Two points of background for today's good news. First, if you want a society to change, you have to change most people in the society. That Johnson ordered troops to escort black students to school was fantastic and a necessary step, but only when it became socially unthinkable to specificy exclude blacks or jews or women from any part of society had Johnson realized a victory. (A partial victory, but let's not get into that now.) If the fear of lawsuits prevents companies from dumping toxic chemicals into drinking water, that's good; if any middle manager who proposes doing so is shamed by everybody else in the room, that's better. My point is, if you think your ideas are right and good for society, it's important to look for support among people you don't consider "on your side."

Second: The point of governments is to do what other groupings of citizens cannot do. Large-scale basic research is a good example. The return on society's investment in science is enormous, especially if the results are widely disseminated. When private entities siphon off the results of research, such as by partnering with publically funded universities but patenting the results of research, they are worse than thieves. They are not only stealing the original investment from society, they are also destroying the multiplier effect of publishing results and thus preventing government from serving one of its essential functions.

With that in mind, I'm happy to see that Joseph Lieberman and John Cornyn, two senators I rarely agree with, are sponsoring a bill that "would require 11 government agencies to publish online any articles that contained research financed with federal grants." Bravo.

The Times obligingly prints the predictable arguments from the journal publishers: that it would weaken the connection between the journals and their readers, hurt ad revenue, and lead to dangerously incorrect results being published. But the Times misses or avoids the real story: the recent revolution in scientific publishing caused by the internet. Many scientists are rebelling against the petty empires of the publishers, who use volunteer scientists to do the hard work of peer review, and collect monopoly rents for their services as typesetters.

These scientists have started their own cheap or free peer-reviewed journals online, and are competing directly with the journals. For example, "[o]n December 31, 2003 the entire editorial board of the Journal of Algorithms resigned due to pricing policies of Elsevier Press. ... On January 21, 2004 the ACM Publications Board approved a proposal for a new journal dedicated to Algorithms ... [its] editorial board is the editorial board that resigned from Journal of Algorithms." (Resignation letter, and see Knuth's excellent letter for, as you would expect from Knuth, a far more comprehensive and detailed exposition then you can quite comprehend).

So let's hope Lieberman and Cornyn's bill passes, and let's applaud them for taking a progressive position.