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Re: NIH as publisher

There are 2 separate issues that are being confused here.

1. Should a government make available to the public, for free, a
particular type of information. The private sector is NOT doing this in
the present case, as far as I know. Arguments about the cost need to
consider the total societal costs and benefits to doing it or not doing
it.

2. If the answer to 1 is "yes", then the question is whether a government
should attempt to compile such information and build the system itself, or
should it take advantage of existing expertise in the private sector to
build or license it?

We can of course speculate whether NIH's costs could be lowered by
contracting with the private sector, but my guess is that the most
qualified organizations would choose not have chosen to bid this one
anyway.

Eric Hellman, President Openly Informatics Inc.
eric@openly.com 2 Broad St., 2nd Floor tel 1-973-509-7800 fax 1-734-468-6216 Bloomfield, NJ 07003
http://www.openly.com/1cate/ 1 Click Access To Everything


I disagree.  This activity is handled well by the private sector.  This
is a waste of government money.  Why re-create the wheel?  I would rather
see this money go toward things that the private sector does poorly, like
universal health care or public schools.

Joe Esposito

On 6/2/05, Michael Carroll <Carroll@law.villanova.edu> wrote:


 Please take a look at what's being published before you fly off the
 handle.  PubChem is a database of factual information, chemical
 compounds and the like, that is in the *public domain*. See

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?CMD=DisplayFiltered&DB=pccompound

 Gathering and organizing public domain information that speeds
 publicly-funded biomedical research is a perfectly legitimate public
 function.

 Best,

 Michael W. Carroll
 Associate Professor of Law
 Villanova University School of Law