Re: Today's Good News
Reply #216 –
I'm not the only one (…not even here!) who reads things he can't understand… Sometimes, the lack is remediated; sometimes, not. Still, I'm a firm believer that Man's grasp should exceed his reach.
(By attempting to understand what is beyond one's expertise, one is led to a wider ambit of concepts and a closer reading of what experts say… Imagine if our proto-sires said, "Ouch! Fire — hurt!" and left it at that.)
In what I would call an unprecedented move, a major publisher of Major Scientific Journals has — made a step in the right direction:All research papers from Nature will be made free to read in a proprietary screen-view format that can be annotated but not copied, printed or downloaded, the journal’s publisher Macmillan announced on 2 December.
The content-sharing policy, which also applies to 48 other journals in Macmillan’s Nature Publishing Group (NPG) division, including Nature Genetics, Nature Medicine and Nature Physics, marks an attempt to let scientists freely read and share articles while preserving NPG’s primary source of income — the subscription fees libraries and individuals pay to gain access to articles.
ReadCube, a software platform similar to Apple’s iTunes, will be used to host and display read-only versions of the articles' PDFs. If the initiative becomes popular, it may also boost the prospects of the ReadCube platform, in which Macmillan has a majority investment.
(source)
I'm not at all bothered by the lack of total capitulation to the IWTBF meme ("Information wants to be free"…). In fact, I'm encouraged: A major publisher recognizes that relevant papers are likely soon going to be required to be Open-Source. (Text, data, code; supplemental info…) This means that —despite the many inane and spurious attacks on legitimate science (made possible by the Web!)— the means to discern what's what will be available.
Even to the likes of me.
I'm grateful. (Although I'm probably too stupid to "get it" — or understand.)