Wednesday, January 11, 2012

You paid for it but you don't own it

That's the theory of publishers of biomedical research journals like Cell, Science and The New England Journal of Medicine. They are pushing The Research Works Act, which would require us to pay for papers for scientific research funded by NIH, which is funded by we taxpayers.

Now, when NIH gives a scientist a grant, the scientist is obligated to provide the National Library of Medicine’s Web site with his published results so that you and I, who supplied the money to the scientist, can review the results if we so desire.

The research journals in which the results appear would prefer that we pay them to read these results and they would like us to pay $15 and more for the privilege.

Make any sense to you?

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