information policy

Academic study?

User Image cpikas | June 21, 2010
Another brief observation. I was just reading a popular cooking/recipe magazine and they mentioned that the New York Board of Health did an "academic study" of the new nutrition labeling laws. ARGH. I don't like calling scientific research "academic study" because to me that implies: 1) it's academic - it's a pursuit for it's own sake or for increased knowledge, not for evaluation or application, 2) only scientists in academe do studies, 3) the results might not be accessible for the public. I ran into this at work and I tried to stamp it out because the vast majority of the work we support…

Publishers say you already have all of the access you need

User Image cpikas | May 17, 2010
Here's a quote from the Professional and Scholarly Publishing division of the Association of American Publishers' response (pdf) to the FRPAA legislation (about): There is no need for federal agencies to replicate content on their own sites when web-linking approaches to publishers' authoritative versions could serve better the same goal of public access. Acting on its own in the free market, the publishing industry already has made more research information available to more people than at any time in history. Articles are widely available in major academic centers and private-sector online…

The new evil empire has closed access to Ageline

User Image cpikas | February 8, 2010
A brief note. Remember when I told you about free to you research databases? Remember when some other librarians told you about a certain company negotiating for exclusive access to certain popular magazines, choking out other aggregators?  Well, now these two things have something in common. Ebsco.

Comps reading & university scientist patenting

Social Sciences User Image cpikas | June 6, 2009
This post serves a few purposes.  First, href="http://friendfeed.com/billhooker/ffbe5e1d/secret-science-again-drugmonkey"> Bill Hooker questioned href="http://scienceblogs.com/drugmonkey/2009/06/secret_science_again.php#comment-1680220">Crotty's assertion about the importance of patents to university researchers [*]. Bill also href="http://www.sennoma.net/main/archives/2009/06/what_use_are_research_patents.php">posted a nice summary of AUTM's statistics (later in href="http://scienceblogs.com/drugmonkey/2009/06/secret_science_again.php">DrugMonkey's comment stream there…