Foundation endorses mandates for free access to publicly funded research. A photo from a 1973 London School of Economics appeal for funds for its library. Scholarly information is often too expensive to access. Academic publishers sell journal subscriptions for thousands of dollars per journal per year. Typically, only universities and large libraries, not individuals, are able to pay those fees, which limits access to researchers and others affiliated with institutions with money. Are these costs justifiable when the underlying research is publicly funded and the underlying goal is public knowledge? If you’re a taxpayer you’ve already paid to fund the research, so why should you pay essentially another tax to read the findings of that research? On May 20, a team of longtime advocates for public access to scholarly information launched a campaign to urge U.S. Click to view a video by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Research Coalition about the petition. Scientific publishing: The price of information.
ArXiv.org e-Print archive. Home - PMC - NCBI. Gowers's Weblog.