3 ms·
Well, many people might be disappointed at the result. But all things government are complicated, long winded, and are finally decided by people who don't even
by erikb 12y ago
Well, many people might be disappointed at the result. But all things government are complicated, long winded, and are finally decided by people who don't even think they have a clue about it (I hope). Therefore I think every small step is a good step and should be appreciated.
In my university people complained a lot about the first online access to papers as ebooks and pdfs from inside the school's VPN. But nowadays students use it a lot for their studies, thesis work, and research, although it's not much more accessible than 5 years ago. I think it earns some kudos to the people who really made this happen!
- pessimizer 12y agoI'm pretty sure that what made this happen was the White House memo. Everyone actually involved with the plan architecture seems to have put all of their hard work into assuring that the access given is as minimal as possible while still complying with the letter of the memo and its least generous legal interpretations.
- capnrefsmmat 12y agoBut the government has done a similar scheme which is much more radical: PubMed Central, which hosts the full-text of NIH-funded articles. It doesn't just link to publisher websites, and the article text is available for download in easily-parsed formats (instead of just PDFs). DOE could have adopted that model, and probably even much of the code, but they decided against it.