As a student, I was told that the goal of education was to learn how to learn, that life-long learning is a highly cherished life habit.
As a teacher, I focused dutifully upon that objective. I encouraged my students to do research, sometimes in the backyard, or maybe at the beach; and other times reading, or writing an email (before email, write a letter) to a researcher and ask a question.
You have the golden key, I told my students in the Pacific Islands. Every organism you see or wonder about---almost every one---someone, some scientist or student, is an expert about it, is devoted to learning about it.
This is a wonderful world. Knowledge is cool. So many ways.
Today I was engaged in one of my deepest passions: browsing the Internet, reading about scientific research. As a sophomore in College I had a Venus fly trip as a "pet," used to feed it flies. So when I saw news today that the mechanism of the Venus Fly Trap's snap trap had been figured out, I was eager to learn about this---as eager as my young students about corals.
I read the article, and was eager to learn more, so I clicked on the link at the bottom of the page---after navigating through a thicket of advertising. The original report of this research was published by the National Academy of Sciences, in PNAS: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This is indeed fortunate, I should have thought---as a public institution, it has always seemed obvious to me that there should be no secret about these publications. Aha! I found the abstract, a summary of the research result, but without any of the juicy morsels, here. If you, like me, click on this link you will discover quite a page. Prominently displayed will be a diminutive button that says "PDF." I was thrilled. This would be the gateway to the original article. I taught students to at least try to read original articles. With the right thinking, it can only shed more light on the findings that were reported elsewhere.
However, I was to encounter an impediment---one that, frankly, I have encounted hundreds if not thousands of times.
Let's zoom in:
My poor students would be unable to pay that amount. Out in the islands, there isn't even a library they could visit and access it that way.
Whos is the National Academy of Sciences?
I decided to dig in. That National Academy of Sciences seems like a prestigious title. What do they do? Accumulate research findings for their prestigious members, who can doubtless afford to subscribe. Let's find out how much a subscription would cost:
For just some guy like me (or my poor students) this would cost 235.00. If I want to just subscribe to 3 or four scientific journals, it would cost not much less than 1,000.00.
I looked into this organization that deprives students reasonable access to the publications of the esteemed scientists who publish behind their walls: at this point I had about HAD IT! Here's the nice "Mission" statement: (The good parts are in Red.)
Mission
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a private, non-profit society of distinguished scholars. Established by an Act of Congress, signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863, the NAS is charged with providing independent, objective advice to the nation on matters related to science and technology. Scientists are elected by their peers to membership in the NAS for outstanding contributions to research. The NAS is committed to furthering science in America, and its members are active contributors to the international scientific community. Approximately 500 current and deceased members of the NAS have won Nobel Prizes, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, founded in 1914, is today one of the premier international journals publishing the results of original research.
The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the National Academy of Medicine (NAM, formerly the Institute of Medicine) -- were founded under the NAS charter in 1964 and 1970, respectively. The three Academies work together as the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to provide independent, objective analysis and advice to the nation and conduct other activities to solve complex problems and inform public policy decisions. The National Academies also encourage education and research, recognize outstanding contributions to knowledge, and increase public understanding in matters of science, engineering, and medicine. The National Academies' service to government has become so essential that Congress and the White House have issued legislation and executive orders over the years that reaffirm its unique role.
Clearliy the National Academy of Sciences has a limited perspective on what constitutes public understanding in matters of science, engineering and medicine. Does this walled garden approach " encourage education?".
No. Not so far as I can see.
More About Scientific Publications
How many scientific publications are there? According to Vice, there are 8,000 FAKE science journals. One source I found via a google search had these statistics on their site:How many science journals?
with one comment
- Estimation: <> 25-40,000 journals
- 96% are published online
- 8-10% are published under Open Access models
- 20% of science articles are available free of charge
- How many articles have been published ever (means since 1665)? est. 50 millions
- Growth: 1.4 million of articles per year
- There are 2,000 publishers but Top 3 (Elsevier, Springer, Wiley) account for 42% of articles published
- Elsevier itself publishes 250,000 articles a year in 2,000 journals
- The biggest platform of ejournals, ScienceDirect, provides 240 million of downloads per year to 10 million of users
- The cost of publishing a single online scientific journal article is estimated at $10,000
- To purchase an article for an individual: $30-40
- Average cost of a subscription for a library: $3,792 (average cost for a chemistry journal) up to $10,000
- The most expensive: Biochimica & Biophysica Acta, $20,930 a year!
Speaking of Elsevier, the University of California Library system has had enough, and has not renewed their contract with Elsevier to provide access. If I understand this well, the Library encourages publication in Open Access journals. Much of the research at the University is publicly funded. How do publishers justify to blockade the public from the reports of this research?
This has been a problem for a long tiome. The phrase "Peer Reviewed Journals" has been a weapon in that hands of some of the publishers.
There is no time, nor do I have the energy at this point, to rant further about my personal battle to access science literature while teaching and researching in Micronesia. I will say, however, that no small number of research projects bear consequences for islanders: publications about global warming, sea level rise, parasites, tropical diseases, nutrition.... to name a few. Even articles about the cultures of the islands themselves are "paywalled," a term meaning to demand payment for admittance to access.
There is hope. The Public Library of Science is a group of journals that were organized to provide scientists publication access, with peer review, in a totally open access manner. Check it out: https://plos.org/
