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Thanks for making my point, Nature

By kbonham on September 14, 2010.

[This post was originally published at webeasties.wordpress.com]

Back in July I wrote about an editorial published in Nature about the future of science communication and what place blogs had in that future. Though I agreed with them that blogs are a great resource, I also thought that they were being a bit disingenuous about their desire to relate with the public considering that almost all of their material is locked behind a paywall, so the public doesn't have access. I even wrote a comment to that effect on their website:

It's all well and good to talk about public accessibility of science, but how do you expect the public to get engaged when almost all primary literature is locked behind a pay-wall? I have access through my university, but when I want to blog about new research for friends and family, I'm stuck linking to abstracts and then summarizing everything in the paper.

I just received an e-mail today that my comment was flagged as spam and removed. I'm not sure how they arrived at that conclusion, but I've written to their customer support to see if they'll rectify the situation. If not, they're just making my point for me. Way to encourage public discourse, Nature.

Tags
education
Science Process

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