Nice article in Financial Times by James Boyle. This paragraph was especially interesting to me.
Where are those links for the scientific literature? Citations are one kind of link; the hyperlink is simply a footnote that actually takes you to the desired reference. But where is the dense web of links generated by working scientists in many disciplines, using semantic web technology and simple cross reference electronically to tie together literature, datasets and experimental results into a real World Wide Web for science? The answer is, we cannot create such a web until scientific articles come out from behind the publishers’ firewalls. What might happen if we could build it? We do not know. Think of the speed of innovation that the open Web has unleashed. Then imagine that transformative efficiency applied to science and technology rather than selling books or flirting on social networks. This bill would forbid us from building the World Wide Web for science, even for the research that taxpayers have funded. And that is truly a tragedy.
