The Opener, The Better
Certainly a good deal of congratulations needs to go out to the folks at
PLoS, which has
published its 500th article in
PLoS ONE—all free, all openly accessible. This is, of course, not to mention the
six other topical journals under the aegis ægis of PLoS—again, all free, all openly accessible.
What a concept: making knowledge free. Here’s hoping the Natures and the Sciences and the Cells, and all the rest of them too, begin to head that direction sooner than later.
Also, here’s realizing that that will probably never, ever happen, at least not in my lifetime. There’s way too much money to be made.
I miss funny Benjamin. Where did he go? Come back. I need a fun distraction.
Serious Benjamin has a point, though. Most of the free databases aren’t worth looking at, and in some cases you could probably find better information off wikipedia.
Not that there’s anything wrong with wikipedia, except sometimes it lies…
the humanities are trying to do a similar thing with free knowledge (as is GoogleBooks of course). this one is called <a href=”" rel=”nofollow”>MediaCommons</a>:
<blockquote>
MediaCommons, a project-in-development with support from the Institute for the Future of the Book (part of the Annenberg Center for Communication at USC) and the MacArthur Foundation, will be a network in which scholars, students, and other interested members of the public can help to shift the focus of scholarship back to the circulation of discourse.
</blockquote>
the neat thing about their online publications is that users can add commentary that will be permanently appended to the corresponding text. you want to say something about paragraph 3? go right ahead.
You’ve been <a href=”http://drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2007/07/09/how-to-fix-the-nih/” rel=”nofollow”>tagged</a> to comment on the state of the NIH.