The Seed blog has a good idea: every week, ask a question, inspire a lot of science bloggers to answer it, and then link to some of the better answers.
Here's the question for this week: "Since they're funded by taxpayer dollars (through the NIH, NSF, and so on), should scientists have to justify their research agendas to the public, rather than just grant-making bodies?"
Clearly this question is not about open access to publicly-funded research. But at least one blogger has written that Americans supporting open access through the recent Harris poll were saying that "the public should be able to vote on what projects/studies/experiments do or do not receive public funding." This is not true. Worse, it's harmful. Misrepresenting OA confuses newcomers and tying OA to a foolish idea makes OA look foolish. If you see this error propagating around the web, please correct it.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 6/01/2006 10:10:00 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.
