More on OA for lay readers
“Would the enactment of this law give scientists a false sense of serving the public (by virtue of making their work available online), when in fact most scientific, jargon-filled articles can’t or won’t be read by most lay people?”
As the commenter above suggests, most people won’t find the open literature that interesting, or will find it difficult to comprehend. The main beneficiaries of the bill are researchers, and the public benefits secondarily since the bill helps to maximize the performance of public money in the support of research. That said, we should not discount the range and breadth of public interests or the public capacity to use even arcane technical reports and papers....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 6/20/2006 09:59:00 AM.
