My girlfriend sent me this video link from PhD comics last week about open-access publishing. The video is narrated by Nick Shockey and Jonathon Eisen, brother to one of the co-creators of the Public Library of Science (commonly known to academics as PLoS).
One of the arguments presented by the two is that research should be free to re-use. I think this means that scientists should be able to use all of the knowledge and material presented in a journal paper to advance their own work. The narrators mention that the full content of papers should be searchable to easily find connections between works and to facilitate locating relevant papers.
This is another hint towards the shifting focus to a data-centric approach to science, only here the arguments for it are coming from the open-access movement.
I also want to add that I support this movement. I can't access a paper that I've written because our campus doesn't have access to the journal. And when I graduate, I will not have access to any of them unless I or my employer has the appropriate subscriptions. Ridiculous.
A "lab notebook" about my life in science, programming, and philosophy.
