Who needs access? You need access! | Public access to scientific research makes all our lives bette

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Web Name: Who needs access? You need access! | Public access to scientific research makes all our lives bette

WebSite: http://whoneedsaccess.org

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description:We have a problem Our governments spend billions on funding research. But most people don't have access to it -- including the taxpayers who ultimately funded the research. Scholars, mostly funded by government money or charities, do the research. They write up their results as papers, format the manuscripts, prepare figures, and send them to publishers. Other…
Who needs access? You need access! Public access to scientific research makes all our lives better HomeAboutFAQContributeBibliographyNewest Stories Home We have a problem

Our governments spend billions on funding research. But most people dont have access to it including the taxpayers who ultimately funded the research.

Scholars, mostly funded by government money or charities, do the research. They write up their results as papers, format the manuscripts, prepare figures, and send them to publishers. Other scientists handle editing for the publishers (unpaid). Yet other scientists review the manuscripts for the editor (also unpaid). The result of all this is a honed and polished research paper. But all too often the publisher demands the copyright, and locks the research behind a paywall.

So what?, you might ask.  I dont want to read research papers.

But dont you want your doctor to read them?  How about your childrens teachers?  Your elected representatives?

The reality is that there are many groups that want and need access to the research that they and you funded.  Public access to scientific research makes all our lives better: it makes us healthier, better governed and better educated; it lets us live in a cleaner environment, a more civilised society and a healthier economy. When publishers lock away the results of research, it hurts us all.

On this site, well talk to people in all walks of life who need access to research but cant get it because of restrictive publishing practices.  Here are some of the people well be talking to:

TranslatorsResearch organizationsSmall businessesPeople working with the developing worldDoctors and dentists [offsite link]NursesTeachersPoliticiansConsumer organizationsPatientsPatient groupsAmateur palaeontologists, astronomers and ornithologists [offsite link]Wikipedia contributorsBloggers
Unaffiliated scholars working into their retirement [offsite link]Enterprising schoolchildren [offsite link]Professional researchersIndependent researchersPublishersArtists

New interviews will appear in the Recent Posts area on the right.  Or you can look up different categories.

Share this:TwitterFacebook 21 responses Prof. Valdi Tutunji 25/02/2012 at 11:40 am | Reply

The building of knowledge is built every second by the contribution of the entire scientific community. Each of us, students and researchers, contributes a brick and so, this building has been evolving, growing, since the first man observed the behavior of an animal, the shape of a plant, the movement of stars. In recent decades, a building is being built parallel, however, a granite and ivory of this new building comes from the old. And we do not have access to it.
It seems to me the story of the builder who built the school, but their children can not study it. It is clear that an elite (some countries) is guaranteeing the inaccessibility of most of us to knowledge.

Wojtek Sylwestrzak 26/02/2012 at 11:32 am | Reply

Polish academics sign a petition urging Polish funding agencies to require open access to publicly funded research publications at http://otwartymandat.pl/ (in Polish, use google translator to read)

bluerasberry 29/02/2012 at 4:45 pm | Reply

I edit Wikipedia on science topics, particularly on issues relating to clinical research. I also train PR staff and community editors to engage Wikipedia. Many people who participate in clinical research want to get information online about the nature of the research and the rights of study participants, but right now, I would assert that there really is not a way for people to get good information online on any website in any country about almost any clinical trial.

I really cannot share a huge success story, but I can say that a lot of research institutions are exploring the possibility of being more engaged online. Since typing in almost any word into a search engine returns a Wikipedia article on the first page, many institutions are also starting to question the extent to which they should commit resources to maintaining Wikipedia articles since that is where everyone goes for layman explanations on any topic anyway.

Anon 06/03/2012 at 9:21 pm | Reply

My wife works for the national ambulance service (not going to say which country) doing stats work trying to improve practice modelling best ambulance geographic placement by time of day/week, setting benchmarks for time to patient in rural/urban environments that kind of thing. Im an academic at the local Uni. I had to get her listed as my research assistant here at Uni so she could get access to the paywalled articles she needs to do her job. Fortunately, my Head of Department is sympathetic and signed off on her RA position to get her library access.

I suppose the solution is for everybody who might need paywall access to marry academics.

Kevin Zelnio (@kzelnio) 06/03/2012 at 9:43 pm | Reply

I am an independent scientist, freelance science writer and a run a science communications business. Closed access affects me tremendously. Thankfully through contacts in twitter and the community I can gather the resources I need without paying the ridiculous fees demanded by publishers. Most articles I read through to note whether they are worth writing about or tagging in the list of topics I follow for future reference. My family I would starve if I had to spend 20-40 dollars each time I wanted to understand an article deeper than the abstract.

Yet, even though there is a demand for the services I provide among many organizations, if I factored in the costs for access I would price myself out of many contracts. Even article rentals for much cheaper would not help if they were articles that I would keep needing to go back to reread for various reasons. I read dozens of articles every day and would read more if I could access more!

