Scientists Frustrated with Limited Access to Full-Text Documents
To find out what is the biggest obstacle to this ubiquitous scientific practice, members of The Science Advisory Board participated in a poll to address, "What makes searching scientific and medical literature online frustrating?" Almost 80% of the 1,400 respondents stated that limited access to full-text documents was the most annoying aspect of online literature searches. It far exceeded the other complaints of broken hypertext links, copyright restrictions and inadequate search engines.
Such sentiments will be sweet music to the ears of Public Library of Science (PLoS) founders who espouse the philosophy that unrestricted access to scientific and medical literature will accelerate progress in these critical fields. Their model of offering full-text and data of published research articlesæavailable free of charge anywhere in the worldæis still being tested. Time will tell whether the scientists, who in theory embrace the nobility of this idea, will choose to publish their own findings in such a venue.
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