If you are tired of using your college’s VPN or sketchy Russian websites to look for research articles, you’re in luck! Following a new policy directive at NASA, any research article that is funded by the agency will now be posted on Pubspace within a year of publication.
All the publicly funded research will now be available to download and view, at no costs. The research papers will be published on Pubspace, a new public web portal.
This announcement is certainly a step in the right direction, following a recent push in the global scientific community towards making research easily accessible and free for the general public.
Back in May, the European Union member states also agreed to roll out a new initiative with the aim of making all European scientific research free to access by the year 2020. It certainly seems like United States is leading by example.
There are, of course, certain logical exceptions in place such as a restriction on the release of research that relates to the matters of national security.
While most of the reactions to the news have been positive, several comments posted in various news boards and forums are skeptic of the news and shrugging off the announcement as a “big whoop”.
Instead of appreciating their efforts and understanding just how amazing it is that the agency is willingly sharing so much with the public, let’s just keep being pessimistic and keep calling government agencies shrill drones /s
It is a little unsettling to think that NASA’s budget is routinely cut down. I believe that is because the policy makers and politicians in congress fail to recognize how NASA’s research directly benefits them and their constituents.
I also think that the general public is oblivious to what exactly NASA does. I hope they know that the agency does a lot more than just looking at pretty pictures in the sky.
And if the source of misconception is because NASA fails to properly market itself, I hope this new move gets the ball rolling for clearing up such stupid ideas. The public needs to understand that NASA is not just a collective of engineers and scientists poking around at rocks and launching satellites into the orbit.
While it pains me to say this, maybe NASA really needs to spend some time coming up with better marketing campaigns that answers questions like why they are needed and just how much their contributions have helped the global population.
I will not apologize if this article paints me as a Republican. Don’t even get me started on the fake moon landing conspiracies. I want my spaceship soon damnit! Now go check out this rad research paper on how astronauts manage to stay fit in space.
Do you have any breathtaking cosmic photographs that you would like to share with us? What are your views on NASA? Let us know in the comment section below.
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