Information Liberation By DANIEL AKST:
If your child has a life-threatening disease and you're desperate to read the latest research, you'll be dismayed to learn that you can't -- at least not without hugely expensive subscriptions to a bevy of specialized journals or access to a major research library. Your dismay might turn to anger when you realize that you paid for this research.
Read the whole thing....
"Alas, the new NIH policy will allow a 12-month lag between publication and posting on PubMed."
preposterous. how hard is it to cut and paste and upload? i guess i'm asking the wrong question.
hats off to PLoS! keep up the great work!
~C
@C4Chaos,
Yes, the 12 month delay is not ideal. However, even delayed access is better than no access at all !!
Here in the UK, it's a 6 month delay (maximum) and bar 1, all of the main funders of scientific/technical/medical MANDATE that the research must be made Open Access (OA).
In the UK, it is important to note that such research must be made OA NO LATER than 6 months.
The advantage of OA Journals such as PLoS is that all Papers are OA as soon as they are published. No messing around by these folks.
To provide a bit of balance (and please don't see this as me defending the evil empire)... Elsevier now has a patient research option so everyone can search Elsevier journals using ScienceDirect and then patients can order copies of articles for $4.95 each, which is just a handling fee. (researchers still have to pay the standard $35 or so) http://patient-research.elsevier.com/patientresearch/about