[Insight-developers] OPEN ACCESS: Slashdot | Royal Society Wants to Keep Science off Web

[Luis Ibanez]

  "The Royal Society believe that internet publishing would
    harm the exchange of knowledge between researchers."

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/25/1950230



      "Keep science off web, says Royal Society"
http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,16781,1650370,00.html



       "Response to Research Councils UK’s
        consultation on access to research outputs"
http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/document.asp?tip=1&id=3883



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It seems that the Royal Society doesn't know that the WEB was
created at CERN to meet the demand for automatic information
sharing between scientists working in different universities
and institutes all over the world:

http://public.web.cern.ch/Public/Content/Chapters/AboutCERN/Achievements/WorldWideWeb/WWW-en.html



The Web was not invented for eBay or Amazon, is was not created
by Microsoft, it was a system for *sharing scientific information*.


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Maybe the Royal Society of London is making honor to his once
president Lord Kelvin, who in claimed in 1900 that


   "..There was nothing new to be discovered in Physics.."


(He just missed little things such as Quantum Mechanics
  and the Theory of Relativity...)


Lord Kelvin also claimed that


     "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible"



maybe their modern version is:


        "Open Access publishing is Impossible"....  ?





It is a *SHAME* that the strongest opposition to Open Access
in scientific publications comes from so-called "Scientific
Societies".



Blinded by their concerns about their main source of income,
these decacent societies rapidly forget what their mission
is supposed to be.



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Fortunately,
The UK Research Councils (Funding Agency) are among the
strongest supporters  of Open Access:


http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/press/20050921rcuk.asp

"The priority for the Research Councils is to ensure the availability
and accessibility of the outputs of research funded by the taxpayer.
This broad principle, together with concern for value for money,
long-term preservation of research and maintaining quality assurance
through peer-review, has been supported by nearly all of the submissions
to the consultation."


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   Luis