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Re: [News] Open Source Mantra Spreads to Many Areas

__/ [ ws ] on Sunday 23 July 2006 07:40 \__

> Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>> Divine Inspiration From the Masses
>> 
> 
> <snip extract>
>> 
>>
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-opensource23jul23,0,5797174.story?coll=la-home-headlines
>> 
>> The author should have probably mentioned GNU and RMS as well, perhaps
>> even the FSF and EFF.
> 
> It is not limited to the computing fields, the continuity of information
> and the ability to access and act on it in a timely manner *is* very
> important. How many scientific discoveries lie underutilied because the
> original publication with the scientific paper simply died or did not
> archive the articles?


I make considerable effort to put all my most recent code on-line (GPL'd), as
well as anything technical that I write. Rather than keeping secrets and
methods to self, one can pursue recognition and see the work being re-used
and further improved (also to be returned, of course). This  motivates
research. Compare the drive of a 'code monkey' in some software house
cubicle against that of an Open Source programmer working from home and
receiving funds from corporations like IBM, whose code is used by thousands
of clients. I believe this was among the mission statements/ideologies for
groups like Apache. I am to a great extent inspired by figures like Don
Knuth. To me, he's a humble role model. My Supervisor's perspective is also
inspiring, but he's not as enthusiastic about openness.


> See: http://www.plos.org - from their FAQ:
> 
> "Why do we need open access publications when many journals release
> their content after 6?12 months?
> The vast majority of journals never release their content. Furthermore,
> timeliness of publication is very important--to readers and to
> authors--and even a 6- to 12-month delay is detrimental to research,
> especially in the biomedical sciences. (Would you be willing to wait
> 6?12 months to read articles in your field?) In any case, there is no
> real need to restrict access to the scientific and medical literature,
> now that we have a better alternative. Open access, supported by
> publication charges, is a more efficient, effective, and equitable means
> to disseminate scientific and medical literature. As soon as it is
> published, a research paper can and should be available to all."


Speaking of bio/+medical publications, I received some good news this
morning. The editors of IEEE Trans. on Medical Imaging are interested in my
paper and they give me 6 months to make changes and resubmit. It's good news
because rather than giving me just a few weeks they permit me to submit the
thesis (draft @ 30/8; final by 31/9) and then probably get /paid/ (no
student status) to work on the publication, which an academic in Sweden
group have already showed interest in (sent a preprint). I wonder what
effect the PDF's I put online is having... the log files could reveal. The
power of having a Web server still amazes me. It's more effective (and far
cheaper) than a secretary.

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