Making All Scientific Journals Free And Online
from the open-sourcing-science? dept
A number of scientists are backing a proposal to offer up all scientific journals in a single online database that is free and open to the public. They feel that this is a worthy cause and that everyone should have access to the scientific information - and be able to search across it. The concept seems good - but of course, the journals who rely on subscription info aren't happy about it. The response is that articles would only be published in the database six months after original publication. I'm also not sure why it needs to be in a single central database. Haven't they learned anything about distributed computing?
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No Subject Given
Because otherwise searching for articles would continue to be the nightmare it currently is. The idea of a Google type interface to say the entire Engineering Abstracts collection has me all but drooling....
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it _must_ be distributed
The reason we have what classical literature we do is because various copies survived.
Just because the data are digital doesn't mean this won't be an issue. Companies can go out of business. databases can be corrupted. _Companies_ can be corrupted, and can try to edit history.
Multiple copies of everything is crucial.
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