The National Institutes of Health proposed back in September 2004 mandated Open Access for all NIH-funded research. The Science Commons project was created to encourage scientific innovation by making it easier for scientists, universities, and industries to use literature, data, and other scientific intellectual property and to share their knowledge with others. Science Commons works within current copyright and patent law to promote legal and technical mechanisms that remove barriers to sharing.

It may be that this effort isn’t really even needed though. 93% of journal publishers already allow self-archiving, so perhaps it’s more a matter of instituting the mechanics of self-archiving more than anything else. Here’s an excellent article in the October 2004 issue of Information Today discussing the open access movement.

Dr. John Grohol is the CEO and founder of Psych Central. He is an author, researcher and expert in mental health online, and has been writing about online behavior, mental health and psychology issues -- as well as the intersection of technology and human behavior -- since 1992. Dr. Grohol sits on the editorial board of the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking and is a founding board member and treasurer of the Society for Participatory Medicine.

Like this author?
Catch up on other posts by John M. Grohol, PsyD (or subscribe to their feed).

Comments

This post currently has no comments. You can read the comments or leave your own thoughts on our new comments page.

Trackbacks

    Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 29 Dec 2004
    Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.