[HN Gopher] Guidance to make federally funded research freely av...
___________________________________________________________________
Guidance to make federally funded research freely available without
delay
Author : mattkrisiloff
Score : 736 points
Date : 2022-08-25 16:33 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.whitehouse.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.whitehouse.gov)
| causi wrote:
| Taxpayer-funded research should automatically enter the public
| domain, period. Anything less is theft.
| jimcavel888 wrote:
| KyleLewis wrote:
| Really happy this is happening! There's no reason we shouldn't be
| able to freely read research funded by NIH, NSF, etc., and
| there's a ton of high impact work there.
| asdff wrote:
| NIH research at least already had a public access requirement
| chrisamiller wrote:
| But that was after an embargo period of 12 months, during
| which a journal could paywall it. This forces immediate
| availability, which is a good thing.
| sytse wrote:
| Great to see this. Expect scientific publishers to start
| increasing their open access fees.
| Animats wrote:
| _" All agencies will fully implement updated policies, including
| ending the optional 12-month embargo, no later than December 31,
| 2025."_
|
| Why does this need a 3 year transition period? Six months would
| be plenty.
| jltsiren wrote:
| It has something to do with money and budgeting, at least.
|
| Academics must still publish in the same prestige journals as
| before to earn merits for jobs, promotions, grants, and prizes.
| Those journals are largely published by for-profit publishers
| that want their money one way or another. If their subscription
| revenues will be lower, they will want more money from open
| access fees. While subscriptions were usually paid by
| university libraries that receive their funding from various
| sources, open access fees are often the responsibility of the
| individual PI.
|
| Some universities have agreements with some publishers that the
| library will pay open access fees for their researchers. Others
| will try to negotiate them, but negotiations take time. When
| there are no such agreements, the PI must pay the open access
| fees from their grants. That means grant agencies must
| establish policies on how much funding to include for that in
| their grants, and the money has to come from somewhere. The
| agencies must decide whether to reduce the number of grants or
| the amount of money available for other purposes. They may also
| request more funding from the Congress, but that takes a lot of
| time and the outcome is uncertain.
| Fomite wrote:
| There were a lot of agreements with journals, etc.
| [deleted]
| rgovostes wrote:
| Unusual in light of the title of the page being "OSTP Issues
| Guidance to Make Federally Funded Research Freely Available
| _Without Delay_ ".
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Maybe it's less about the agencies technical ability and more
| about making it long enough that the current beneficiaries of
| this don't oppose it as strongly as they would if it disrupted
| their biz in the next 2-4 quarters so that it can actually get
| done.
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| Your talking about the parasitic scientific publishing
| 'industry' * ?
|
| The 'industry' which funded none of the work, and charges the
| people who did do the work to host a PDF behind a paywall?
|
| The 'industry' where most of the journal editors and referees
| are volunteers?
|
| That 'industry'?
|
| * I think its disingenuous to call something an industry if
| it produces nothing.
| ebiester wrote:
| Unless an alternative to the current publishing system
| comes, the new grants will need to add a cost to publish
| any papers that come out of the study.
| nwiswell wrote:
| Well, if nothing else, it produces profits... and profits
| pay for lobbyists.
|
| At least in the Washington understanding, an "industry" is
| any profit-seeking entity or association which has
| lobbyists representing its interests. (What would you say
| are the "products" of the hedge-fund "industry"?)
|
| I suppose you could call this a special-interest group
| instead, but it's a little pedantic.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Yes, it produces profits which indeed can pay for
| advocacy and also has jobs and where there are jobs there
| are congresspeople with people who might lose jobs in
| their district and therefore a potential wrench in any
| policy change.
|
| Edit for data to paint a clearer picture: The co I know
| best in this space is Elsevier which according to their
| Wikipedia has more than 8,000 employees. I don't know
| where they're distributed (it's a Dutch co) but if you
| represent a certain district or consituency and all of a
| sudden your area might lose thousands of jobs, you
| listen, even if you don't particularly like that
| industry.
| torstenvl wrote:
| Woah boy. You drastically overestimate the alacrity of the U.S.
