Roger Martin, Research Findings Should be Made Accessible to Public, Kansas City Info Zine, March 6, 2005. Excerpt: 'After the doctors had given up on him, Lorenzo's dad, played by Nick Nolte, went on a tear. He researched everything known about his son's disease and came up with a treatment. Today, Lorenzo's dad would probably have to live near a major university with a giant subscription budget to access the latest research. Here's one example. It costs about as much to buy a year's subscription to the Journal of Applied Polymer Science as a 2005 Toyota Corolla. The price of each approaches $13,000....While faculty still give their scholarship to society and commercial publishers [without payment], those entities increasingly charge extraordinary prices for their journals. Between 1990 and 2000, medical journal prices went up 184 percent; science and technical journals, 178 percent. You could call it pricing power, or you could call it greed, but in either case, the National Institutes of Health is upset. Last month, it urged researchers who get any NIH support to release their findings to the public ASAP -- and no later than a year after publication. Richard Fyffe, KU assistant dean of libraries for scholarly communication, wants to make it easier for researchers to do that. He's asking faculty and staff to submit manuscripts and publications for posting on a Web site called KU ScholarWorks. He says, "There's no real consolidated picture anywhere of the actual output of the KU research community." Most journals are starting to loosen up a bit, Fyffe says. Some now allow scholars to post a version of the paper they submit for publication. Others let scholars post a corrected manuscript or even the final publication. Fyffe says, "A lot of scholars and publishers realize that research done at tax-exempt institutions should be open."...New ideas are the scholar's gift to us. Not all of them will be interesting or, except to other experts in the scholar's field, understandable. Very few will save the Lorenzos of this world. But if taxpayers are helping to pay for discovery, they should be able to lay hands on the latest research findings -- and for less than the price of a Toyota Corolla.'
Posted by
Peter Suber at 3/06/2005 09:14:00 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.
