Shulenburger D. University Public-Access Mandates are Good for Science
PLoS Biol 2009; 7(11): e1000237.
doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000237
The ArXiv online digital version of physic articles preprints and post-prints in August of 1991 had the objective of simplify access to and sharing of scientific papers among the scientific community. Since then many have forwarded the example of ArXiv, to such and extent that if u visit the DOAR home page (last update in Sept 2008) the site advertise over 1500 listings. The author of this article finds that accessibility has some disadvantages when researchers have to face such a well of information retrieval. Whatsmore, open access and public access pose the question of immediate access to a work or in the case of public access of a limitation period in order to weight the cogency of a paper. For instance, ArXiv has no peer review but since 2004 has introduced the endorsement that is the authorization to publication of a paper from another ArXiv author. However, there authors who are not interested in having their work peer-reviewed. The policy of Harvard, MIT and the University of Kansas and other universities to display over the web their scholar literature, the economy benefits and potentials of such an initiative, the request to “ expand the NIH mandate to all federal funding agencies” and other aspects regarding the issue are taken into consideration.
http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1000237
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