Faye Flam, Researchers working for full disclosure of clinical trials, Philadelphia Inquirer, August 17, 2004. Excerpt: "In criminal proceedings in the United States, the prosecution is legally required to provide the defense with any information that might be beneficial to the defendant - even if it may hurt the prosecution's case. Scientists are bound to a similar type of disclosure through an unwritten code of ethics. It's part of what separates real science from pseudo-science or folk wisdom....In many cases, it's not that the journals refuse to publish negative results, [Kay] Dickerson [professor at Brown University] said, but that researchers never write them up or send them to the journals. Sometimes, when researchers try to publish their results, the companies that sponsor them try to intervene....Critics such as [Drummond] Rennie [a deputy editor at JAMA] argue that...voluntary measures won't go far enough. Companies retain the power to stop posting all results once the current controversy dies down."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 8/17/2004 11:14:00 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.
