Slashdot Mirror
Bill to Require Open Access to Scientific Papers
Ponca City, We Love You writes "Congress is expected to vote this week on a bill requiring investigators funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to publish research papers only in journals that are made freely available within one year of publication. Until now, repeated efforts to legislate such a mandate have failed under pressure from the well-heeled journal publishing industry and some nonprofit scientific societies whose educational activities are supported by the profits from journals that they publish. Scientists assert that open access will speed innovation by making it easier for them to share and build on each other's findings. The measure is contained in a spending bill that boosts the biomedical agency's effective budget by 3.1%, to $29.8 billion in 2008. The open-access requirement in the bill would apply only during fiscal year 2008; it would need to be renewed in yearly spending bills in the future."
Unsurprisingly, Slashdot commentors think that the U.S. Congress should give us something for nothing.
We paid for the research in the first place, dipshit. That we should have to pay, again, to access what we paid for is indefensible.
However, this law will likely disturb the economics of academic publishing, which could have serious consequences.
Disturb some leeches, you mean. Good riddance.
Academic journals don't just print to paper submitted articles; their real value is quality control: organizing peer reviews and editing, i.e., determining what is fit to print. In research, quality control is extremely valuable, and if Congress appropriates their means of re-couping their costs, then those quality controls may disappear.
Open access doesn't mean QC goes down the tubes. Go away, tool.