Tax-funded research should be made available to those in need
Guest Column
Sami Lange
Issue date: 11/15/06 Section: Opinion
Ever wonder where your tax dollars are going? Well, about $55 billion are going to basic and applied research. Some of the major agencies that use federally funded money include the National Institute of Health, National Science Foundation, NASA, the Department of Energy and the Department of Agriculture.
Since taxpayers are helping to fund the research, why are they restricted from accessing scholarly publications based on research they paid for?
Some of the barriers to retrieving articles include being at a university with no access, outrageously high article purchase fees or an institution that refuses to send an article because of the time involved and tells you to try another institution or go through interlibrary loan.
A professor of microbiology at the University of Vermont is allowed access to about 66-75 percent of his required journal articles.
He then has to rely on inter-library loans and only requests articles that are exactly what he needs and misses out on discoveries he might have made by browsing through other relevant articles in the entire journal.
For parents of children with rare diseases who have no access to information on their children's illness and scientists and academics unable to get the latest information in their field because their institution doesn't subscribe to an unusual journal, the need for access is not only a desire, but of vital importance.
Our fast-paced, need-it-now society demands immediate access to information. Heather Joseph, of Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, said, "whether it is speeding a response to a potential flu pandemic, developing energy alternatives, or putting the brakes on global warming, access to publicly funded science is more critical than ever."
The National Institute of Health accounts for about one-third of all tax-funded research and produces about 65,000 peer-reviewed journal articles annually.
The public access policy of the institute was implemented in May 2005 and was voluntary for researchers. It has been considered a failure, with about 4 percent of the research articles making it to public access.
Since taxpayers are helping to fund the research, why are they restricted from accessing scholarly publications based on research they paid for?
Some of the barriers to retrieving articles include being at a university with no access, outrageously high article purchase fees or an institution that refuses to send an article because of the time involved and tells you to try another institution or go through interlibrary loan.
A professor of microbiology at the University of Vermont is allowed access to about 66-75 percent of his required journal articles.
He then has to rely on inter-library loans and only requests articles that are exactly what he needs and misses out on discoveries he might have made by browsing through other relevant articles in the entire journal.
For parents of children with rare diseases who have no access to information on their children's illness and scientists and academics unable to get the latest information in their field because their institution doesn't subscribe to an unusual journal, the need for access is not only a desire, but of vital importance.
Our fast-paced, need-it-now society demands immediate access to information. Heather Joseph, of Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, said, "whether it is speeding a response to a potential flu pandemic, developing energy alternatives, or putting the brakes on global warming, access to publicly funded science is more critical than ever."
The National Institute of Health accounts for about one-third of all tax-funded research and produces about 65,000 peer-reviewed journal articles annually.
The public access policy of the institute was implemented in May 2005 and was voluntary for researchers. It has been considered a failure, with about 4 percent of the research articles making it to public access.
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posted 10/17/07 @ 1:33 AM PST
"The public access policy of the institute was implemented in May 2005 and was voluntary for researchers. It has been considered a failure, with about 4 percent of the research articles making it to public access. (Continued…)
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