HOUSE SEEKS TO CLOSE FREE BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATABASE A bill now pending before the U.S. House of Representatives could force the U.S. Department of Energy to end PubScience, its Web database that allows scientists to search abstracts and citations from more than a thousand scientific journals. The database, which operates on an annual budget of approximately $500,000, is the most popular of the Energy Department's online offerings, with roughly 1 million searches executed per year. However, a report associated with the department's appropriations bill for 2002 questions whether the database is appropriate, noting that several private-sector firms provide similar services. Several firms, including Cambridge Scientific Abstracts and Reed Elsevier, lobbied the Software & Information Industry Association to exert its influence and recommend the elimination of the database in the report. However, Stephen Miles Sacks, who publishes the journal "Scipolicy," said that some of the publications that the department's database makes available are ignored by private-sector firms. He added that few scientists could afford the fees these firms would charge if they did create a similar database. (Chronicle of Higher Education Online, 2 July 2001)
Source: Edupage, July 2, 2001 --
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