| federal government. Also, keep in mind that existing contracts
| may not permit the updated policies to be "fully" implemented,
| and premature "termination for convenience" is a great way to
| screw the American taxpayer.
| nwiswell wrote:
| It seems like the language of the XO could simply specify
| "six months, or the soonest time which would be allowed
| without penalty by the relevant contracts, but in no case
| longer than three years."
| IncRnd wrote:
| Many of these things, dates of the start (or end) of laws +
| rules + EOs, are regularly set with a timeframe years away and
| right after the next President sits in office. There is a real
| pattern of this.
| culturestate wrote:
| _> Why does this need a 3 year transition period? Six months
| would be plenty._
|
| For the same reason aircraft carriers need five miles to stop -
| it's a _really big ship_ and there's an extraordinary amount of
| inertia to be overcome.
| robocat wrote:
| > aircraft carriers need five miles to stop
| The shortest distance that I stopped the Carrier while going
| at 34 knots (top speed) was 1.2 nautical miles (NM). This
| takes several minutes and involves Backing Bells (reversing
| the spin of propellers), which is hard on the engines. The
| command is "All Engines, Back Full, Emergency, Indicate 000
| (or 999 as necessary)"[1]
|
| However this was the only quote I found that said this
| though.
|
| [1] https://www.quora.com/How-difficult-is-it-to-stop-an-
| aircraf...
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| The fuck are you even talking about? An afternoon at best to
| turn off the paywall and simply link to the PDF's.
| awillen wrote:
| It's the federal government, not a startup in your garage.
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| Its not the federal government, its federally funded
| research. Its Elsevier. Its Scihub. Its JSTOR.
|
| An afternoon is more than plenty.
| kanzure wrote:
| I believe the federally funded research rules are about
| prohibiting future ongoing publication at venues that are
| not in compliance with the policy, rather than the
| government directly compelling private businesses to take
| down the paywalls.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| You don't understand what is being discussed here. The
| guidance was given to federal agencies to figure out how
| to make their research available publicly. There was no
| guidance given to publishers, they don't have to do
| anything. Read the memo. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-
| content/uploads/2022/08/08-202...
| pavon wrote:
| Yes the agencies will have to survey all the ways that
| their spending goes into research. Some of these will be
| obvious like NSF grants. Others will be more gray area
| like R&D contracts. They will have to modify the rules
| for each of these processes, and train employees on the
| new rules. There may be existing contracts that will have
| to be renegotiated. Some of the agencies may have legally
| mandated processes they have to follow when making
| changes to rules, which may include public comment
| periods. Many agencies will be able to make the change
| within a year, but some will have legitimate reasons for
| taking longer. Three years is generous, but not
| ridiculous.
| afarrell wrote:
| Not if one of the people who would do that is currently
| on a boat in Lake Winnipesaukee.
|
| Not if {insert 20 other sources of complexity that exist
| in the real world}.
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| Give them an afternoon and then charge them a $2500 a day
| fine for any federally funded research not made
| available. They'll fix it that afternoon. I'm sure Jake
| can remote in from Lake Winnipesaukee.
|
| Apolegetics for bad, unethical, and world damaging
| polices, be it corporate or otherwise, are unacceptable.
| afarrell wrote:
| It is more important to:
|
| 1. Have a sense of proportion.
|
| 2. Respect people's work-life boundaries.
| [deleted]
| FabHK wrote:
| This is guidance to federal agencies to update their
| policies to require free access for results they funded
| going forward.
|
| So, the issue is not to flip a switch on a server to
| disable a paywall. The issue is to change official policy
| at many agencies, which will then trickle down. You can't
| just retroactively change the terms on existing grants.
| geysersam wrote:
| Simple solution: stop prosecuting SciHub and link to them
| from official websites. They've already solved this
| problem.
| [deleted]
| e-clinton wrote:
| Paywalls aren't setup by first parties here. And likely all
| content isn't either.
| hh3k0 wrote:
| Perhaps they'd like to see if geopoliticial conflicts due to
| the uncertainty of the impending doom that is climate change
| make it unnecessary.
|
| Imagine doing all that work for nothing, as there was societal
| collapse just around the corner!
