泽熙美文Reading Comprehension
If there is any endeavor whose fruits should be freely available, that endeavor is surely publicly financed science. Morally, taxpayers who wish to should be able to read about it without further expense. And science advances through cross-fertilization between projects. Barriers to that exchange slow it down.
There is a widespread feeling that the journal publishers who have mediated this exchange for the past century or more are becoming an impediment to it. One of the latest converts is the British government. Recently it announced that, the results of taxpayer-financed research would be available, free and online, for anyone to read and redistribute.
Britain’s government is not alone. Soon the European Union followed suit. In the U.S., the National Institutes of Health (NIH, the single biggest source of civilian research funds in the world) has required open-access publishing since 2008. And the Wellcome Trust, a British foundation that is the world’s second-biggest charitable source of scientific money, after the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, also insists that those who receive its support should make their work available free.
Criticism of journal publishers usually boils down to two things. One is that their processes take months, when the Internet could enable them to take days. The other is that because each paper is like a mini-monopoly, which workers in the field have to read if they are to advance their own research, there is no incentive to keep the price down. The publishers thus have scientists—or, more accurately, their universities, which pay the subscriptions—in an armlock. That, combined with the fact that the raw material (manuscripts of papers) is free, leads to generous returns. In 2011, Elsevier, a large Dutch publisher, made a profit of ￡768 million on revenues of ￡2.06 billion—a margin of 37 percent. Indeed, Elsevier’s profits are thought so egregious by many people that 12,000 researchers have signed up to boycott the company’s journals.
Publishers do provide a service. They organize peer reviews, in which papers are criticized anonymously by experts (though those experts, like the authors of papers, are seldom paid for what they do). They also sort the scientific sheep from the goats, by deciding what gets published, and where. That gives the publishers huge power. Since researchers, administrators and grant-awarding bodies all take note of which work has got through this filtering mechanism, the competition to publish in the best journals is intense, and the system becomes self-reinforcing, increasing the value of those journals still further.
But not, perhaps, for much longer. Support has been swelling for open-access scientific publishing: doing it online, in a way that allows anyone to read papers free of charge. The movement started among scientists themselves, but governments are paying attention and asking whether they might also benefit from the change.
Much remains to be worked out. Some fear the loss of the traditional journals’ curation and verification of research. Even Sir Mark Walport, the director of the Wellcome Trust and a fierce advocate of open-access publication, worries that the newly liberated papers have ended up in different places rather than being consolidated in the way they want.
A revolution, then, has begun. Technology permits it; researchers and politicians want it. If scientific publishers are not trembling in their boots, they should be.
1. The first two paragraphs intend to indicate that ______.
A.taxpayers should make great efforts to exchange ideas
B.publishers are regarded as a negative factor in science
C.the government is liable to pay for research expenses
D.the results of research projects are freely available to the public
正确答案：B
[解析] 推断题。前两段的核心内容是“纳税人希望免费获得由财政支持的科技成果信息，而期刊出版商却成了其羁绊”。近来，英国政府推出一项举措，由财政资助的科研成果在网上免费向公众开放。将本题的四个选项与这些内容比对后，可知B为正确答案。A未提及，C和D的共同问题是未限定财政支持。
2. According to Paragraph 3, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation ______.
A.is a very important provider of research funding
B.argues that researchers make their findings public freely
C.has a monopoly on any research results with its financial support
D.follows the example set by the U.S. NIH
正确答案：A
[解析] 细节题。根据题干关键词定位第3段第4句，分析句子结构可知，the Wellcome Trust排在the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation之后，是世界第二大为科学研究提供资金的慈善机构，由此推断the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation也为科学研究提供资助，故选A。
3. According to the passage, people who are unhappy with publishers of scientific journals ______.
A.criticize the unfair publication of scientific articles
B.object to their slowness and the high costs of the journals
C.blame them for the slow pace of recent scientific progress
D.think that journals should be abolished as an obstacle to freedom of speech
正确答案：B
[解析] 细节题。根据题干关键词定位第4段第1句，从后文可知批评集中在两点：出版时间长达数月；垄断造成价格难以下降。故选B。
4. The word “egregious” underlined in Paragraph 4 means ______.
A.somewhat unfavorable
B.rather unnecessary
C.strikingly unavailable
D.clearly bad
正确答案：D
[解析] 语义题。根据上下文可知，人们对于Elsevier的过高获利极为不满，因此egregious应为贬义，而且程度比较强烈。因该句主语是Elsevier所获得的利润，首先可以排除C(完全无法获得)和B(完全没必要)，而A(有点不利的)程度不够，意义也不符合题意。通过排除法，正确答案为D(显然是不正当的)。
5. According to Paragraph 4, which of the following is true? ______
A.Mini-monopoly seems to advance scientific research.
B.Subscription is a major source of margins for the journals.
C.Publishers make great profits by keeping the price down.
D.Researchers subscribe to journals to receive free manuscripts.
正确答案：B
[解析] 推断题。该类题型通过选项定位寻找正确答案。根据关键词mini-monopoly，subscription，publishers，manuscripts定位到原文相关句子后，将四个选项的语义与其对比后可知，符合题意的只有B(期刊收入的主要来源是客户订阅)，因为原文提到“因此出版商掌控了科学家，更准确地说，是科学家任职的大学，它们需要花钱订阅学术期刊”，故选B。
6. In the phrase “sort the scientific sheep from the goats” underlined in Paragraph 5, the author uses a metaphorical device termed ______.
A.allusion
B.pun
C.metaphor
D.irony
正确答案：C
[解析] 修辞题。本题考查修辞手段的运用。根据上下文可知，出版社需要辨别论文稿件的优劣，以确定哪些论文可以出版。本词组中的sheep(绵羊)和goat(山羊)显然不是指这两种动物本身，而是指代优劣稿件。根据修辞的特点，可知作者运用了暗喻的手法，故选C。英文中有separate the sheep from the goats的说法，等同于sort (out) the sheep from the goats，意为：to make clear which people in a particular group are of a higher ability than the others。
7. Before the publication of papers, peer reviews are to ______.
A.differentiate papers
B.evaluate them
C.exercise the power of publishers
D.add the value of journals
正确答案：B
[解析] 细节题。根据关键词定位原文第5段第2句，大意为“出版社组织同行评审专家对论文进行匿名评审”，故选B(评估论文)。值得注意的是，选项A(区分论文)也与题意接近，但不如B准确。
8. The author mentions the concerns of Sir Mark Walport, who ______.
A.strongly supports current publishing arrangements and models
B.worries about the poor quality of current scientific publication
C.believes that the weaknesses of open-access journals can easily be overcome
D.is afraid that good papers in open-access journals may be neglected
正确答案：D
[解析] 细节题。根据关键词定位原文第7段第2句，可知Sir Mark Walport强烈支持科研论文通过网络发表，但同时对这些论文的前景感到担忧，因为这种改革失去了传统审稿的保障。由此排除A和B，因为这两个选项是针对现行出
