Will Lack of Open Access Wipe Out the World?

A few months ago, I asked whether lack of open access to avian 'flu data might hinder our ability to head off a pandemic; now it looks like lack of open access could lead to the destruction of civilisation as we know it. If that sounds a little far fetched, consider the facts.

The US is the largest single polluter in terms of carbon dioxide: according to the US Environmental Protection Agency, "In 1997, the United States emitted about one-fifth of total global greenhouse gases."

The EPA plays a key role in determining the US's environmental actions: "the Agency works to assess environmental conditions and to identify, understand, and solve current and future environmental problems; integrate the work of scientific partners such as nations, private sector organizations, academia and other agencies; and provide leadership in addressing emerging environmental issues and in advancing the science and technology of risk assessment and risk management."

To "assess environmental conditions and to identify, understand, and solve current and future environmental problems; integrate the work of scientific partners such as nations, private sector organizations, academia and other agencies" clearly requires information. Much of that information comes from scientific journals published around the world. Unfortunately, the EPA is in the process of cutting back on journal subscriptions:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is sharply reducing the number of technical journals and environmental publications to which its employees will have online access, according to agency e-mails released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). This loss of online access compounds the effect of agency library closures, meaning that affected employees may not have access to either a hard copy or an electronic version of publications.

...

In addition to technical journals, EPA is also canceling its subscriptions to widely-read environmental news reports, such as Greenwire, The Clean Air Report and The Superfund Report, which summarize and synthesize breaking events and trends inside industry, government and academia. Greenwire, for example, recorded more than 125,000 hits from EPA staff last year.

As a result of these cuts, agency scientists and other technical specialists will no longer have ready access to materials that keep them abreast of developments within their fields. Moreover, enforcement staff, investigators and other professionals will have a harder time tracking new developments affecting their cases and projects.

So, we have the organisation whose job is to help determine the actions of the world's worst polluter cut off from much of the most recent and relevant research, in part because much of it is not open access.

No OA, no tomorrow, no comment. (Via Open Access News.)