| anm89 wrote:
| It's funny how the political class understands the things like
| this that need to be done, they just don't care at all until they
| are heading into an election cycle they are about to lose. Then
| suddenly the political will is suddenly found.
| [deleted]
| thfuran wrote:
| You think this is a big populist vote grab?
| d23 wrote:
| I'd love to live in a country where moves like this are
| considered populist pandering.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Somehow this doesn't seem like an issue a politician is going
| to campaign on.. I mean you can talk about women's
| rights/abortion, gun violence, student debt, the economy,
| Ukraine, or... access to federally funded research? There are
| only so many press hits, tv ad dollars, and speech time
| politicians have to get their message out. I doubt this makes
| anyone's list.
| [deleted]
| efitz wrote:
| I hope this will include research at universities where
| government grants are involved.
|
| On the topic of openness, we also need to ensure open access to
| government records even when involved parties are trying to use
| NDAs (StingRay) or copyright (many municipal building codes) to
| hide government records.
| elefanten wrote:
| Seems like a good thing. Any downsides to this? Any low hanging
| fruit it misses in making research more open access?
| wolfi1 wrote:
| the publication fees (paid by the authors) seem to be
| considerably higher
| Fomite wrote:
| My lab's gotten hit by some hefty publication fees this year
| - it's painful for early career researchers, but in
| aggregate, this is a good thing.
| nequo wrote:
| Elsevier pockets a 30+ percent profit margin.[1] Nothing
| besides market power forces them to push this to the authors.
|
| [1] https://www.relx.com/~/media/Files/R/RELX-
| Group/documents/re... (page 23)
| FabHK wrote:
| I hope this (White House Office of Science and Technology
| Policy guidance) is another nail in Elsevier's coffin.
| Fomite wrote:
| Some society-level journals that are used to help support their
| respective societies are likely going to struggle a bit.
|
| That doesn't mean this isn't worth doing (it is), but it's
| going to be a thing.
| hikingsimulator wrote:
| I don't see any to be honest. Public money, public access.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| Definitely agree it's a good thing - my libertarian core can't
| help but wonder if the white house has (or ought to have) the
| power to unilaterally declare this, though. Would much prefer
| this had been voted on by congress.
| twblalock wrote:
| It's policy guidance issued by the executive branch to the
| Federal agencies, which is well within the President's
| authority.
|
| Of course, that also means that another president could
| reverse this policy just as easily. If Congress passed a law
| it would be harder to reverse.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> that also means that another president could reverse
| this policy just as easily_
|
| Which, since the deadline for full implementation is
| December 2025, is not at all a farfetched possibility.
| dimator wrote:
| i wonder why this is not a law already? at first i assumed
| lobbying, but i can't imagine the journal racket to be that
| lucrative to influence the required number of legislators to
| block the law, unlike oil or insurance. this seems like such
| a no-brainer issue, but i would love to hear the spin.
| pksebben wrote:
| I'm sure there's a ton of special interests who wouldn't
| want all the research made public. the oil industry
| immediately comes to mind. so does tobacco, gambling,
| pharma, and farming.
| porcoda wrote:
| For consumers of the information and those paying for it, it's
| all upside to me. My only prediction for downside will be
| increased author fees for open access publications. Some venues
| have ridiculously high fees for open access authors, which is a
| barrier for some (not every author is funded by a research
| grant or in a department with a budget that can cover such
| fees). I expect they'll go even higher, and the available
| exceptions or discounts will be more stringent. To me, the
| upsides vastly outweigh that downside though, so I'm very happy
| to see this move.
| krull10 wrote:
| It is not just a barrier for researchers without lots of
| grant funding, but also diverts public funds from funding
| more research and research personnel to paying significant
| publication fees. This really needed a complementary cap on
| what would be allowed in paying such fees via grants to bring
| the costs down.
| dwheeler wrote:
| Wonderful!! This will save $billions in US universities (at
| least) and speed research around the world.
| hammock wrote:
| Does this apply to the Pfizer studies that were going to take 55
| years to release?
|
| https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/fda-requests-55-years-to...
