All,
No 'palaeoanthropology' whatsoever in the following article, but certainly worth reading if you happen to be one of the many frustrated (professional as well as amateur) palaeoanthropologists unable to afford access or subscriptions to so many journals and books.
Jacques Cinq-Mars
Debating access to scientific data
APA Online - Monitor on Psychology
Volume 35, No. 2 February 2004
BY TORI DeANGELIS
A California-based group wants to put all scientific findings--including psychology's--online for free. The movement fails to acknowledge the financial realities of science publishing, critics say.
Any psychologist who has followed the science media over the past year has likely caught wind of the debate over "free access" or "open access," terms used to describe free, unrestricted public Internet access to scientific information. Fueled by a San Francisco-based group called the Public Library of Science (PLoS), the movement's idealistic aim is to keep taxpayers from what PLoS calls "paying twice" for scientific data: once when they fund the government agencies that sponsor research, and again when they pay online fees to access scientific journal articles. The problem could be stopped, PLoS advocates argue, by changing the financial nature of science publishing from a system based on subscription fees--which they deride as overly profit-based--to one based on fees paid up front by authors.
The plan has a few strong supporters and many critics, both among science publishers and scientists themselves. While advocates praise the plan for its democratizing agenda, critics say it fails to account for the realities of publishing.
"It's a good idea in principle," says APA Publisher Gary VandenBos, PhD, "but it is also incredibly naive."
The money for "free" publishing has to come from somewhere, he and others say; on top of that, many scientists feel unable to afford the hefty fees required by the plan, particularly if they use complex funding streams.
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