[Gllug] OSS

John Hearns john.hearns at clustervision.com
Tue Oct 26 17:15:36 UTC 2004


On Tue, 2004-10-26 at 12:41, Rev Simon Rumble wrote:

> More to the point: why should data and research results that are paid 
> for by the taxpayer be available to said taxpayers only through 
> subscription to a very expensive journal?  They don't pay their 
> reviewers.  They don't pay their authors.  What is the expensive 
> subscription paying for?  Gold-plated typesetters and printing presses?

Indeed. That was the tenet of the Guardian article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,3604,1264827,00.html



I come from a high energy physics background. It is common in that field
for results to be published as preprints, and that is what most people
read. Physics labs have shelves of preprints which you browse over
coffee, and they're freely available on the Web.
The final papers go into Physics Letters, 

(Even saying that, just found a paper from Physics Letters scanned in,
freely available from KEK in Japan)


Back when the world was young, I remember being in a meeting at Guys
Hospital.
I said something along the lines of 'students and researchers will soon
be able to read journals on a computer screen, using something called
the Web'. A senior medic near had apoplexy at the very thought of 
preprints, and not consulting journals. Couldn't think of
any other way to do it.






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