The Irony of a Web Without Science - Financial Times article
By James Boyle
Published: September 4 2007 03:00 | Last updated: September 4 2007 03:00
Excerpt:
The US National Institutes of Health invests $28bn annually in research. European spending is lower, although the European Union is closing the gap, helped by a shortsighted American policy of “flatlining” many scientific research budgets. (Perhaps this is because scientists have an annoying tendency to discuss things that conflict with the Bush administration’s view of reality, such as global warming, evolution, the insufficiency of the New Orleans levee system and the medical potential of stem cells.)
Economists on both sides of the Atlantic strongly agree that scientific research spending provides measurable impact on economic growth. The moral case for health research is even clearer.
So much for the input side of research. What about the output? After all, paying for research is not enough. We have to get it to the scientists who might use it which, in an increasingly interdisciplinary world, is hard to predict beforehand. In the case of health research, patients are also looking for information - trying to find out whether the latest research shows that oestrogen therapy increases breast cancer risks, or anti-inflammatory drugs the risk of heart disease.
The outputs of scientific research come in a variety of forms, but the most important is an article in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. While some journals, such as those produced by the Public Library of Science, are “open access” - available in full for free online - most are not.
They can be extremely expensive. The cost of journals has dramatically outpaced both the rate of inflation and the cost of monographs over the past 15 years. These journals may be available online - but they are behind firewalls, available only on payment of a fee.
It is easy to be shocked at some of the excesses - a journal subscription more than $20,000, or the $150 per student that the Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology demands for the right to photocopy a single page. Or one can be indignant that the public sometimes pays once to have the research done, again for the salary of the scientist who peer reviews it and then a third time to read the results.
These are natural reactions. But they miss a more fundamental point; our failure to apply what we learned from the world wide web to the world of scientific research.
Read the rest of the article at: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/39166e30-5a7f-11dc-9bcd-0000779fd2ac.html
