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."
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
I'm a researching physician -- You did not take your own points to the logical conclusion:
.pdf attachment in reply.
A great deal (almost all) research has an NIH component of funding. Thus, if the bill goes through, *all journals will open their access* rather than have the scientists publish in lesser known journals, which will instantly become prestigious. The only articles that a 'closed' journal could publish would be those from industry or private/semiprivate funding sources (e.g. HHMI).
This is an indirect way of forcing open access to journals, which is a *great* thing.
Many journals have already opened up archive access. For instance, the New England Journal of Medicine http://nejm.org/ has its archive with free access, and also releases "important" or widely read articles for free immediately.
For the average scientist (including me) at a large institution, this has no effect. All of the hospital / university computers are whitelisted for almost all major journals by IP given the hospital / institution subscription. This will still occur, as I need journal access for articles when they come out, but this open archive access will benefit those not tied to major universities or private doctors out in the community.
Of note, it is an unspoken agreement in science that researchers at major institutions help others. Rarely we will receive an email from a doctor / researcher in Bumbletown, Argentina asking "Can you send me article from 1997 in X journal, they want $399 USD for an archive copy," I have a patient with this reported disease, etc.
They get a
Slashdotter, ID #101. UIDs are in binary, right?
Yes, but what are the costs? You write the paper for free, and deliver it in electronic form half-way ready for publication, draw the figures, etc. It's reviewed by your peers for free. It can now be published purely in electronic form (not free, but cheap). Journal publishing houses might as well be printing money - the model needs shaking up.
Honestly, I've given up on this debate around here (and for the record I fully support these open access policies). I used to work at a nonprofit scientific journal (small 3 person office, 15 AEs, ~45 review board members). Our print run was a little over 20,000. Our operating budget was a bit less than 1M a year. We barely broke even each year, and any extra that was made was funneled back into the next year's operating budget. We were all making average salaries and could easily have been making more in the for-profit world. Slashdotters are all convinced that they know how to run a publication for absolutely nothing. Save your breath. They simply don't want to understand that regularly producing a quality journal has costs, time, and effort associated with it.
This guy's the limit!