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hi all my thanks to linda herman for forwarding this it is great news and reflects a trend supported by the british medical journal organisation where all articles are available on the internet in the abstract format as well as in the full text format knowledge = power = people janet ------------------------------------------------------------------- Legislation to Expand Access to Publicly Financed Research Findings The (U.S.) Public Library of Science on June 26 is expected to announce legislation that would make federally funded scientific research available to the public, bypassing the current system of access to journals through paid subscriptions, the New York Times reports. The legislation, called the "Public Access to Science Act" and introduced by Rep. Martin Olav Sabo (D-Minn.), would place the results of research primarily funded by the federal government into the public domain, meaning that access could not be prohibited by copyright law, according to Dr. Michael Eisen, a co-founder of the library, whose members include doctors, scientists and researchers. The measure will also call on federal agencies to improve access to their research results. Sabo, noting that the public pays about $45 billion annually through taxes to finance the research, said, "It defies logic to collectively pay for our medical research, only to privatize its profitability and availability" (Leary, New York Times, 6/26). The movement to expand access to research studies has "struggled to gain traction" because scientists are "reluctant to abandon the prestige journals," in which publication is "integral to tenure and promotion decisions," according to the Wall Street Journal (Begley, Wall Street Journal, 6/26). " The Public Library of Science: http://www.plos.org/ Kaisernetwork.org: http://www.kaisernetwork.org/ -------------------------------------------------------------------- janet paterson: an akinetic rigid subtype, albeit primarily perky, parky pd: 56-41-37 cd: 56-44-43 tel: 613-256-8340 email: [log in to unmask] my newsletter: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/newvoicenews/ my website: http://www.geocities.com/janet313/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn