Taxpayers are storming the fee-based barricades that keep them from federally funded research....
It’s not just the general public that lacks access: College and university researchers face serious problems, too. Just ask Gary Ward, associate professor of microbiology and molecular genetics at the University of Vermont in Burlington. Ward conducts research in a specialized area of cell biology. The work that he and his departmental colleagues do is relevant to many illnesses, including cancer and AIDS.
Ward estimates that he can access 66%–75% of the articles that he needs for his research thanks to journal subscriptions and database license agreements at the university’s Dana Medical Library. For the articles that his library can’t provide, he’s dependent on the much-more-time-consuming process of interlibrary loan. Given time constraints and the cost of transactions, he utilizes ILL only if he’s certain that the article he’s seeking will be relevant.
Ward points out the importance of ready access to the scientific literature. As a scientist he needs to see the full text of promising articles —not just abstracts— in order to determine which ones are useful. Time lags are also problematic. “Research scientists need immediate access to all relevant articles so that they can browse and go from one study to another without delay,” he says....
But it’s impossible for Ward to get that kind of access to a significant portion of the journal articles he needs, despite the fact that his library access is far better than that at most academic and research libraries: The university’s medical and general libraries spend over $5 million annually on acquisitions. The result, Ward asserts, is that faculty members “end up teaching what we have access to, rather than what our students most need to know.” ...
Even the largest and most wealthy university libraries, such as Harvard and Cornell, have problems providing all the journals their constituent communities need. “All academic libraries are challenged to provide their students and faculty with effective access to the research literature,” says Jim Neal, university librarian at Columbia University in New York City. “It is one of our profession’s most pressing issues.” ...
The principle of public access to taxpayer-funded research is gaining significant backing. Congressional support for a strong NIH public access policy and for the Federal Research Public Access Act [FRPAA] is bipartisan, and spans the political spectrum. The principle also appears to have very strong public support. A recent Harris interactive poll, published in the May 31 Wall Street Journal, indicates that over 80% of Americans share the view that government-funded research should be made publicly accessible.
The library community is uniting behind the principle. Seven major library associations, including the American Library Association, are members of the Alliance for Taxpayer Access. The alliance is coordinated by SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, a leading advocate for change in the system of scholarly publishing. At the ALA Annual Conference in New Orleans, the Association’s governing Council unanimously endorsed a resolution in favor of [FRPAA]....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/20/2006 02:10:00 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.
