Free Web Research Link Closed Under Pressure From Pay Sites
By Jonathan Krim
The Washington Post
November 21, 2002
SLIS Summary
The U.S. Department of Energy recently shut down its popular Internet site PubScience, in response to corporate complaints that it competed with similar commercial services.
Department officials said abandoning the electronic service that cross-indexed and searched some 2 million government reports and academic articles, will save the government $200,000 per year because of two equivalent commercial services, Scirus and Infotrieve.
The decision alarmed researchers, who worry that other services operated by federal agencies may be ousted by private gatekeepers that would control access to information and research, much of which was created with public money. "What we worry about is what's next," said Charles A. Hamaker, associate librarian at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
PubScience offered easy access for literature on energy and science topics. Searching the site was free, and the service provided brief summaries of articles or reports that related to requested topics. The service also linked either to full texts that were free or to payment systems for information that was for sale. Scirus and Infotrieve are owned by database companies that publish or make available academic literature for a fee, but the search function is free.
Hamaker and others said they fear offering search functions free is a way for the database companies to lure users to become dependent on their services. "It's the heroin pusher's approach to marketing," said Martin Blume, editor in chief of the American Physical Society, which publishes several journals on physics.
Emily Sheketoff, executive director of the American Library Association's Washington Office, said, "Our fear is that this is the beginning of privatizing government services for profit." Private companies are being allowed to "take information that has been created with tax dollars, they turn around, make some slight little change, and then they start selling it," she added.
Other government researcher are also concerned. Kent A. Smith, deputy director of the National Library of Medicine and chairman of an interagency group of federal providers of scientific and technical information, said the group was not happy that PubScience was taken down.
"We believe there is a need to ensure open access for the public to information created by taxpayer dollars," Smith said. "We think that's essential."
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www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17568-2002Nov20?language=printer
Posted November 26, 2002