[sc-announce] One small step for open access... -- Science Commons blog

Donna Wentworth dwentworth at creativecommons.org
Sun Apr 13 18:33:56 EDT 2008


One small step for open access…

April 13th, 2008<http://sciencecommons.org/weblog/archives/2008/04/13/one-small-step-for-open-access/>by
dwentworth

NPR's *Science Friday* <http://www.sciencefriday.com/> program has now
posted <http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/200804114> its
interview with Harold Varmus
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_E._Varmus>on the landmark NIH
open access mandate <http://publicaccess.nih.gov/>, which went into effect
this past Monday. Varmus, the former NIH director who co-founded the Public
Library of Science (PLoS <http://www.plos.org/>), talks about what the
mandate means for the future of biomedical research, fielding questions
about everything from freeing dark
data<http://sciencecommons.org/weblog/archives/2008/03/13/biomed-centrals-smart-push-to-publish-negative-data/>to
expanding access to orphan
disease research<http://network.nature.com/blogs/user/wilbanks/2008/01/16/huntingtons-and-the-knowledge-gap>to
reclaiming our scientific heritage in the literature.

Among the many other excellent points he makes, Varmus argues that more
research funders should adopt open access policies — not only to magnify the
impact of the research they fund, but also to open it to innovative uses:

You can imagine that if you were a funder of science anywhere in the world,
you would want the results that you paid for to be out there for everyone —
not just to see, but to work with. Indeed, the way in which one works with
the information is extraordinarily important in this day in which we use the
computer to mine research data for new ways to think about things.

Amen.

In case you missed it earlier this week, here's Varmus's PLoS editorial on
the mandate: *Progress Toward Public Access to
Science<http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0060101>
*. For more information about the NIH mandate going forward, including
university-sponsored resources for authors, check out
SPARC<http://www.arl.org/sparc/about/index.shtml>'s
NIH implementation
page<http://www.arl.org/sparc/advocacy/nih/implementing-the-new-nih-.shtml>
.

................
Donna Wentworth
Communications Specialist
Science Commons
http://sciencecommons.org
dwentworth at creativecommons.org <kaitlin at creativecommons.org>
................
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