//storify.com/phylogenomics/aaas-science-magazine-shamelessly-try-to-get-credi/embed?border=false//storify.com/phylogenomics/aaas-science-magazine-shamelessly-try-to-get-credi.js?border=false[View the story “#AAAS & Science Magazine shamelessly try to get credit for free #Ebola papers; while ignoring HIV, TB, malaria, etc ” on Storify]
Tag: Ebola
Does #AAAS care about #Ebola anymore? Nope. And probably never did. #ClosedAccess
In October I wrote a blog post criticizing AAAS (and ASM) for trying to give themselves a pat on the back for making a few papers about Ebola freely available: The Tree of Life: No #AAAS and ASM you do not deserve good PR for freeing up a few papers on Ebola. The whole thing was a publicity stunt. And AAAS in particular tried to play up how they were doing this for the benefit of humanity.
So today I decided to check back and look into whether AAAS was making new papers on Ebola freely available. So I searched for the word Ebola in the title or Abstract
The most recent seemed interesting:
Surely AAAS must still care enough about Ebola to make new papers freely available right? Nope. $20 to rent for a day
How about #2:
Seems useful and worth reading if one works on Ebola. Free right? Nope: $20/day
How about #3:
Seems peripherally relevant to Ebola but I would not mind if more Ebola workers read this. Free right? Nope. Guess how much? $20/day
And so on. A few in the first 10 were, at least for now freely available. But overall it seems, AAAS and Science have decided Ebola is no longer important. So much for helping the world.
No #AAAS and ASM you do not deserve good PR for freeing up a few papers on Ebola
Saw a PR from AAAS about how they were freeing up all of ~ 20 papers on Ebola
In light of what has become the largest Ebola outbreak on record, Science and Science Translational Medicine have compiled over a decade’s worth of their published news and research. Researchers and the general public can now view this special collection for free.
OK. More access is good. But alas, they did not even free up all papers in #AAAS journals with Ebola in the Title or Abstract.
And then I started thinking. What about HIV? TB? Malaria? And as I started Tweeting about this, I saw that ASM also was hopping on the “free Ebola” bandwagon (actually I do not know who did it first).
And so I got angry and started Tweeting away. The Storify below sums up most of the details.
//storify.com/phylogenomics/aaas-and-asm-free-up-ebola-papers-show-they-don-t/embed?border=false//storify.com/phylogenomics/aaas-and-asm-free-up-ebola-papers-show-they-don-t.js?border=false[View the story “#AAAS and ASM free up Ebola papers show they don’t care about HIV, malaria, TB, etc.” on Storify]
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UPDATE 9 AM 8/21
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UPDATE 9 AM 8/21
Great. And now the Lancet has joined the bandwagon.
They write
“The current outbreak of Ebola in west Africa constitutes the largest and most complex to date. Declared a public health emergency of international concern by WHO, the outbreak of a disease with no known treatment or vaccination is proving difficult to contain given the already fragile and under resourced health systems in the affected areas.
The Lancet wishes to assist health workers and researchers working under difficult and dangerous conditions to bring this outbreak to a close. This Ebola hub contains all related resources from The Lancet family of journals offered with free access to support their vital work.”
Since they do not make papers available on TB, malaria, AIDS, cancer, etc does this mean people working on those are not doing vital work?
UPDATE 2: 8/21 5:45 PM
Wiley also trying to get some PR for making papers available.
UPDATE 3: 9/3
Oh look. ACS cares about Ebola too. They are making 18 papers available for free. How generous. Oh and only until February 2015. After then, they don’t care about Ebola. Oh and before then, they apparently don’t care about any other affliction affecting the world. Ebola is the only thing important enough to make freely available.
UPDATE 10/17
As the Ebola situation worsens, journals and publishers are still trying to get props for making certain papers freely available. For example, AAAS continues to do this – (see this news story here which ends with a statement about a collection of free ebola papers). Alas they are being sadly selective in what papers they make available.
Here are some that are not available
What a joke. If #AAAS really cared about infectious diseases and human health and making papers available, they would stop being one of the most anti-open access publishers out there.
If you want consistently #openaccess papers about Ebola, go to #openAccess journals or do a search in Pubmed Central with a “limit” for Open Access papers: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/?term=ebola%5BAll+Fields%5D+AND+%22open+access%22%5Bfilter%5D&cmd=DetailsSearch
Jonathan Eisen's Lab 