Dick Kaser interviews Kurt Molholm in the April issue of Information Today. Molholm is the director of the U.S. government's Defense Technical Information Center, which generally supports open access to unclassified research. The conversation ranges over the death of PubScience, the threat to the GPO, and self-censorship of scientific journals and government web sites disseminating scientific information. Quoting Molholm: "That's one of two big paradoxes I see as a government organization. First, more and more legislation is saying, 'We can't afford to fund you, so find ways of getting revenue yourself.' And now industry says, 'You're encroaching on my area.' The second thing is, they say, 'Conduct yourself like a business, but you don't have the same business tools.' [This] gets back to that same thing I've said before: equity versus profit. Government organizations are not in business to make profit. They are there to serve their constituencies, [which are] as much overseas as here."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 4/07/2003 01:03:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
