Like locked cell phones and copy-protected music, Facebook is on the wrong side of the open-network debate. Facebook is a sealed bubble. Facebook users are locked into Facebook, just as iTunes locks music fans to Apple's iPod.
When entering data into Facebook, you're sending it on a one-way trip. Want to show somebody a video or a picture you posted to your profile? Unless they also have an account, they can't see it. Your pictures, videos and everything else is stranded in a w
Subscription models make publishers insist on controlling access to research they didn't perform, write up, or fund. They act like a midwives who insist on keeping (or hiding, or performing surgery on) other folks' babies.
Suber's a policy analyst on open access to scientific and scholarly research literature. He's also a Senior Researcher at SPARC, and publisher of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter.
Taxpayers pony up $28 billion annually for NIH to fund medical research, resulting in 60,000 annual published studies. First beneficiaries of that knowledge aren't doctors or patients, but journals that are prohibitively expensive for many.
A new metrics in the works...instead of "impact factor", try "usage factor?" A majority of publishers in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) appear to support "UF."
"Academic literature should be freely available: developing countries need access; part time ... thinkers ... journalists and the public can benefit; ... you’ve already paid for much of this stuff with your taxes ... important new ideas from humanity"