freedom of information
http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070122/full/445347a.html
OK, this isn't everyone's cup of tea, but for those of you who are interested in research, I'd love to hear some thoughts on this. My gut reaction is, 'Hell yeah, there should be public access to scientific research.' But then I started to wonder if that would affect peer-reviewed work. Would research become sloppier as it's made more readily available to the public? Would it matter, being that most people don't even care about this research?
Right now PubMed is one of the few and PubMed tends to not interest me so much since it's not focused on language learning, my primary interest. What happens when I leave the university, but I want to continue my research? Aren't teacher-researchers, such as myself, put at a distinct disadvantage in relation to the Ivory Tower-ensconced academics? On a different note, could we rely on the publicly accessible information as much as we do the pay databases?
Seriously, anyone. Thoughts?
OK, this isn't everyone's cup of tea, but for those of you who are interested in research, I'd love to hear some thoughts on this. My gut reaction is, 'Hell yeah, there should be public access to scientific research.' But then I started to wonder if that would affect peer-reviewed work. Would research become sloppier as it's made more readily available to the public? Would it matter, being that most people don't even care about this research?
Right now PubMed is one of the few and PubMed tends to not interest me so much since it's not focused on language learning, my primary interest. What happens when I leave the university, but I want to continue my research? Aren't teacher-researchers, such as myself, put at a distinct disadvantage in relation to the Ivory Tower-ensconced academics? On a different note, could we rely on the publicly accessible information as much as we do the pay databases?
Seriously, anyone. Thoughts?