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Free Global Virtual Scientific Library
Several readers wrote in with news of the momentum gathering behind free access to government-funded research. A petition "to create a freely available virtual scientific library available to the entire globe" garnered more than 20,000 signatures, including several Nobel prize winners and 750 education, research, and cultural organizations from around the world. The European Commission responded by committing more than $100 million towards support for open access journals and for the building of infrastructure needed to house institutional repositories able to store the millions of academic articles written each year. In the article Michael Geist discusses the open access movement and its critics.
Wikipedia!
The purpose of libraries in modern times may change to offer that sort of science service. My area's library has a list of online databases they pay for, and offer to everyone with a library card [which is free where I'm from] to access them. Perhaps ask your local library what databases and journals/periodicals they offer to you at no cost online.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Is there really any reason why government-funded research shouldn't be made available to the masses? After all, wasn't it the masses who paid for the research?
My blog
Yeah. We remember what happened to the LAST "freely available virtual scientific library available to the entire globe".
what if somehow we find research data from Area 51 in this new library? I'd like to see that government research online. Don't bother telling me it doesn't exist or should be a secret still, I just would like to see what they have.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Google Research®
Follow the path of Wikipedia. In 1997 no one believed the biggest encyclopedia in the world would be free (both free as in freedom and free as in beer) in 10 years. You can do the same with science!
I've heard how bad the situation is: Scientist publish their papers in scientific magazines without getting payed. Other scientist review those papers, without being paid either.. but buying those magazines is really expensive. Basically the magazines don't do anything useful for science... they just cost much...
$5 says articles start vanishing as "certain" governments decide that previously unclassified materials are not secret ...
Bark less. Wag more.
"will last until the people discover they can vote themselves free bread."
Having grown fat on free bread, the people will now vote themselves free information.
Just saying.
sigs, as if you care.
Scientific literature is now mainly published in digital form and all the infrastructure that paper copies require is increasingly obsolete. Now we still live in the ruins of the time when printing mattered: we have rivalling databases who charge money from "publishers" (just a guy with Office and Outlook Express, in some cases) who in turn charges money from authors. In many cases, having published at a particular journal before or knowing who's probably going to review you has entirely too much influence on what gets accepted. People still insist on distributing their papers as read-only PDFs. The whole system ceases to make sense as a market, and it never made sense as an infrastructure. If all of this luggage was finally done away with and replaced with a state-funded, largely automated, high capacity system that was available from anywhere, lots of highly competent people would have more time to devote to research. The difference such a system would make for scholars is akin to the difference that Wikipedia makes for laymen.
I know what's suggested here wouldn't be quite that, but it'd be the second to last step before we arrive at a system where free application and publication, anonymous worldwide peer review and free access to all publications speed up research considerably.
However, the advantage of this would be greatest for backwater scientific communities in second- and third-world countries. I could see a couple of legislators not want the Russian anthropologists, Kenyan mathematicians or Peruvian veterinarians to catch up on the guys in "their" universities...
blow your mind already
I have been thinking about this for a long time. At my public university (in the US) I have heard librarians say that some journals have subscription fees of 10's of thousands of dollars a year. Multiply that by the enormous number of journals that the university library has to subscribe to each year and you are talking 10's of millions of dollars a year. Also, of course the access is restricted to students and faculty of the university; the general public cannot get web access to these journals. Given that the vast majority of the research published is funded by government agencies, this is outrageous. The fees have gotten so bad that the library has had to pick and choose. Just this year my online access to the journal Review of Scientific Instruments was limited to just the last 5 years or so, rather than the entire archive, due to fees. The kicker is that there are paper copies in the physical library that I can go photocopy, but I can't access the articles online because my university can't afford it. There must be reform regarding the publishing of scientific work funded by government agencies. My only concern is that the quality of peer-review must remain intact, but I see no reason for that to change since those who review papers don't get paid anyway.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
The arXiv system (www.arxiv.org) already hosts just about every preprint that comes out in high energy physics, astrophysics, and several related disciplines. Access is completely free, and they currently host 400,000 papers. Needless to say, people post there for a reason: it works really effectively to get research results out to the public quickly and efficiently, and as mentioned before, it's totally free for everyone involved. Open access isn't a theoretical question taking place in a vacuum, it's already underway, and it works just fine, and can even coexist with the refereed journal system, as the physics world has learned over the past decade.
The APS began its participation in PERI by offering access to countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Now that this pilot program has operated successfully for one year, the APS is in the process of expanding access to other developing regions.
The APS also supports the electronic Journals Delivery Service (eJDS), which is administered by the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), http://sdu.ictp.it/ep/ejds.html. This service is aimed at providing access to scientists at institutions in developing countries that do not have access to sufficient bandwidth, thus, making it impossible or too difficult to download material from the Internet. Through eJDS, scientists receive individual mathematics and physics journal articles via e-mail.
In addition to the programs above, the APS is also one of many publishers that are partners in the Iraqi Virtual Science Library (IVSL), https://www.ivsl.org/. IVSL provides free access to scientific journals to institutions in Iraq. The Society has also established multi-institutional agreements (consortia) in many countries to help broaden access to institutions that might otherwise be unable to afford or gain access.
www.doaj.org - directory of open access journals
If only they could use this new initiative to pump up the number of journals and full-text index the whole thing, plus the physics/math/computer science index over at www.arxiv.org, you'd have a good start towards a single, comprehensive index.
stuff |
Or some friend/do-gooder in CapeTown or even San Francisco goes down to his local Kinkos, prints out the book, and then mails it to this Kalahari address.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
When you give someone bread, you have less bread. When you give someone information, you still have it.
The article talks about government funded research. Why shouldn't the people who paid for it have access to it? Why should publishing companies, who often require transfer of copyright and cash payments from authors in order to publish, continue to get fat off public money?
People who think that the public is not entitled to what it pays for, while some random company that adds nothing of value is, are dumbasses. Just saying.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Interesting, but what if I want to see papers from real science, not virtual science?
("Free Global Science Virtual Library" might have been a better choice.)
This is, probably, not enough to outweight the benefits, but is not anybody concerned about our sworn enemies using our scientific advances against us?
They already do that, but they want more...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
FTA: Notwithstanding the momentum toward open access, some barriers remain.
First, many conventional publishers actively oppose open access, fearful that it will cut into their profitability.
Pretty much sums it up.
Indeed, soon after the launch of the European petition, Nature reported that publishers were preparing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to counter open access support with a message that equates public access to government censorship.
Distortion and distraction. Can we expect anything else from this crowd?
What?
I haven't seen that many adjectives in a row since my wife's last order at Starbucks...
while [ 1 ]; do echo -n -e "\xe2\x95\xb$((($RANDOM&1)+1))"; done
If your Kalahari bushmen get this book,
are they going to read it in English, do you think?
An international knowledge bank needs an international language that works.
Se via Kalaharaj vilaghanoj akirus tiun libron,
chu ili legos ghin Angla-lingve, vi pensas?
Internacia sciobanko postulas tiun internacian lingvon kiu funkcias..
Why should they get it free?
Because information wants to be free? And with virtually nil distribution costs, there's no logical reason(but plenty of instinctive ones) to deny access.
The internet may destroy regional boundaries, but it hasn't destroyed financial ones.
More like the reverse is true, but either way the problem will be resolved soon, I hope. It's time to tear down ALL boundaries.
What?
This is hardly likely, except in a miniscule fraction of research libraries. Although there are reams of papers whose finding are essentially worthless, often what is worthless to one investigator is often of value to another. This is the case because research papers seldom contain a single relevant "finding". Often papes contain important and valuable data, but the interpretations or methods used to analyze it are faulty or poorly chosen.
