Dan Engber, Andy Gass, and Gavin Yamey, Who should own medical knowledge, Student BMJ, September 2004. Excerpt: "It is a depressingly familiar story. A group of medics in Indonesia search medical literature in preparation for a study. They want to arm themselves with as much knowledge as possible, so that their own research will build on previous work. But when they go online to access the crucial articles, they are out of luck: reading the papers requires exorbitant pay per view or journal subscription fees which they cannot afford. We are part [PLoS] of a grassroots movement of doctors and researchers who believe that medical research results should be a freely available public resource. Governments worldwide invest billions of dollars in medical research every year --the National Institutes of Health in the United States will alone spend $28bn (£15bn; €23bn) in the fiscal year 2004, yet the results largely remain in private hands, locked behind access fees and restrictions. Why is it so urgent to unlock this treasury of knowledge? Taxpayers deserve free access to the results of research that they have financed. Patients have the right to know the results of studies in which they participated and which are relevant to their condition. Researchers should be able to share knowledge to promote more efficient scientific progress....Open access publishers act as service providers, rather than owners of information. They charge a one time publication fee for what they do --mediating peer review, copy editing, electronic formatting, online hosting, and a few other tasks-- and in return they impose no restrictions on viewing and using the articles that they publish. If authors cannot afford the publication fee, it is waived, with no questions asked --inability to pay publication charges should not be a barrier to publishing in open access journals."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 8/27/2004 09:52:00 AM.
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.
