Access
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
Opinion
Nature 397, 455 (11 February 1999) | doi:10.1038/17149
Open Innovation Challenges
- More Challenges
- Powered by:
nature jobs
Postdoctoral Research Fellows
- Northwestern University
- Chicago, Illinois, United States
Senior Faculty Positions
- Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies
- Port St. Lucie, FL
Ill-advised 'freedom' of scientific information
Abstract
The sharing of data by researchers ought to be encouraged. But a compulsion to release raw data and notes in current US openness laws is the wrong way to achieve it, as is a proposed amendment.
The principle of granting maximum public access to government records, as embodied in the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), is a sound one which has strengthened democracy in the United States, and from which secretive regimes elsewhere in the world have much to learn. However, a new law, passed last October, that would shed similar light on scientific records, threatens to undermine academic research, while contributing nothing to open government.
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
