Paying twice for science

I've been thinking lately about my upcoming publication in Virology and the cost of viewing this paper for anyone who doesn't have access to the journal. The cost is $30 to download the article online, $666 for a personal subscription, and $5546 for library access.

My research, and the vast majority of research published in scientific journals, is funded at least in part from public sources ( NSF funds part of my research and about 20% of the nations non-medical research). Science works better when ideas are shared openly and it seems that particularly in the case of publicly funded research there is a responsibility to provide the results of the research the public has paid for. Several scholarly journals have switched to a partial open source or completely open source format, most notably in the latter category is PLoS. I hope to publish my future work in open source journals where more people will be able to access the research, especially those who have paied for it.

Yep,
It's my very first blog entry. Here's whats going on in my life now
Another first publication by me (and my P.I. Ken Stedman) is in the works, my manuscript to Virology, "SSV1 viral integrase is not essential" was accepted and will be published next month. This is my first peer reviewed publication and the result of part of the last few years research. Yipppie!

Less exciting news I broke my hand (the 4th metatarsal to be precise) while commuting home last month. It's healing nicely, but no biking for another three weeks...