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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