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.
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this is an interesting point, tho, one that is a *rub* in most all fields = who should have access to what and at what cost?
i contribute freely to Wikipedia as that is a great example of community-based information being made available to as wide an audience as possible.
however, in the context of true research, where the quality of results [answers] are often in direct proportion to the amount of funding spent to produce them, this brings up that question in a different light.
from another point of view, locking even specialized info such as the stuff you deal with daily poses another question : will *hiding* such information from all but the specialized minds that generate it contribute to its value or render it yet another piece of research done and boxed up forever to collect dust?
does making such information available to laymen such as artists and thinkers give it value that would otherwise be denied it by locking it down to only those with a subscription to Pseudopsilly Science Magazine???
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