IP: HOUSE SEEKS TO CLOSE FREE BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATABASE: Edupage, July 2, 2001

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

>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)



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