October 1st 2013: Government Dysfunction Impacts the Dissemination of Scholarly Research | The Scholarly Kitchen

"'Due to the lapse in government funding, the information on this web site may not be up to date, transactions submitted via the web site may not be processed, and the agency may not be able to respond to inquiries until appropriations are enacted. Updates regarding government operating status and resumption of normal operations can be found at http://www.usa.gov.'  Is what greets you if you visit PubMed Central (As of 21:30 UK time 1/10/2013). If you go to http://www.data.gov you will be redirected to notice.usa.gov  and you will be greeted by this notice: 'Due to the lapse in federal government funding, this website is not available. We sincerely regret this inconvenience. For information about available government services, visit USA.gov.'  On The Scholarly Kitchen, you will find writing that subjects PubMed Central to some pretty hard scrutiny. But regardless of that fact, today is really a rather depressing day. Because today is the day that an uncomfortable truth about government funding of direct access to research has been revealed. If the government no longer wishes to fund it, then it can disappear very quickly indeed. The servers go down on PubMed Central and it’s an open question as to whether there is anybody around to reboot them. Data.gov seems to have been completely taken down proactively. Think about that ..."