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| 100% agree with this. Paywalls for publicly funded research is bs
| and always has been. This should also be true for all state-
| funded or even municipally funded research (if there is any).
| Also should be true for non-profits who fund research (the tax
| exempt status is a form of public funding). Also any paper
| published by someone employed at university that receives any
| form of public funding or tax breaks should also be included. So
| the only ones who should be allowed to publish research behind
| paywalls are private for-profit companies who completely self-
| funded their work. And even they should, for the best interest of
| everyone, also use open access.
| joshe wrote:
| Very nice. Dark Brandon rising.
|
| Worth pointing out that academics have been stuck on this since
| around 1997. Physicists and most other tech fields mostly solved
| it with arxiv (founded in 1991!).
|
| Academia and especially the humanities is probably the least
| cooperative and worst at coordination problems of any big sector
| of our civilization. Good to remember when they are offering
| advice.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _Academia and especially the humanities is probably the least
| cooperative and worst at coordination problems_
|
| I have asked a lot of academics why they don't work across
| departmental/institutional lines to strategize against
| administrators/regents. You'd think sociologists, economists,
| and lawyers would be able to take on the rather glaring market
| failures in academia, but those who don't already have tenure
| and a fiefdom all seem to be teetering on the edge of economic
| insecurity and can't risk the career destruction.
|
| It might just be that there are too many credentialed people
| chasing too few research and teaching positions, but it's a sad
| state of affairs however you look at it.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I really wish they would have called him Darth Brandon :( . Big
| opportunity missed.
| [deleted]
| krull10 wrote:
| This is a good thing overall, but it only half addresses the
| issue. Now journal fees to authors will simply go up to cover the
| difference, making it harder for researchers without lots of
| grant funding to publish (journals can now be over $6000 per
| article), and even more tax payer dollars will be going towards
| paying these fees for those researchers funded by gov grants
| (money that could be better spent funding students, postdocs and
| researchers). This really needed to be coupled with a requirement
| to cap per article charges for grant-funded work, which would
| have benefited all researchers.
| chrisamiller wrote:
| It will force publishers to either add real value or be swept
| away by new models of publishing that aren't simply rent-
| seeking. It will take time to change, but this is another hole
| in the dike. It'll probably be messy for a couple of years, but
| I welcome the opportunity to shake things up.
| trevcanhuman wrote:
| Serious question: What do journals actually do ? Do they check
| the article ? Why is it important for it to be in a journal ?
|
| I don't know much about academic research, fyi.
|
| I think it's also a midway proposal for other reasons. The
| proposal merely suggests open access but barely specifies
| anything. I don't want to give the government personal
| information and enable endless tracking to them just because I
| want to download a paper.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| The find one or more well-credentialed and cited experts in
| the field to anonymously review the paper and point out
| shortcomings in the research or drafting - this is the 'peer'
| part of peer review. Then they either accept for publication,
| suggest revisions, or reject it outright.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Note that the peer reviewers doing the work are unpaid
| volunteers, the people receiving the money are just
| middlemen.
| tylerneylon wrote:
| I fully agree. The US's academic system provides a lot of
| insulation to researchers because generally this publishing
| cost will be paid for by your employing company, by your
| university, or by a grant. So researchers are not incentivized
| to spend a ton of time worrying about it. At the same time, I
| believe the large majority of researchers don't realize how
| little (or negative, arguably) value they receive from paying
| for publication vs doing so for free (such as on arxiv).
|
| Specifically, online academic publishing is, at its core,
| indexing and hosting pdf files. It is some work to do a good
| job. But it's also quite achievable to re-create the same
| service without asking for much, if anything, from authors.
| Given a little funding, every field could use arxiv or their
| version of arxiv (which is free to publish on). The bottleneck
| to a large-scale change is the self-sustaining prestige of a
| paid journal's badge.
|
| As a first step, we can spread awareness among authors of how
| crazy it is to pay so much to publish.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _This really needed to be coupled with a requirement to cap per
| article charges for grant-funded work_
|
| It'd be nice if there were just a different model. I do a lot
| of research in a niche field and would like to publish some of
| it. But the enormous submission fees are unaffordable as a non-
| academic with no connection to grant infrastructure. I had
| thought that rigor and reproducibility would be the main
| hurdles, but it's pretty discouraging to have or be close to
| publication-quality datasets and discover how steep the
| financial wall is. I was aware of submission fees for papers,
| but until recently had been under the impression that they were
| an order of magnitude lower.
