13 Federal Computer Week, William Matthews assesses the impact of killing PubScience and reports that the lobbyists who killed it are targeting other government-funded FOS, including one database in law and one in agriculture, both unnamed. The lobbying campaign is led by the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), a trade association of commercial electronic publishers.
SIIA spokesman David LeDuc said, "We have no intention of going after PubMed." But it's not clear why. According to LeDuc, as paraphrased by Matthews, "it is fairer to charge researchers for the articles they use than to charge taxpayers for the cost of running a Web site that makes them available for free." (PS: Let's get this breathtaking assertion straight. When the research is funded by the government and the articles donated by authors, then taxpaying readers should have to pay a second levy to read them, and pay it to a third party with no role in the research? The cost of a running a government web site is a greater burden on taxpayers than the cost of paying profiteers standing between authors and readers?)
Le Duc says that SIIA picked out PubScience because some SIIA member organizations didn't appreciate the competition. To be charitable, we can assume that many SIIA member organizations deplored this attack on the public interest. Scan the list of companies that are members of SIIA. You probably use software from at least one. Let these companies know what you think of what the SIIA is doing in their name and whether you want your dollars to support this kind of piracy from the public.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/14/2002 09:11:00 AM.
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.
