ATA : Comments from the Blogosphere

Comments from the Blogosphere

Recent Posts:

April 9, 2008
Wired Science
All Your Research Belongs to You

September 24, 2007
Linux.com
PRISM Coalition lobbies against open access

September 21, 2007
Madisonian.net
"Open Access is Censorship": Big Brother Would Be Proud

September 9, 2007
SLASHDOT
Libraries defend open access

August 26, 2007
A BLOG AROUND THE CLOCK
This PRISM does not turn white light into the beautiful colors of the rainbow

August 24, 2007
INFORMATION RESEARCH WEBLOG
Publisher Panic

July 22, 2007
KANTOR.COM
Public research hidden from the public

July 20, 2007
THOUGHT CAPITAL
Does open access need patriotism?

July 20, 2007
LIVING ON THE FRONTLINES
Better access to research papers for patients

July 20, 2007
A BLOG AROUND THE CLOCK
Great News!

July 20, 2007
THE SCIENTIFIC ACTIVIST
House Approves Mandatory Public Access to NIH Research Results

January 30, 2007
THE NATIONAL JOURNAL - TECHNOLOGY DAILY
Open Access To Government-Funded Research
By Aliya Sternstein

January 30, 2007
THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION - NEWS BLOG
European Petition Seeking Open Access to Research Draws 13,000 Names

January 28, 2007
COMMUNICATION, COGNITION, AND ARBITRARY THOUGHTS
Science Publishing: Ideas or Dollars?
By Samuel Bradley, Assistant Professor, Communications, Texas Tech University

"That's right. Hire an attack dog to tackle those radicals suggesting that science -- of all things -- should be about ideas rather than profits."

January 28, 2007
THE DAILY TRANSCRIPT
Washington Post on academic publishing's new PR guy
By Alex Palazzo, postdoctoral fellow, Department of Cell Biology, Harvard Medical School

"Let's see if understand this. While I work for these publishers for free, submitting the manuscripts that make up their journals and doing the peer review, my subscription fees and page charges are paying for a disinformation campaign. Why do we put up with this?" (Comment by Theodore Price)

January 28, 2007
OMNI BRAIN
Follow up on Open Access Lobbying
By Steve Higgins, Psychology graduate student

"From Thom Parks:

The American Chemical Society is rich ground for blogging.
Scientific American has a piece about the American Chemical Society
spending close to half a million of membership dollars hiring two
lobbyists to defeat open access."

January 28, 2007
EVIDENCE SOUP
Peer review: Does it have to be expensive?
By Tracy Allison Altman, Researcher and founder of asula

"It's actually not a 'free-information' movement, since U.S. citizens are funding substantial scientific research with their tax dollars (via NIH). So why shouldn't there be wider access to those research findings?"

January 28, 2007
THE OLIVE RIDLEY CRAWL
The Open Access “Debate”
By Anonymous environmental scientist

"The divisions could not be more clearly drawn. The people who produce the work, and the people who check the work for scientific accuracy, readability, appropriateness and suitability don’t get paid, the man does!"

January 27, 2007
LATER ON
Bad news on public access to scientific research

"The battle over public access to scientific literature stretches back to the late 1990s when Nobel Prize winner Harold Varmus began plans for PubMed Central—a repository for all research resulting from National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding—and, a few years later, launched the Public Library of Science (PLoS). These easily accessible journals and repositories have struck fear into the hearts of traditional publishers, who have enlisted the “pit bull” of public relations to fight back, reports news@nature."

January 27, 2007
ROMUNOV'S BLOG ET AL
So much for swim or sink

Here are a few takes with such lofty arguments that a nine year old would see through them.

The consultant advised them to focus on simple messages, such as “Public access equals government censorship“. He hinted that the publishers should attempt to equate traditional publishing models with peer review, and “paint a picture of what the world would look like without peer-reviewed articles".

January 27, 2007
SAVAGE MINDS
Big Content’s ‘pitbull’ and the AAA
By Alex Golub, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Hawai’i Manoa in Honolulu

"In a land of plenty, what does an industry premised on scarcity do? Enforce scarcity on a world that has never known it. And just as in the recording industry, Big Content has begun using scare tactics to convince academics that the free dissemination of ideas—the central ideal of our profession—is unethical."

January 27, 2007
FRAMING SCIENCE
Things Get Worse for Those "Greedy" Academic Publishers
Matthew C. Nisbet, Ph.D, is Assistant Professor in the School of Communication at American University

"Things just went from bad to terrible for the image of the Association of American Publishers. Rick Weiss in today's WPost spotlights the Association's hiring of "PR Pit Bull" Eric Dezenhall to help in their fight against patient advocates and members of Congress who are trying to require free access at academic journals to the results of federally financed research..."

January 26, 2007
LEX BLOG
LexisNexis to fight free legal information movement?
By Kevin O'Keefe, Founder and president, LexBlog

January 26, 2007
RICHARD'S BLOG
Shutting the Door on Open-Access?
By Richard Hull, Executive Director of the Text and Academic Authors Association

"Peer review is not threatened by free access; peer reviewers are uncompensated and do not represent a major cost for a journal...It is not uncommon for a scientific journal to charge an author to submit a manuscript, then to levy an additional hefty charge for publishing it, and then to levy a hefty charge for the privilege of reading the published work. In all that the peer reviewers do their work as unpaid volunteers."

January 25, 2007
HOW THE WORLD WORKS - SALON.COM
Science publishers get stupid
By Andrew Leonard

"The free information movement is really coming of age, if one is to judge by the enemies it's making. Nature has a doozy of an article out this week reporting that a group of scientific publishers, including Elsevier, Wiley and the American Chemical Society, have hired a notorious public relations gunslinger to fight back against those kooks who think scientific information should be freely accessible to all."

January 25, 2007
IWRBLOG
Nature uncovers PR attack on open access
by Mark Chillingworth, IWR Editor

More blogger comments on public access are tracked by the Open Access News Blog.