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

Fri Dec 21 14:04:22 UTC 2012

Perfect, thanks.

(Why would it have taken longer to paste into your blog than to paste onto G+?)

-- Mike.

On 21 December 2012 14:01, Ross Mounce <ross.mounce at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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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>> > http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-access
>> > Unsubscribe: http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/open-access
>> >
>
>
>
>
> --
> --
> -/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-
> 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
> -/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-