| dwheeler wrote:
| You're right it doesn't fully address the issue, but it _does_
| provide some pressure.
|
| If an article is available for free immediately, there's no
| need to spend $6K to make it available at _all_.
|
| Researchers want to be in specific locations because of their
| prestige. However, when all US-funded research is also
| available _outside_ that location, the walled garden of
| prestige becomes rather porous. Especially since the reviewers
| typically aren 't paid either.
| krull10 wrote:
| I don't think the promotion and prestige incentives can be
| fixed easily by academics. Their promotion, earnings, ability
| to change universities, and recognition depend on publishing
| in the most prestigious journals they can.
|
| In contrast, the government could easily fix this by simply
| not providing the money currently required by such journals,
| which would force them to come up with models that can work
| with lower fees.
|
| I hope you are right though!
| geoalchimista wrote:
| > Researchers want to be in specific locations because of
| their prestige. However, when all US-funded research is also
| available outside that location, the walled garden of
| prestige becomes rather porous. Especially since the
| reviewers typically aren't paid either.
|
| You are assuming researchers are saintly figures dwelling in
| a vacuum who don't need to constantly prove to their
| department head or promotion evaluation committee of their
| worth. That is not the case. The walled gardens are desirable
| for some because their social functions are not easily
| replaceable.
|
| One way to decouple the evaluation of scientific output from
| the walled garden is simply to stop using them as a gate-
| keeper in making hiring and research grant distribution
| decisions. But apart from the constant lip service, there is
| no momentum in doing anything concrete about this in
| academia.
| verdverm wrote:
| > Eliminating the optional 12-month publication embargo for
| federally funded peer-reviewed research articles.
|
| I hope this means that Fed Funded research publications will
| always be free to access from day 0 to day [?]
| wikitopian wrote:
| I've been relying on making stuff up and then linking to
| paywalled articles to win my internet arguments, so this is a big
| setback for me.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Maybe try Forbes or Business Insider? The former definitely
| seems like it is happy with a pay to play model
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Just rebrand yourself as a data scientist and tell them to read
| it on your medium page and then immediately blocking them on
| social media. Do an occasional freebie piece about how you're
| the victim of an ugly new trend and watch your follower count
| soar.
| aaaddaaaaa1112 wrote:
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| Scihub's servers breathed a sigh of relief.
| lofatdairy wrote:
| A song on the world's smallest violin for publishing companies
| executives. The fact that this asinine situation has reached this
| point to begin with is an embarrassment, and that it didn't end
| when we lost Aaron Swartz is a tragedy.
| [deleted]
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| The loss of Aaron Swartz has always been the date when the
| timeline went dark for me.
| jhallenworld wrote:
| Great! How about we reduce the cost of college by eliminating the
| equally parasitical textbook industry?
| fabian2k wrote:
| That's pretty much entirely in the hands of the universities
| and professors. To a large degree this is really a US-specific
| problem, US textbooks are easily 2-3 times as expensive as
| elsewhere. And the cause is likely that US universities require
| specific textbooks for courses, which is not how it works e.g.
| in Germany where I studied. I had a single course that required
| a specific textbook, which cost like ~50 EUR at regular price.
| Every other textbook I bought I selected myself, and they
| almost all were really worth their price.
|
| Requiring specific textbooks in specific editions removes all
| market forces and direct competition. It also kills the second-
| hand market and makes it much more difficult for libraries.
| When students are free to choose which textbooks to buy or rent
| from a library you get a much healthier market.
| derbOac wrote:
| My department seriously discussed making our own textbooks for
| at least one class. The idea never got off the ground, although
| I think it was a good idea. Part of the reason really is that
| there were no incentives for doing so, no real teaching or
| research credit, no grant dollars brought it, etc. The other
| end of it too was that there was a lot of pressure to turn it
| into a profit-making venture. Rather than it be open-source,
| for example, to keep the money in-house with the idea that it
| would lower costs for students and keep the money in the
| department instead of a publisher.
