Friends: Here is a short message from Stevan Harnad that I received recently. I thought all of you might find it usful. Best wishes. Arun [Subbiah Arunachalam] -----Original Message----- From: Stevan Harnad [mailto:harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk] The Science Advisory Board, an international panel of 22,319 life science and medical professionals formed in 1997, has conducted a survey on "What makes searching scientific and medical literature online frustrating?":

Scientists Frustrated with Limited Access to Full-Text Documents http://www.scienceboard.net/community/news/news.214.html

While scientists often cite staying abreast of developments in their field as the most common reason for reading scientific literature, it is by far from the only reason. "Scientists perceive their ability to access scientific and medical literature almost as an unalienable right of their profession," observes Tamara Zemlo, Ph.D., MPH, Director of The Science Advisory Board. The Internet has reinforced this perception by increasing the speed and ease by which these searches can be conducted.

To find out what is the biggest obstacle to this ubiquitous scientific practice, members of The Science Advisory Board participated in a poll to address, "What makes searching scientific and medical literature online frustrating?: Almost 80% of the 1,400 respondents stated that limited access to full-text documents was the most annoying aspect of online literature searches. It far exceeded the other complaints of broken hypertext links, copyright restrictions and inadequate search engines.

Such sentiments will be sweet music to the ears of Public Library of Science (PLoS) founders who espouse the philosophy that unrestricted access to scientific and medical literature will accelerate progress in these critical fields. Their model of offering full-text and data of published research article--available free of charge anywhere in the world--is still being tested. Time will tell whether the scientists, who in theory embrace the nobility of this idea, will choose to publish their own findings in such a venue.

   Scientists Frustrated with Limited Access to Full-Text Documents    http://www.scienceboard.net/community/news/news.214.html http://www.scienceboard.net/community/news/news.214.html

   While scientists often cite staying abreast of developments in their    field as the most common reason for reading scientific literature,    it is by far from the only reason. "Scientists perceive their    ability to access scientific and medical literature almost as an    unalienable right of their profession," observes Tamara Zemlo,    Ph.D., MPH, Director of The Science Advisory Board. The Internet    has reinforced this perception by increasing the speed and ease by    which these searches can be conducted.

   To find out what is the biggest obstacle to this ubiquitous scientific    practice, members of The Science Advisory Board participated in a poll    to address, "What makes searching scientific and medical literature    online frustrating?: Almost 80% of the 1,400 respondents stated that    limited access to full-text documents was the most annoying aspect    of online literature searches. It far exceeded the other complaints    of broken hypertext links, copyright restrictions and inadequate    search engines.

   Such sentiments will be sweet music to the ears of Public Library of    Science (PLoS) founders who espouse the philosophy that unrestricted    access to scientific and medical literature will accelerate progress    in these critical fields. Their model of offering full-text and data    of published research article--available free of charge anywhere    in the world--is still being tested. Time will tell whether the    scientists, who in theory embrace the nobility of this idea, will    choose to publish their own findings in such a venue. It continues to amaze, how researchers, despite their mounting frustration, remain blind (or paralyzed) with respect to the obvious! Why on earth would they want to keep waiting, passively, frustrated, for

It continues to amaze, how researchers, despite their mounting frustration, remain blind (or paralyzed) with respect to the obvious! Why on earth would they want to keep waiting, passively, frustrated, for the eventual outcome of the test of a new cost-recovery model in order to gain access at last to one another's full-text articles, when they can already provide that access themselves, right now, by self-archiving their own articles? http://www.arl.org/scomm/subversive/toc.html There is no question but that the research community fervently desires Open Access: Already back in 2001, for example, 34,000 biologists worldwide signed the PLoS open letter to that effect, essentially threatening to stop publishing in and refereeing for journals if they did not provide Open Access. http://www.plos.org/about/letter.html But while researchers have proved willing and able to perform the requisite keystrokes for signing open letters, declarations and surveys clamouring for Open Access to be provided for them, it looks as if they are not yet ready to perform the few additional keystrokes it would take to actually provide that Open Access for themselves -- even when over 90% of their journals have already given them the green light to go ahead and do so, with their blessing! http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php It looks as if nothing less than a self-archiving mandate from their funders and employers will manage to induce the thirsty research cavalry, having been duly led to the waters of Open Access Self-Archiving, to actually stoop to drink, at last! http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php (Historians will have a jolly time sorting out why this was the case: why researcher inertia kept itself waiting, thirsty, needlessly, and despite mounting frustration, for over a decade, before grasping the optimal and inevitable that had been within their reach all along!) http://www.dlib.org/dlib/december99/12harnad.html http://www.infotoday.com/IT/oct04/poynder.shtml Stevan Harnad Mandating OA around the corner? Friends: Here is a short message from Stevan Harnad that I received recently. I thought all of you might find it usful. Best wishes. Arun [Subbiah Arunachalam] -----Original Message----- From: Stevan Harnad [ mailto:harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk mailto:harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk ] The Science Advisory Board, an international panel of 22,319 life science and medical professionals formed in 1997, has conducted a survey on "What makes searching scientific and medical literature online frustrating?": the eventual outcome of the test of a new cost-recovery model in order to gain access at last to one another's full-text articles, when they can already provide that access themselves, right now, by self-archiving their own articles?     http://www.arl.org/scomm/subversive/toc.html http://www.arl.org/scomm/subversive/toc.html There is no question but that the research community fervently desires Open Access: Already back in 2001, for example, 34,000 biologists worldwide signed the PLoS open letter to that effect, essentially threatening to stop publishing in and refereeing for journals if they did not provide Open Access.     http://www.plos.org/about/letter.html http://www.plos.org/about/letter.html But while researchers have proved willing and able to perform the requisite keystrokes for signing open letters, declarations and surveys clamouring for Open Access to be provided for them, it looks as if they are not yet ready to perform the few additional keystrokes it would take to actually provide that Open Access for themselves -- even when over 90% of their journals have already given them the green light to go ahead and do so, with their blessing!     http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php It looks as if nothing less than a self-archiving mandate from their funders and employers will manage to induce the thirsty research cavalry, having been duly led to the waters of Open Access Self-Archiving, to actually stoop to drink, at last!     http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php (Historians will have a jolly time sorting out why this was the case: why researcher inertia kept itself waiting, thirsty, needlessly, and despite mounting frustration, for over a decade, before grasping the optimal and inevitable that had been within their reach all along!)     http://www.dlib.org/dlib/december99/12harnad.html http://www.dlib.org/dlib/december99/12harnad.html     http://www.infotoday.com/IT/oct04/poynder.shtml http://www.infotoday.com/IT/oct04/poynder.shtml     Stevan Harnad