Following the announcement by US research funder NIH that authors had submitted just 4% of eligible papers to PubMed Central by the first anniversary of their Public Access Policy, both advocates and opponents of open access agreed that the policy had failed to make research freely available online.
Advocates are now calling for a strengthening of the policy to make submission mandatory, opponents for it to remain voluntary. US legislators are also getting involved in a more far-reaching effort to make research more available.
Back in January, we did some research among those most affected – the authors themselves – and reported on the PRC website here. Many accept the principle of more open access to research but not if they lose their favourite journals.
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Given the popularity of the Blackberry which currently has a fifth of the PDA market with its push email, this report suggesting that mobile email will overwhelm employees and reduce productivity is either out of step or a vision of the future. Alternatively, maybe we’ll just get better at managing it.
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Watching Lemming at the cinema last night, this enjoyable, haunting, surreal film about the fears of the modern couple contained a flying webcam – what a great idea! Its use in the automated home I thought a little lame but then this morning I saw a video by Coptervision whose flying webcam is rather larger and applications rather broader. The corporate video begins with noble aims – save lives in search and rescue missions – but ends predictably – safeguard profits by spying on your employees.
By the way, Lemmings don’t actually commit mass suicide – they migrate en masse and will often just die of exhaustion in their mission to find a new home.
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