Does this mean what I think it means?

[catsittingstill]

Wired has a blog post about something that seems very exciting to me.

Passed by President Bush in December as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2007, the law requires the submission of all scientific articles produced with National Institutes of Health funding to PubMed, the NIH's public digital library. Within one year of publication, articles must be made freely available in their entirety.

If this means what I think it means--any research funded by the NIH (most of the biological research in this country, though the NSF does also account for a modest chunk) must have resulting publications (the papers in science journals that describe the research, its results, and the implications) made available for free by one year after publication.  This time next year, presumably, we'll be seeing the first trickles of what will be a flood of free papers.

Right now I can only read papers whose paper journals or e-journals I can find at the Carson Newman library (not a big selection).  If I'm really desperate I can drive into Knoxville and use their paper journals, but their e-journals are closed to me, since I don't have a UTK username/password anymore to access them.  This will be a great thing for people like me who can't afford e-subscriptions to all the journals out there, and sometimes really want to read a particular paper.

Hot damn!

Comments

[mdlbear]

That's very good. Scientific journals on dead trees are, ultimately, doomed, but it's going to take a huge struggle and won't be very pretty.

[mdlbear]

There are some very hopeful things happening on the patent front, too.

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080409033837121

[bigbumble.livejournal.com]

It means what you think. The American Chemical Society (ACS), of which I am a member, has been whining and whimpering about this issue for some time. ACS publishes numerous journals, including Chemical Abstracts, many of which are available, for a price, on-line. The one year waiting period is part of the compromise that was worked out. Not a moment to soon as far as I am concerned.

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

This seems an unlikely thing for that guy who tried repeatedly to control or modify what "his" scientists were saying/publishing, but it is very cheering. It's pretty common for me to end up frustrated when I want to check real research online, because all I can access is the abstract, and a page asking for cash!

There are way too many things that I think ARE worth what they cost, but that I simply don't have enough in my budget to pay for. And government-funded research was ALREADY paid for by us citizens, you know? So this seems fair as well as wonderful.

[karinny.livejournal.com]

yup... you're reading it correctly.

[karinny.livejournal.com]

behold the serials librarian doing happy cartwheels!

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Very cool! Now if they'd just do it for building science.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

It's not just the electronic-ness of it that I find exciting--lots of journals are available electronically--it's the available-to-the-public-ness. Previously articles were only available to people who subscribed, or who belonged to universities who subscribed.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

That seems quite a bit more complicated to me... but I wish them well.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Yay!

I understand that the people who make their money by publishing journals may not be too psyched about this, but it's a matter of balancing what's good for them versus what's good for the field as a whole, and researchers actually having access to all the information they need seems more important to me too.

In the long run, science results may have to be distributed by a different method--either a different business model or a publicly funded method.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

:-)

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Yeah.

I think it may end up that science results need to be distributed by a different method; maybe the old publishing paradigm just won't work any more under this rule.

But I think the social / scientific good of having results freely and rapidly available is more important.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Yay!

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Maybe they will eventually. I think this is happening because NIH sees the benefits, and since it funds most biological research, has sufficient clout to make it happen. I don't know what entity funds building science, and I don't know how they would feel about making the results public like that.

[mdlbear]

*nod* I work in a very small research lab; it's even worse there.

Ideally *anyone* ought to be able to follow a link from a blog posting to an interesting article, and from there to every paper they reference.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Yes. People work very hard to produce this knowledge, and given that it's publicly funded, it should be public knowledge. (And I would guess probably the preference of most working scientists too.)

[mdlbear]

Corporations have to remember that the legal system is under no obligation to preserve their obsolete business model. I believe the buggy-whip manufacturers eventually got the message.

(It's worth noting that farriers are actually doing pretty well these days.)

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

Maybe I'm cynical, but I think my skepticism of anything coming out of the Bush administration, especially related to science, is justified. I fear that they may be doing this precisely to economically ruin the established journals, because if the established journals go out of business they won't be there to tell people outside of the immediate discipline which papers are important and solid. This will mean it will be easier for corrupt administrations and businesses to manipulate the public's understanding of science by telling us falsely which results deserve our attention.

Another thing they might be trying to angle for is a situation where scientific results are *only* published on a government controlled website, at which point it becomes very easy for results the government doesn't like to disappear, or worse, to be altered.

(It may be the right thing to do, in spite of the disruptions it could cause. I just doubt that the Bush administration would be doing it for the right reason.)

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Building science is mostly funded by the construction industry in the USA. They're fine with making results public...if you pay. The premier building science journal is Building and Environment and is so expensive that the large, well-funded University of Washington library does not take it.

Sigh.