Increasing Public Access to the Results of Scientific Research
As a scientist, it is so funny to read about the "valuable contributions that the scientific publishing industry provides".<p>The scientific publishing industry does not write, review, or edit any of the content it publishes -- volunteer scientists do that. It literally takes a pre-formatted PDF or Word document and sticks it on a website, and maybe into a print edition. It charges multi-thousand dollar fees to authors to publish the articles, fees to institutions to access them, and still litters the website/journal with ads. And their profit margin is in the 40% area.<p>This industry is an absolute scourge on human progress, and a 12-month embargo does not go nearly far enough. 12 months is an eternity in science.<p>I will say that the publishing industry does do some very minor but useful things, like linkification of references, management of submitting the publication record to PubMed, etc. But the cost is exorbitant, and the government could provide these services for a fraction of the cost.<p>Edit: Oh, and journal prices are rising much faster than the CPI. While at the same time most have reduced or eliminated a print edition, and increasingly require reformatting to be done by faculty. Hmm...