A much, much bigger problem is that the average Joe has no interest in reading ANY technical publications (on line or otherwise) and for many who try they really don't have a clue as to what it means. Just look at how the science of climate change is covered in the news and in print. The entire science is predicated largely on the solution of differential equations and numerical analysis. Just how many readers are really in a position to read and properly interpret such results? The percentage is extremely small.
I have published "obscure papers" myself. I would love it if they were more widely available, read, and appreciated, but regardless of whether people would find them "useless" or "valuable" it seems unlikely that these will be even read, except by a few experts.
If its post-arthroscopic it is related to the joints and since emphysema is a lung disease, your application for tenure is hereby declined!
Moreover, my concern is that a Virtual Scientific Library will will not emphasise where (i.e. which journal) a paper was published and therefore the rigour of the review process. Instead we'll end up with average research on an equal footing with research that deserves maximum respect.
So, yes to a Virtual Scientific Library but can we have it based on Slashcode please but with moderation linked to expertise?
"... while some random company that adds nothing of value is"
Publishing books can hardly be seen as not adding value. Could you imagine how combersome and unworkable a system there would be if everyone just printed out
or photocopied raw manuscripts? Plagarism would be rampant and citation would be next to impossible. Also publishing houses provide distribution, and often are the
only outlets for many obscure works and often manage storage of unpurched volumes yet to be sold.
Can web-based systems work? Yes, they probably could but there needs to be a lot of infrastructure in place before it will replace published works. Take for example, hosting? How would this be paid for. Should we require that webhosts agree to permanent, indefinte long term storage for all time? Who will upgrade the media? Paper, degrades far more slowly than electronic media. How about security issues, these are greater for electronic media as the potential to "deface" previously published text is greater and more available to crackers and other miscreants. What about citation? Which website should be cited? What about date of publication, etc.? These are not insignificant issues. I for one, would be lothe to have a government system so centrally organized that some future politicans can begin to restrict or destroy what can or has been published, simply because they find it expedient to do so.
Yes, I believe that in the long run we should be moving to freely available web-based publication for research articles, but to think that it scientific publication is just as simple as posting HTML to a webpage, is a gross oversimplification of the scientiric publication process. Likewise, it counter productive to destroy the business of scientific publication houses, without consideration of the attendant loss of expertise, talent, and resources, without providing a beneficial and well-reasoned pathway for all parties, often quite well-meaning even if money-making enterprises. The entire move will require careful deliberation and quite possibly lare expenditures to complete, even though they will hopefully save money in the long run and make scientific works more accessible.
Nobody has yet mentioned the reason expensive journals persist in an era of cheap typesetting and distribution. It's because they provide two (inter-related) things to the science community:
I agree the current system is bad and needs to be changed. My point is that it isn't so simple a problem to solve as many Slashdotters might believe. We're talking here about one of the primary mechanisms influencing people's research careers (which jobs they get, whether they get grant funding, which awards they win). If the money gets sucked out of publishing and the peer review process that this funds goes away, something will need to take its place as a QC mechanism for science.
....when is esperanto going to use asian, hindu, arabic or cyrillic lettering? ;)
substituting a mangled romance language for english doesn't make it any more accessible. Not to mention maybe all those different approaches to communication actually contribute something to the creativity in constructing well-thought out experiments to properly phrased hypothesis...like how Asian languages predispose their speakers to character/pattern recognition, and German lends itself to compounding ideas, or English lends itself to forming new ones by verbing (--- see I just made that up by converting a noun into a verb!) I for one welcome diversity. How about getting people off their asses (coughs Americans) and getting them to learn to speak another language besides American; damn know that I think about it, get them to learn English first
"Nobody has yet mentioned the reason expensive journals persist in an era of cheap typesetting and distribution. It's because they provide two (inter-related) things to the science community: Quality control. For the good journals, when you submit an article it is typically reviewed (anonymously) by at least three of your peers, who make comments that are forwarded to you for response. You either argue your case against the reviewers or change your paper to accommodate."
e n )
Peer review has little to do with the price of the publications. Referees are not paid by the publisher of the journal (I know this because I've refereed a bunch of papers and never got anything more than a "thank you" note.)
