Research Works Act defeated

Huge success toward preserving the open science movement's momentum.

The Research Works Act would've set the open science movement back years by restricting congress from requiring that research created at the tax payer's expense be made publicly available. More clearly: the Research Works Act would've prohibited congress from requiring tax payer-funded science be made available for free to the tax payer.

I couldn't find a good summary in our "paper of record," so please check out the Slate.com article here.

Also worth noting is the (originally) unconditional support for this bill by Elsevier, a publishing conglomerate. I'm not sure their support of it can be construed as anything but self-preservation, greed, taking a cut of the pie, a desperate act by an unnecessary middle-man.

I ask again: why do we need publishing houses? Why do we even need journals?

We do not. We need an effective, rigorous peer-review process that'll provide transparent, high-quality scientific publishing. This absolutely does not need to be accomplished via publishing houses and journals. We have other options.