|
| So, good idea but too much pressure on departments to be
| bringing in indirect grant funds, and not enough incentive to
| release it openly. I think some people in some places can get
| away with it, but not everywhere.
| hedora wrote:
| Your story makes it pretty clear what the solution is:
|
| Change college accreditation / federal financial support
| rules so that the cost of textbooks is rolled up in the
| university's tuition fee, and standardize tuitions across
| departments within each university.
| guelo wrote:
| The problem is the professors are the parasites in many cases.
| reidjs wrote:
| There are ways for students to side-step the problem (textbook
| resale, piracy, libraries), unfortunately lazier professors are
| using the textbook company homework websites as part of their
| grading metric.
| loeg wrote:
| As college expenses go, textbooks were less than 1% of my costs
| attending a public university as a state resident. The industry
| may be just as parasitic but I don't think it would appreciably
| help reduce college expenses.
| jhallenworld wrote:
| 6% in 2014 according to this..
|
| https://thecrite.com/home/2014/04/29/the-hidden-cost-of-
| educ...
|
| But even if it's low, it's also low hanging fruit for a big
| problem.
| sa501428 wrote:
| https://openstax.org/ has been working on this.
| m463 wrote:
| I think there needs to be good textbooks, but there could be
| some GOOD rules for conflicts of interest with respect to who
| chooses/requires which textbooks.
| ejb999 wrote:
| you mean like my kid's class a few years back, where the
| 'textbook' was about $75, and was written by the person
| getting paid to teach the class, and was just about 150 pages
| of plain white paper stapled together with no binding?
|
| Get paid to teach the class, and then also make 100 or more
| students pay for some photocopies, the money which goes
| directly into the professors pocket - oh yea, and then change
| a few paragraphs each year and tell next year's class they
| can't rely on previous years books - i.e. no resale market
| for the 'book' you just bought.
| mataug wrote:
| I'm honestly surprised this wasn't done before, but its better
| late than never
| hedora wrote:
| They somehow manage to avoid using the words "copyright" and
| "patent" anywhere in the press release or the memorandum.
|
| I assume they mean for this to apply only to copyrights over the
| actual text of the published paper and supporting data, but it's
| strange that they are so vague.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| I wonder if it applies to overseas labs?
| digitalmaster wrote:
| Aaron Swartz
| ajankelo wrote:
| Hugely important. Great win for all.
| guerby wrote:
| In France since 2018:
|
| https://www.enseignementsup-recherche.gouv.fr/fr/le-plan-nat...
|
| Approximate translation:
|
| The national plan for open science announced by Frederique Vidal
| on July 4th 2018 makes open access mandatory for articles and
| data from state funded projects.
| jschveibinz wrote:
| There is a tiny caveat in here that has yet to be discussed:
| freely available to US taxpayers.
|
| How will this be implemented? Will there be controlled access by
| SSN? Restrictions against public release? A world-wide license
| agreement?
|
| What about SBIR work?
|
| It will be interesting to see how this plays out legally.
| biomcgary wrote:
| I was granted an SBIR grant for a small biotech that I
| previously worked for. We were very careful about what we
| funded on the grant, because even under the current rules that
| government can use the research, if they choose (although I
| think this is rare).
| bglazer wrote:
| This is good news. Academic publishers are parasites and anything
| that reduces their stranglehold on academic knowledge is good.
| That said, parasites are, if nothing else, resilient.
|
| So, there's a few issues that I'm concerned about. First, it's
| not clear to me that university libraries will be able to drop
| their subscriptions to these journals based on this decision. The
| vast majority of research receives some federal funding, but
| there will still be some subset of articles that are funded
| through private research grants and will still sit behind a
| paywall. Journal subscriptions are a huge drag on library
| budgets, so freeing that money up would be immensely beneficial.
| Second, I can see the journals reacting to this by going full
| open access, but charging massive "fees" to publish. Right now
| Nature charges >$10k to publish open access, and I'd expect them
| to ratchet that up as it becomes their primary vector to siphon
| tax payer money into their own pockets. This seems to be the
| playbook based on the European "Plan S" push for open access.
