Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community
Another article on the closure of PubScience. The U.S. government service that cross-indexed and searched roughly 2 million government reports and academic articles was closed because of the development of commercial sites offering the same service. Though the government saved $200,000 by closing the site, it's not clear how much more the public (or at least, part of the public) is now paying for the same information. I'm concerned about this model, in which private companies offer online services emulating government functions, and then lobby for the closure of the cheaper and more widely available government service because of the supposed unfair competition.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Mar 29, 2024 02:05 a.m.

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