Rick Weiss, in the Washington Post, puts up a good article concerning the cost of access to scientific research papers. He goes over the financial, emotional, political, and collaborative aspects of paid versus open access including information about the Public Library of Science‘s attempt at putting up research papers for free access. “Unlike their ink-on-paper counterparts, scientific papers that are maintained in open electronic databases can have their data tables downloaded, massaged and interlinked with databases from other papers, allowing scientists to compare and build more easily on one another’s findings…Sabo’s bill would require research “substantially funded” by the federal government to be in the public domain.”