NEWS: If You Thought Closing PUBSCIENCE Was Bad: More of the SameMay Be Coming

["David P. Dillard" <jwne@astro.ocis.temple.edu>]

Having won the battle to eliminate the government run full text science
journal database, the organization that spearheaded this drive now has
other government websites in its sites as targets for elimination.

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More sites targeted for shutdown
BY William Matthews
Nov. 13, 2002
<http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2002/1111/web-science-11-13-02.asp>

After more than a year of pressing Congress and the Bush administration,
the SIIA succeeded Nov. 4 in having PubScience shut down. The
association's members include publishing companies that offer some of the
same articles for sale over the Internet that the Energy Department was
making available for free.

Publishers, including Dutch giant Elsevier Science, argued that PubScience
amounted to improper government-funded competition with commercial
information services.

<snip>

He said about 10 companies in the SIIA were anxious to eliminate
competition from PubScience, and member companies now want the trade
association to challenge other government Web sites.

Two in particular rile SIIA members: "One is law-related, the other has to
do with agriculture," LeDuc said. He declined to identify them further.

One site the SIIA is unlikely to challenge is PubMed, the National Library
of Medicine site ({http://www.pubmed.gov} www.pubmed.gov) that provides
free access to millions of medical articles and research papers.

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Full Story May Be Read at the URL Above

Sincerely,
David Dillard
Temple University
(215) 204 - 4584
jwne@astro.temple.edu