There are enormous price differences between peer-reviewed journals. Some first-class journals in computer science, such as the Journal of the ACM, cost about 200 a year, while some other journals cost as much as 5000. The difference is that the former are published by nonprofits (scientific or technical societies) while the latter are published by for-profit entities, who charge universities through their nose.
A solution, yet unimplemented, would be to have editorial boards read and validate articles that are published on sites such as arXiv.org
Repeat: what's important is the editorial board, not the publisher.
(Shameless plug: the French research agency CNRS has a nice site for open publication: http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/index.php?langue=
What you say about journals is true, but the same is true of books in general now that reading electronic versions is becoming practical. (Still waiting for an e-ink book with pages, though.) There's money to be made in selling a physical object that's more expensive than it needs to be.
Has anyone yet put together a physical artifact containing a few thousand key scientific papers, blueprints, engineers' memoirs, and raw data collections? Not that we have any real use for such a thing at the moment, but it'd be cool to have the sort of object that could theoretically boost a civilization's technology level or bootstrap a space colony.
Revive the Constitution.
There's a former Canadian government official calling for the release of secret alien technology to fight global warming! I'd be more interested in the power armor, myself.
Revive the Constitution.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
2. Many editors at society journals work for free. These posts are considered prestigious, and are a good way to make professional friends. There hasn't been any shortage of volunteers. Universities universally support this use of researcher's time, because it adds to the department's and university's prestige.
What is more, some first-class journals and conference proceedings in CS are completely free and persistently available on-line. Some of these have been this way for more than a decade now!
A solution, yet unimplemented, would be to have editorial boards read and validate articles that are published on sites such as arXiv.orgWhich is exactly why these free and open but reviewed and edited online sources are much better than arXiv.
And these editorial boards likewise aren't going to receive any kind of money from any source? Is there any particular reason slashdot believes that the world doesn't require money?Yep, that is right, nobody pays the editorial boards, just as nobody pays the reviewers. We do it because we are saints. Also, you are right, slashdot is one big groupthink, which is why nobody ever disagrees with anybody here.
Of course, back in realityland, reviewers do get paid. They don't get paid by publishers, they get paid by their universities. No, not per review or anything. However, at a typical research university, each prof is expected to spend something like 50% of his or her time doing research, 50% of his or her time teaching, and 10% of his or her time doing service. (Does this add up to more than 100%? Well, there is a reason we work more than 40 hours per week.) Guess what? Reviewing papers can be counted as service. So can editing (or helping to edit) a journal.
So, the people doing the work are covered. The websites? These are pretty small and low traffic and the costs can be easily covered by Universities for the prestige of it. The only cost that isn't covered at this point is for the printed copies to go into University archives and these can be farmed out to publishing companies that will sell them to libraries for a couple hundred dollars per year. If people become convinced they don't need these, that cost will vanish.
The only reason more journals and conferences haven't gone this route is momentum. To start up a new journal or conference, or to switch an existing one to open, online access takes time and effort. Did I mention we already work long hours? You don't need massive government warehouses of information. You just need to pay a few faculty a couple of semesters per journal you want created/switched over and we'll take it from there. We want our research to be available to everyone.
Dean
Years ago this was already set in motion through the Berlin Declaration (http://oa.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclarat ion.html).
Currently in the Netherlands almost all major universities have repositories for their papers, theses, et cetera. Typically runs software like DSpace (www.dspace.org) or others (Chesire3, et cetera).
See http://www.opendoar.org/ for open access repositories.
Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai
The parent was meant as a response to the post by AC here. Sorry about that.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.