Inside FRPAA: Public Access Denied
Coupled with the strain on researchers is a growing movement to grant taxpayers access to research that is funded with taxpayer dollars. Led largely by the Alliance for Taxpayer Access , an organization in which CSU is a founding member, the movement insists on developing open, online access to federally funded research. Its main advocates include universities, libraries, consumer groups, and perhaps most notably a long list of patient advocate groups including the Genetic Alliance , a coalition of 600 disease-specific organizations that advocates for better healthcare treatments.
Sharon Terry became the coalition's president after she and her husband encountered astounding barriers to research literature that would help them understand the debilitating genetic disorder from which both of their children suffered. The Terrys worked around those barriers by volunteering at a hospital and gaining access to the hospital's library. Armed with the research that they were first denied, the Terrys became experts on their children's disorders and, working with a network of scientists, became co-discoverers of the gene responsible for the disorder. Although it is uncommon for lay individuals to make such a significant impact in the research community, 80 percent of taxpayers, according to a recent Harris interactive poll, support a right to "open access" and have a strong desire not necessarily to view research findings themselves, but rather to feel the real-world benefits reflected when their own doctors, pharmacists, and other practitioners have better access to cutting-edge discoveries.
Sources:
English, R. and M. Raphael. "The Next BIG Library Legislative Issue." American Libraries. 37 (8)2006: 30-33.
Comments
The story about Sharon Terry is misleading. Any library, whether at a research university or in a city, can subscribe to all journals. The Terry's may have looked for biomedical information at their city library, but they were not likely to find the appropriate journals. Why? Quite simply, those libraries invest in subscriptions that their "users" search for, and medical research journals are not in high demand. Thus, city libraries spend their limited resources elsewhere. Likewise, university libraries spend large sums on scholarly journals, and if biomedical research is a significant activity for the faculty at a given university, they invest heavily in the appropriate journals. Thus, experts that rely on the published literature to drive discovery forward have access to the data they need. Is it as easy for the general public to access the medical literature? Perhaps not, but most university libraries allow public access to their materials when requested. Is this a major deficiency for the general public? I guess one could argue that, but in reality, how many members of the "general" public have the educational background or interest in following highly technical scholarly literature in the sciences?
Posted by: Daiel Bush | November 15, 2006 09:36 PM