Free Web Research Link Closed Under Pressure From Pay Sites


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Jonathan Krim at The Washington Post writes:

The Energy Department has shut down a popular Internet site that catalogued government and academic science research, in response to corporate complaints that it competed with similar commercial services.

Department officials said abandoning PubScience, an electronic service that cross-indexed and searched roughly 2 million government reports and academic articles, will save the government $200,000 a year because two equivalent services exist in the private sector.

There’s no way that I can rationalize this as being a Good Thing.  Other agencies are worried that this might pave the way for other closures.