There is now some good news among persons who are interested in free access to peer reviewed journal articles that report the results of autism research.
Autism speaks has announced a new policy They now have a policy where all researchers who receive funding from them have to put the resulting publications into pubmed central online archive within 12 months of publication. Access to these articles is free. This is a good deal for those who do not live near a biomed library like UCLA who otherwise might have trouble obtaining journal articles like these. Normally these articles can be purchased over the internet by interested parties, but the cost is often like $30 or more per article, which seems to me to be pretty steep just for a journal article. This will help disseminate information to those persons who are interested in autism and the research findings of those who receive funding for research from autism speaks. Autism speaks says they are the first nonprofit organization to implement such a policy. these articles are available at www.pubmedcentral.gov for those who are interested in these forthcoming articles as well as other free articles that are available.
I wish everyone from the government on down (or up depending on your point of view) would institute this policy. I live near UCLA so I can obtain a lot of these articles if need be. Of course it is always a hassle to xerox them and it costs like 15 cents per page at UCLA and you have to purchase this card to use in the machines. Due to my perceptual motor problems, I sometimes have trouble lining up the pages properly and it takes several attempts for me to xerox some of the article pages and get everything on the page.
UCLA used to have the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders on their shelf in the biomed library which I would browse on a regular basis. At one time, this publication came out four times a year. Due to the increased interest in autism research, the JADD now publishes something like eight times a year. UCLA no longer seems to have it on their shelves and this is a disappointment to me. My disability and other commitments make it hard for me to keep up with as much research as I would like to keep up with. Hopefully someday that will change and I will have more juicy tidbits to add to this blog. I think now UCLA has JADD and some other journals available online and maybe some day i will investigate and become a more regular reader of JADD and then some of the other journal articles.
Though admittedly autism speaks is a less than perfect organization, I applaud them for instituting this policy.
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Usually if you're interested in a paper and don't have access to Athens or whatever portal, you can usually get a copy by emailing the lead researcher (Who's contact details should always be on the publication).
Would've thought PubMed would be enough to keep you miserable thought...
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