As of today all PDF versions of books published by the National Academies Press will be downloadable to anyone free of charge. This includes a current catalog of more than 4,000 books plus future reports produced by the Press. The mission of the National Academies Press (NAP) — publisher for the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council — is to disseminate the institutions’ content as widely as possible while maintaining financial sustainability. To that end, NAP began offering free content online in 1994. Before today’s announcement, all PDFs were free to download in developing countries, and 65% of them were available for free to any user.
“Our business model has evolved so that it is now financially viable to put this content out to the entire world for free,” said Barbara Kline Pope, executive director for the National Academies Press, in a statement. “This is a wonderful opportunity to make a positive impact by more effectively sharing our knowledge and analyses.”
Based on the performance of NAP’s current free PDFs, projections suggest that this change will enhance dissemination of PDF reports from about 700,000 downloads per year to more than 3 million by 2013.
Printed books will continue to be available for purchase through the NAP website and traditional channels. The free PDFs are available exclusively from the NAP’s website, http://www.nap.edu/, and remain subject to copyright laws. PDF versions exist for the vast majority of NAP books. Exceptions include some books that were published before the advent of PDFs; books from the Joseph Henry Press imprint; and in cases where contractually prohibited, such as reference books in the Nutrient Requirements of Domestic Animals series.
Source: The National Academies
Anything free is worth what you pay for it.
Wow, that is so profound.
Seriously, the anti-intellectualism of many posters here at MDN is scary. The National Academies Press is a widely respected publisher on an impressive range of scientific and engineering subjects. The willingness of NAP to make most of its books free to download should be celebrated, not trivialized.
Power to the people!
Hear! Hear!
It’s amazing isn’t it? I think many of these posters would complain if you handed them a free 20 dollar bill. They’d gripe that it wasn’t two 10s.
Well its hard to break a 20 at Starbucks – come on.
Well said, Ralph M. I thought that observation was just mine – i.e. the “anti-intellectualism” of many posters. It’s almost as if ignorance is a badge of honor sometimes. Kudos to NAP.
I hear the jury is still out on “science.”
They’re down at the local evangelical church.
What global warming?
d
I think its great!
1. These are fantastic folks that do a great job of research and analysis. NAP is fantastic and I have used their reports in my work a number of times. Anyone who tells you differently is selling you their stupidity.
2. The science is never settled on anything until it is always reproducible. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you a religion (“climate change”).
#1 is fine. No argument.
#2 is also fine, right up to the point that you tag climate change as a religion. Climate change is a theory, subject to investigation and measurement, and is based upon several real physical processes (greenhouse effect of certain gases, ocean acidification, etc.). Climate change, by definition, is not a religion.
The extent to which climate changes over the past decades can be attributed to human influences is unclear. But it seems ill-advised to motor along assuming that the impact is zero. In my opinion, it is in humanity’s best interest to tread lightly on the Earth’s ecosystem lest we trigger unintended consequences. The Earth is clearly a well-damped system, but that does not mean that any excursions from the baseline will be pleasant, or even tolerable without great sacrifice. And that has been historically true (e.g., the fairly recent “little ice age”), even without human influence.
Very fine analysis here, people who do not fully understand the way science works, tend to take a not fully established theory and promote it to absolute truth. It is unfortunate that even scientists sometimes promote half-baked theories, just to gain exposure…
And, in converse, people or organizations actively ignore or even publicly deride those same theories without valid justification. It goes both ways.
I believe that you took my post too far in the wrong direction. When I said that climate change is a theory and not a religion, I was objecting to the belittling of the scientific merits of the theory by conflating it with religion. As a matter of fact, I personally believe that climate change is a real concern, although I cannot begin to estimate the potential impact of the human influence on the Earth’s climate. It is an extremely complex system with many unknowns that make it difficult to actively model. Perhaps some scientists have gone overboard, but I empathize with them far more than I do their mindless opponents.
I am not The Other Steve Jobs and we have the same view. I firmly believe that science is trustworthy to the general public only as long as scientists apply the scientific method without concession to ideology or religion. As far as climate change is concerned, the effect of human activity cannot be overemphasized and my opinion is that the problems technology has created can only be solved by more advanced technology – going back is not an option.