[Open-access] A sad encapsulation of why Open Access is so important

[Ross Mounce]

I'm afraid I don't have time to blog it but it's here on G+ which will
provide a nice unmoderated instantaneous comment platform for it:
https://plus.google.com/109536929126322188570/posts/59ioHjsfPy6

- Ross

On 21 December 2012 13:56, Mike Taylor <mike at indexdata.com> wrote:

> Ross,
>
> Please immediately put this message, unchanged, in a blog post or on a
> Google+ page or somewhere else that I can link to it. It deserves to
> be more widely read than this email list.
>
> -- Mike.
>
>
>
> On 21 December 2012 13:36, Ross Mounce <ross.mounce at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Dear All,
> >
> > I thought I'd share what is perhaps a new and interesting example of
> missed
> > impact through Closed Access research publishing.
> >
> > I was reading this new Nature blog post 'What were the top papers of
> 2012 on
> > social media?'
> >
> http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/12/what-were-the-top-papers-of-2012-on-social-media.html
> >
> > and found that the 3rd most tweeted paper (cumulatively) throughout 2012
> was
> > first published way back in 1996.
> > Why was such an old paper so topical in 2012?
> >
> > Well, the title is: "Rape-related pregnancy: estimates and descriptive
> > characteristics from a national sample of women"
> >
> > It is not a freely accessible paper. Most people can only see the
> abstract
> > without paying more. The tweets are clearly related to this news story
> and
> > related US political issues:
> >
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/19/republican-todd-akin-rape-pregnancy
> >
> > Perhaps Todd Akin and other public policy-makers in the US and abroad
> might
> > have benefited from Open Access to this and related research?
> >
> >
> > Am I clutching at straws here with my thinking that this is huge missed
> > potential for societal impact? The difference between an abstract and the
> > fulltext is immense - what knowledge benefits have we missed out on here
> > with so many citizens and policymakers denied full access to this
> > publicly-funded* piece of medical research?
> >
> >
> > Food for thought perhaps?
> >
> >
> >
> > Ross
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > * The paper was "Supported by National Institute on Drug Abuse Grant No.
> > ROIDA05220"
> >
> >
> > --
> > -/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-
> > Ross Mounce
> > PhD Student & Open Knowledge Foundation Panton Fellow
> > Fossils, Phylogeny and Macroevolution Research Group
> > University of Bath, 4 South Building, Lab 1.07
> > http://about.me/rossmounce
> > -/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-
> >
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> >
>



-- 
-- 
-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-
Ross Mounce
PhD Student & Open Knowledge Foundation Panton Fellow
Fossils, Phylogeny and Macroevolution Research Group
University of Bath, 4 South Building, Lab 1.07
http://about.me/rossmounce
-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-
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