tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post114636704545167043..comments2024-03-22T00:30:09.536-07:00Comments on The Neurocritic: Belgian Study Touts Open Access Publishing for EUThe Neurocritichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08010555869208208621noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post-1146469319859463962006-05-01T00:41:00.000-07:002006-05-01T00:41:00.000-07:00Last year, NIH "strongly encouraged" their funded ...Last year, NIH "strongly encouraged" their funded researchers to submit manuscripts to PubMedCentral for free release within a year of publication in a paid journal. This, of course, won't help you find an article published last week.<BR/><BR/>SO there is some movement in science publishing to make federally funded research freely available to the public (after all, taxes pay for NIH). There's also PLoS and Biomed Central.<BR/><BR/>Here's an extreme (but true) example of when timely access is a life-and-death matter. My colleague's neighbor is suffering from a virulent form of breast cancer and wants to read about the latest experimental treatments. Who can afford to pay $300 for 10 articles? So my colleague got her the articles using his academic affiliation. What kind of publisher wants to gouge a cancer patient for articles on cancer treatments??The Neurocritichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08010555869208208621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21605329.post-1146379734290843002006-04-29T23:48:00.000-07:002006-04-29T23:48:00.000-07:00I'm really glad to read that. Snippet from an emai...I'm really glad to read that. Snippet from an email I sent recently to an organization who may or may not respond:<BR/><BR/>I want to write about [x]. I have to pay for all those<BR/>documents in order to let other people, who will also<BR/>have to buy them, know that they exist. <BR/><BR/>The alternative is not to write. If it were just a<BR/>matter of writing for myself, if I read the info and<BR/>told nobody, it wouldn't matter. But I have hundreds<BR/>of readers who can process this knowledge if they<BR/>learned about it, and hundreds more who will at least<BR/>skim my writing and see that the word bipolar is not<BR/>spelled bi-polar or BiPolar. <BR/><BR/>Is pay-per-read the solution? Am I looking at this all<BR/>wrong? I'm getting paid to write [sometimes] so I should pay for my<BR/>raw source material, right? Certainly that makes sense<BR/>in theory and in some cases is quite appropriate. It's<BR/>just that the scale is out of proportion in this case.<BR/>If I paid the going rate for PDFs, if every link from<BR/>my blog items cost me $30, I'd be paying thousands a<BR/>month, and I don't get nearly that in return. <BR/><BR/>Some journals give free access to media. The APA is<BR/>great for that, they send me lots of publications. They're<BR/>an exception.<BR/><BR/>Meanwhile, the authors of the articles invariably and<BR/>enthusiastically want me to read, and send me their writing. They want<BR/>readers, they want dissemination, they want<BR/>discussion. <BR/><BR/>Etc.Sandrahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04943949264511919698noreply@blogger.com