Closed access is a direct threat to entrepreneurship and for those research works paid for by public funds (state, federal, or otherwise), I contributed to funding those results. Me and my business cannot afford to be double-dipped by megapublishers making profits hundreds of times more than I could ever dream to earn!

8lossom 06/03/2012 at 10:13 pm | Reply

Students are sold this big idea of joining the university network and being given access to all of these online journal article resource libraries. Only when we get here, we are told that the university only has access to certain journals, for certain years, and cannot always promise it will work unless youre on a university-based computer. We pay a fortune, are told we should not have opinions and should base our concepts on our analyses of the work of others (at least in year 1 and 2), and then we are prevented from accessing said work. While many may think we have access to resources, even at a top 5 university, we do not.

juliusbeezer 06/03/2012 at 10:20 pm | Reply

I think its worth logging here that according to the Chronicle of Higher Education JSTOR turns away 150 million individual requests for access each year.
JSTOR (journal storage) is a non-profit collaboration serving academic libraries that makes digital editions of 1289 journals available online.

Ted 26/07/2015 at 1:57 pm | Reply

Another way I consider the government missuses the funds is by spending the funds on projects that are not helpful to the economy. Most of the money is spent on charities that dont support the well-being of the economy.

Mike Taylor 02/08/2015 at 8:48 am

That may be true, Ted; but its a separate problem for a separate site to address. (In any case, most people would argue that the purpose of charities is to support the wellbeing of people, not of the economy.)

samsaundersbristol 06/03/2012 at 10:43 pm | Reply

The interests that keep academic research closed are intimately tied up with large corporate publishers, individual academic careers, all university rankings and all aspects of research assessment and funding. In 1996 The Electronic Libraries Programme in the UK tried very hard to shift the culture. (I contributed as as assistant on one project). Publisher prices are now causing huge damage to Libraries (and to their University scholars when titles have to be cancelled) . Many Universities do run accessible archives of (some) staff publications. Stevan Harnad (Southampton) and others have tried very hard to change normal practice, but vested interests have provided plenty of reasons for the majority to not bother. An old petition languishes here: http://www.ec-petition.eu/

Perhaps its time to start a Pirate Bay to do to academics what the world has done to musicians liberate the best and destroy the merely average. It would probably be better to start by controlling publisher oligopolies and being more creative with access costs. If open access were declared tomorrow there would be some major earthquakes in the University sector.

François-Nicolas Pelletier 07/03/2012 at 2:57 am | Reply

Absolutely right. You should add journalists to the list of people you will be talking to. Science journalists (and journalists in general) can get pretty frustrated about the current lack of accessibility to science papers. (Although universities are pretty happy when the media trumpet their new discoveries, often based only on press releases).

Andrew McLeod (@mcchino64) 07/03/2012 at 8:50 am | Reply

What legal ramifications would there be if everybody posted a load of material on sites such as Scribd?

Mike Taylor 07/03/2012 at 9:38 am | Reply

Andrew McLeod asks: What legal ramifications would there be if everybody posted a load of material on sites such as Scribd?

I really dont know. Im afraid that for obvious reasons we cant condone copyright violation.

A Member of the Public 07/03/2012 at 1:23 pm | Reply

and what about lay people checking out research for themselves, instead of trusting pre-digested edicts? Check out http://nccam.nih.gov/health/providers/digest/coldflu-science.htm#echinacea: NCCAM claim doesnt work. Yet, on the same website, though hard to find: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17597571 excellent results presented in Lancet-published meta-study. I could cite several more examples from around PubMed. Perfectly ordinary people need access to study data. Until the day when we can be sure that arbiters of information have no vested interest in presenting a particular view closed access = disempowerment.

Garry Haywood (@_garrilla) 07/03/2012 at 2:50 pm | Reply

Im an independent researcher. I made a new model of the business economy by creating an ecology matrix out of Yellow Pages data. I learned much about how the economy works this way. I could have worked faster and smarter if Id had access to research papers. Fortunately I had the tenacity to continue without having access to much research material or getting academic friends to break copyright.

Out of the process I did end up writing some papers for journals on what I found in research. One of the papers I won an award for. but I cant read that paper because I dont subscribe to the journal!

kim McEvoy 25/05/2012 at 4:18 am | Reply

Hi Im a 44year old female with Dercums disease am desperate to find SOMEONE here in Australia that has any knowledge of this illness. I have been to numerous Doctors with all symptoms find that none seem to have the slightest idea about the disease or who to refer me too. If you could please give me any specialists or help groups I would be eternally grateful. Thank you.

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We have a problem Our governments spend billions on funding research. But most people don't have access to it -- including the taxpayers who ultimately funded the research. Scholars, mostly funded by government money or charities, do the research. They write up their results as papers, format the manuscripts, prepare figures, and send them to publishers. Other…

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