On Fri, 26 Oct 2007, Jay Sulzberger wrote: > On Thu, 25 Oct 2007, Jennifer McLennan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
[snip] >> Under a mandatory policy, NIH-funded researchers will be required to >> deposit copies of eligible manuscripts into the National Library of >> Medicine?s online database, PubMed Central. Articles will be made >> publicly available no later than 12 months after publication in a >> peer-reviewed journal. > > This is absurd. I was once asked to sign a petition in favor of such a > rule. I did not sign because there is no excuse for handing over to old > style publishers of scholarly journals the power to block distribution > of work for one year. The old style publishers deserve nothing from us, > because they offer us nothing. We write the articles, we do the > reviewing for free, and we now possess a better system of distribution. I think that'd be great, but the difficulty is getting scientists on board. PLoS seems to be working on this with some software called Topaz; you can check it out on their website. But on the other hand, there's a nightmare of regulation, corporate interests, and old tradition to fight. I think that mandating some openness, even if not everything we want, sets the stage for moving the conversation toward more openness, even all of the openness we do want. This is a common topic of conversation among proponents for more kinds of freedom of many kinds. -- Asheesh. -- God isn't dead. He just doesn't want to get involved. _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://freeculture.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss
