Wall Street Journal on Open Access

Information Liberation By DANIEL AKST:

If your child has a life-threatening disease and you're desperate to read the latest research, you'll be dismayed to learn that you can't -- at least not without hugely expensive subscriptions to a bevy of specialized journals or access to a major research library. Your dismay might turn to anger when you realize that you paid for this research.

Read the whole thing....

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"Alas, the new NIH policy will allow a 12-month lag between publication and posting on PubMed."

preposterous. how hard is it to cut and paste and upload? i guess i'm asking the wrong question.

hats off to PLoS! keep up the great work!

~C

@C4Chaos,

Yes, the 12 month delay is not ideal. However, even delayed access is better than no access at all !!

Here in the UK, it's a 6 month delay (maximum) and bar 1, all of the main funders of scientific/technical/medical MANDATE that the research must be made Open Access (OA).

In the UK, it is important to note that such research must be made OA NO LATER than 6 months.

The advantage of OA Journals such as PLoS is that all Papers are OA as soon as they are published. No messing around by these folks.