JSTOR fees seem really high

[Marcus Julius]

It must be freely accessible online after about a year. However, the EU is taking its time, and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft is now asking people to sign a petition: [url:37yc584u]http://www.ec-petition.eu/[/url]

My first gut instinct was that this was just going to cause people to stop funfing research, because there is no way they can turn a profit in just one year. Then, I read the link to the petition, and it is concerning information obtained through publicly funded research projects.
Now that's just common sense. The type of common sense that makes you wonder why they even need to pass this kind of legislation in the first place. These people are turning a profit off of research projects funded by the government? And claiming copyright on top of it? That is absolutely ridiculous. Knowlege should be free to the people! If it was found on government money, then the people have already paid for their right to access by paying their taxes, tax money which funded the research in the first place.

I apologize if this seems political, but for someone to charge a common person for information that they didn't have to pay for in the first place is just plain wrong!

[Praefectusclassis]

Hi Brian,
The racket is actually even better, since many of the libraries where these books end up, are university libraries. Those, in many cases, are publicly funded.
Anyway, Jona's question about a Scholarship subforum has been noted.