Since health-related data seem to be high on the list of things searched for on the 'Net, here are a couple of items which might be germane.
If you've ever wanted to read an article from a scientific journal but been frustrated because your library doesn't subscribe, this article may interest you. It discusses the business models journals are using and ones they may be moving toward, because they recognize that subscription costs have become nearly prohibitive for many public libraries. "According to the Assn. of Research Libraries, prices for serial publications -- including academic journals, newspapers and magazines -- increased 215% from 1986 to 2001, while the consumer price index went up 62%."
Similarly, Medscape is celebrating the fifth birthday of its open-access general journal this year.
Most medical research articles published in the United States, and many articles published in other developed countries, result from research funded by the government, often the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). We believe (and one of us [GDL] has argued for many years) that it is inappropriate for a reader in such a developed country whose tax money has paid for the research to have to pay again to read the results of such research by having to buy a subscription to the journal that publishes them. For government-funded research to be unavailable for application in the field of public health because of financial constraints seems particularly at odds with the intent of the US Congress in funding the NIH. This idea, open-access publishing, was expressed in a speech at a conference at Harvard on the Internet and Public Health in 2000, and was supported editorially by The Boston Globe.[2]
The Medscape article lists several other sources for free journals, in case you're in need of them.
Posted by Linkmeister at April 15, 2004 11:41 AM