Re:NSF announces plan for comprehensive public access to res...
by wsxcde on Thursday March 19, 2015 @07:55AM
(#9231281)
> Yet people are pleased with a two year delay disseminating the most important research? The heartbeat of progress is the time it takes to disseminate information.
This is a bit of a strawman, don't you think? Researchers, the vast majority of whom are located in corporate R&D labs and universities, already have the subscriptions to big digital libraries so they can download papers as soon as they are published.
The move towards open access mostly affects practising engineers outside this environment, and I think a delay of a year or two is acceptable in this scenario.
Re:NSF announces plan for comprehensive public access to res...
by basilgohar on Wednesday March 18, 2015 @10:58PM
(#9229984)
As opposed to the current state of things, where there is basically no requirement to publish freely whatsoever?
This plan is for articles to be widely available like two years after being written. One year after publication [1], which can be a year after the article is written [2].
Imagine a blogging platform that took two years between pressing "publish" and the article appearing online. It sounds like a Kafkaesque nightmare, but here it is, hailed as a breakthrough. The scientific community is as much to blame as the publishers.
[1] "NSF will require that articles ... be available for download ... within one year of publication." (linked article)
[2] http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-duration-of-peer-reviews-fo...
EDIT: The tepid reaction surprises me. We are on the verge of big advances in artificial intelligence, anti-aging, space travel, and we direly need new energy sources. Yet people are pleased with a two year delay disseminating the most important research? The heartbeat of progress is the time it takes to disseminate information. The status quo is absurd and we should be angry about it.