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The contribution of scholarly publishing to the advancement of science
over more than 400 years has been made possible by the management and
stewardship of the private sector. Each year, non-profit and commercial
journals invest time, expertise and hundreds of millions of dollars to
peer review, publish, preserve, archive and disseminate the knowledge
that comes from scientific, technical and medical research. That vital
private sector contribution is now under threat by ill-advised and
misinformed policy proposals.
Recent initiatives
have been floated that would expropriate from nonprofit and commercial
journals results of their work in conducting peer review of authors
submissions -- if the authors' research was funded by the government.
The government would then post these articles for free use on the
Internet and in direct competition with the journals from which the
articles are taken. The expropriation of the journals' contribution is
being proposed in spite of the fact it is the publisher and not the
government who conducts the peer review. |
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| Copyright Corbis |
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