首页
登录
职称英语
If there is any endeavor whose fruits should be freely available, that endeav
If there is any endeavor whose fruits should be freely available, that endeav
游客
2025-01-20
9
管理
问题
If there is any endeavor whose fruits should be freely available, that endeavor is surely publicly financed science. Morally, taxpayers who wish to should be able to read about it without further expense. And science advances through cross-fertilization between projects. Barriers to that exchange slow it down.
There is a widespread feeling that the journal publishers who have mediated this exchange for the past century or more are becoming an impediment to it. One of the latest converts is the British government. Recently it announced that, the results of taxpayer-financed research would be available, free and online, for anyone to read and redistribute.
Britain’s government is not alone. Soon the European Union followed suit. In the U.S., the National Institutes of Health (NIH, the single biggest source of civilian research funds in the world) has required open-access publishing since 2008. And the Wellcome Trust, a British foundation that is the world’s second-biggest charitable source of scientific money, after the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, also insists that those who receive its support should make their work available free.
Criticism of journal publishers usually boils down to two things. One is that their processes take months, when the Internet could enable them to take days. The other is that because each paper is like a mini-monopoly, which workers in the field have to read if they are to advance their own research, there is no incentive to keep the price down. The publishers thus have scientists — or, more accurately, their universities, which pay the subscriptions — in an armlock. That, combined with the fact that the raw material (manuscripts of papers) is free, leads to generous returns. In 2011, Elsevier, a large Dutch publisher, made a profit of £768 million on revenues of £2.06 billion — a margin of 37 percent. Indeed, Elsevier’s profits are thought so
egregious
by many people that 12,000 researchers have signed up to boycott the company’s journals.
Publishers do provide a service. They organize peer reviews, in which papers are criticized anonymously by experts (though those experts, like the authors of papers, are seldom paid for what they do). They also sort the scientific sheep from the goats, by deciding what gets published, and where. That gives the publishers huge power. Since researchers, administrators and grant-awarding bodies all take note of which work has got through this filtering mechanism, the competition to publish in the best journals is intense, and the system becomes self-reinforcing, increasing the value of those journals still further.
But not, perhaps, for much longer. Support has been swelling for open-access scientific publishing: doing it online, in a way that allows anyone to read papers free of charge. The movement started among scientists themselves, but governments are paying attention and asking whether they might also benefit from the change.
Much remains to be worked out. Some fear the loss of the traditional journals’ curation and verification of research. Even Sir Mark Walport, the director of the Wellcome Trust and a fierce advocate of open-access publication, worries that the newly liberated papers have ended up in different places rather than being consolidated in the way they want.
A revolution, then, has begun. Technology permits it; researchers and politicians want it. If scientific publishers are not trembling in their boots, they should be. [br] The passage intends to______.
选项
A、argue that academic journals face a radical shake-up
B、illustrate that the publishing formalities need not to change
C、report that the publication of papers faces intense competition
D、discuss that scientific research is shifting to free access
答案
A
解析
主旨题。文章的主题往往出现在第一部分和最后一部分。本文第2段表明,英国政府宣布由公共财政资助的研究成果将在互联网公开,供民众免费阅览,第8段又强调此举势在必行。换言之,出版社有偿公布科研论文的传统模式将一去不复返。将四个选项与这一主题对比后可知,最符合题意的是A(表明学术期刊面临巨大变革)。D为强干扰项,似乎也符合题意。但仔细研究后发现,其意为“科学研究向免费转变”,而本文的主题是研究成果免费查阅,略有不同,故选A。
转载请注明原文地址:https://tihaiku.com/zcyy/3920565.html
相关试题推荐
Menandwomenshouldlimittheiralcohol______tolessthanabottleandahalfo
Lifeinsurance,beforeavailableonlytoyoung,healthypersons,cannowbeobta
Thenameofabookcannotbeshownbydoublequotes.Butshoulduseitalics.A、n
WhenlivinginEngland,peopleshouldbeawarethatEnglishpeopleare,bytempe
ItisimperativethatalltheaccountsofthePropertyManagementCompanyshould
Ifthereisanyendeavorwhosefruitsshouldbefreelyavailable,thatendeav
Ifthereisanyendeavorwhosefruitsshouldbefreelyavailable,thatendeav
Ifthereisanyendeavorwhosefruitsshouldbefreelyavailable,thatendeav
Ifthereisanyendeavorwhosefruitsshouldbefreelyavailable,thatendeav
Inthecourseofpreparinghisspeech,heshouldbeclearlyawareofhowtomake
随机试题
—Mustwehandinourexercisebookstoday?—Yes,.A、youwillB、youmustC、youdo
设A是m×n矩阵,AX=0是AX=b的导出组,则下列结论正确的是().A.若A
下列关于杜邦分析系统的计算公式中,不正确的有:()A.资产报酬率=销售净利率×
通过教学活动,学生可以“上知天文,下知地理”,这说明学生认识的对象是( )。A
1928年,英国人弗莱明发现,被污染的金黄色葡萄球菌培养基上生长出一种霉菌,进而
在国际局势错综复杂、全球经济增长乏力的背景下,“一带一路”倡议正搭建起促进全球包
严惩破坏生态行为 近日,针对违法毁林、搞违建的黑龙江牡丹江市“曹园
先天性梅毒牙指A.成釉细胞增生突入牙乳头 B.牙齿发育时牙乳头组织向成釉器突起
现场质量检查控制包括()。A.开工前检查 B.工序交接检查 C.隐蔽工程检
传统通信网的主要业务是()业务。A.数据 B.传真 C.话音 D.视频
最新回复
(
0
)