Tragedy of the Intellectual Fortress
Monday, September 26th, 2005It had been a while since I’d clicked over to “The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences”. I was dismayed to see that this journal, which is published by the national academy, has gone to a subscription only model. For a long time it was unique in that it didn’t demand high fees for spreading the word or science. I could understand how commercial publishers would justify charging for subscriptions — they had expenses to meet. But the National Academy? Their sole purpose is to spread science around, so why are they closing it up?
The tragedy is that science is supposed to be an open community that welcomes scrutiny. By refusing to open their works to the whole world, it becomes an inbred group of backscratchers fawning over each others uninspired work. Well, okay it *might* become that.
Consider the use of Jargon in science writing. Since Jargon is only understood by a select group, it is an indication of that the writing is intended for a closed audience. Oh sure, my PI used to argue that every word was at a premium, and it was sufficient to simply use phrases or words from previous publications to convey the argument presented in that publication.
(of course, you couldn’t really understand a paper without reading all of its references. Oh and by the way, those publications are published in other journals, each of which has a separate subscription fee.)
I was attempting to read this article on two-dimensional vibrational spectroscopy. It sounded pretty cool. Instead, this is what PNAS gave me:
PNAS — Subscription Status
