The Real News.

Things are happening as they have to happen; there is only one way they happen. Evolution continues.

"It's happening everywhere, a gradual chilling debasement of science and open collaboration. On one hand the internet has brought great opportunity and some great things like Project Gutenberg, the Internet archive, Hyperphysics, and of course Wikis that are gaining credibility more and more, but these are not real scientific repositories; real science is being buried.

Some online journals have their archives open to download free pdfs, but they are the exception not the rule. In general things are getting much worse than better for science information. 15 years ago I had to go to a library to get papers, but at least they were there and I could photocopy papers for free. Now that all of the records have gone electronic it's a nightmare.

Do a Google search on any serious topic and the first two pages will be istore, free patents online, and all of those for-pay peddlers of knowledge. These guardians of information charge $30 or more for an electronic reprint on 80 year old papers for intellectual property that doesn't even belong to them! I expect many great scientists are spinning in their graves.

I sometimes laugh when I hear the phrase scientific community. There isn't one anymore! Everyone is out to obscure and bury. How can peer review be conducted anymore? Everyone is too afraid to publish in case patent trolls seize their work -- and only the few in large institutions can afford to.

I have to share papers on the sly with other researchers and certain old textbooks are becoming treasured items. This knowledge belongs to us all. The vast majority from the last few hundred years is public domain, payed for by your tax dollars to fund research on national levels.

We must reverse this slide into private and secret science or eventually university students will be signing NDA agreements before being allowed to study any science and progress will only be the preserve of the wealthy.

Google scholar is a step forward, but if you use it a lot you will see that more than half of what it links to isn't actually available, it just leads to pay-for sites. They should block those so that only info that is actually available to read is presented."
-- Anonymous

And that is the REAL news.