Public Library of Science - more on open access

As an addition to my previous entry regarding the Framing the Issue - Open Access by ARL, it is informative to note that the Public Library of Science (PLoS) emerges as a practical attempt to establish such open access scientific/research publication. In A Fight for Free Access To Medical Research it is written:

"Why is it, a growing number of people are asking, that anyone can download medical nonsense from the Web for free, but citizens must pay to see the results of carefully conducted biomedical research that was financed by their taxes?"

Here is the role of the PLoS:

"The Public Library of Science aims to change that. The organization, founded by a Nobel Prize-winning biologist and two colleagues, is plotting the overthrow of the system by which scientific results are made known to the world -- a $9 billion publishing juggernaut with subscription charges that range into thousands of dollars per year."

and the benefit of open access:

"For scientists, the benefits would extend well beyond being able to read scientific papers for free. Unlike their ink-on-paper counterparts, scientific papers that are maintained in open electronic databases can have their data tables downloaded, massaged and interlinked with databases from other papers, allowing scientists to compare and build more easily on one another's findings."

Do we need any more arguments about why taxpayer funded research publications should be accessible for free? Yes, we could go on and on trying to explicate the benefit of free and open access to scientific information, as many have done. However, the above argument is simple and convincing. :) Perhaps not to the commercial publishing enterprises.

Related:
Open Access to Scientific Research
open access to federally funded research