Some good news on /. today: the House is finally pushing open access to scientific journals. The article claims that Congress is bitter over the high prices of scientific journals, but the vultures are obviously not going to take this lying down, and claim that it will destroy their livelihoods (ooo, sob sob, get a job that doesn't involve gouging public universities) and break up scientific socities (at first I thought the word was "soriorities," a confusion that led to no small amount of mirth later).

The copyrights for the articles are largely held by the journal publishers. Some eventually are made available online for free, but many, if not most, are not. Commercial publishers in particular are archiving articles and charging for access. Non-subscribers, such as someone looking for the latest research on his or her child's illness, can purchase individual articles from these firms, but even those prices can be high -- $25 to $30 per paper.

The same point is made here that I made in an earlier Kairos post--tax dollars go to support this research, but then commercial publishers swoop in, seize copyright, and charge inexcusably high prices for access to the results. I had a hard time feeling sympathy for those groups united to fight the switch to open content:

"If you mandate that you immediately turn this over to a public link, then your subscriptions are going to go down and you are going to lose advertising," said Paul Kincade, President of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.

Somebody hand me a hanky, please. Think of the devestation that will come when commercial interests quit interfering with publically-funded scientific research!

I suggest writing our representatives to ask them to support this movement. I just wrote my representative, the Honorable Jim Davis, whom I hope I have peruaded to support this push. :-) After the scientific journals switch to open-source, it's just a matter of time before humanities do the same, and you better believe they'll all be switching to online formats as soon as the order hits.