Re: CCL:boost for research paper access

["David Konerding, Ph.D." <dek -8 at 8- cgl.ucsf.EDU>]

Eugene Leitl writes:
 >
 >"The literature that should be freely accessible online is that which
 >scholars give to the world without expectation of payment," reads the
 >declaration.
 That's known as altruism.  I don't know any scientists who publish anything
 without some expectation of payment- in the form of credit, attention, or money.
 >
 >It calls for "free availability on the public internet, permitting any
 >users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the
 >full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data
 >to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose".
 As much as this sounds like a good idea, making journal articles freely
 available on the internet has a lot of hidden costs.  Providing the web server
 hardware, internet connectivity, and maintaining the site are only the first
 costs that come to mind.  Making sure the articles aren't written by cranks
 who can produce semi-scientific sounding text that means absolutely nothing
 has a cost- you have to hire somebody who's an expert in that area.
 George Soros has a lot of money- probably enough to float a project
 like this for many years- but I don't really expect the service to be
 "free" nor do I expect these free online journals to ever achieve the
 prominence (IE influenceable readership) that some print journals
 have.