| expensive_news wrote:
| Maybe I'm missing something, but if Nature charges that much to
| publish why does anyone publish in Nature? Why don't academics
| just create their own 'ethically priced' journal? It's my
| understanding that most of Nature's labor is voluntary and
| unpaid anyway.
| [deleted]
| permo-w wrote:
| Nature is very, very prestigious
| ModernMech wrote:
| You can create your own ethically priced journal any day of
| the week, but if no one reads it, no one will publish to it.
| And if no one publishes to it, no one will read it. Offering
| cheap or free publishing doesn't solve this chicken-and-egg
| problem, unfortunately. Quite the opposite; it signals that
| the researchers who publish there are only doing so because
| they can't afford the publishing fees of larger journals,
| presumably because their research isn't interesting or
| noteworthy enough to attract enough money to do so. Honestly,
| $10k is a drop in the bucket when grants are in the millions.
| krull10 wrote:
| Grants are only in the millions in certain fields. But more
| than that, $10K per paper, budgeted for 2-3 papers a year
| in a 3-5 year grant across all the NIH grants, is a lot of
| taxpayer money that could be better spent funding students,
| postdocs, and researchers.
| spanktheuser wrote:
| This certainly would seem to be the next logical move for the
| prestige journals. However, in the long term I think this
| decision to provide open access to the research allows new
| journals to compete on a more even footing, especially with the
| emergence of publishing and peer review services like
| Scholastica. Over time, a thoughtfully curated journal with
| advantages in speed, cost, editorial focus, peer review
| process, etc. may be able to overcome the journals whose
| advantage lie primarily in prestige & gate-keeping.
| jimcavel888 wrote:
| Test0129 wrote:
| Having done a short stint dealing with this stuff I am glad
| something is being done. NIST/NSF funded several studies that I
| was close to that were suddenly owned by a journal who did
| nothing but provide a place to put it.
|
| Public money should always mean public access. Not just for
| journals, but for anything. If one red cent of taxpayer money
| goes to it, the taxpayer should get it for free. Hopefully the
| trend continues.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I agree. All that data should be publically available for
| reproduction of the work as well as open season. No one should
| be able to patent it either, or should only be able to file a
| patent to make it "publically available into perpetuity" to
| protect it. If tax dollars funded it, we own it as a society.
| If companies foot the bill then maybe something more
| complicated needs to exist, but if it is 100% public funded,
| universities should not be able to sell it off to corps.
| koheripbal wrote:
| I assume military R&D would be a big exception?
| logisticseh wrote:
| It's the other way around -- academic R&D is just about the
| _only_ type of government spending for which there 's wide-
| spread support for openness and a lack of entrenched power
| against openness.
|
| The USG spent $6B on cloud computing in 2020. That number is
| increasing quickly. To say nothing of the massive quantities
| of non-OSS software that the government buys and incorporates
| into is own business-critical processes. And it's not just
| government licenses, but also anyone who interacts with the
| government. E.g., try interacting with any government agency
| without an Office 365 license.
|
| You get really funny looks if you say that MSFT should have
| to give away Office 365 for free if the government is going
| to use it for anything.
|
| But total USG spend on closed-source software has to be well
| into the 30B-50B range conservatively. For reference, the
| entire NSF budget is $10B.
|
| The main reason for this is that there are many monied and
| powerful stakeholders who benefit from selling closed
| software to USG, whereas the academic publishers a tiny,
| often not even American-owned, and got super greedy and
| screwed their natural contingency (academics hate them as
| much as or more than anyone else).
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| There's a difference between the government paying to use
| software and paying for it to be developed.
| logisticseh wrote:
| Most of what the big contractors like Booz do is custom
| software. Every single cloud provider has an entire
| GovCloud division. Even Office has special Government
| licensing that behaves differently on the backend.
| pksebben wrote:
| I think part of the point here, is that the value from
| that investment should go to the investors, who are (if
| you buy the 'by the people, for the people' hype) the
| taxpayers.
|
| Say I'm vulture capitalist Tom, and I pay a few gajillion
| dollars to developer Gupta to create a product for me. I
| would be understandably pissed if Gupta turned around and
| sold that same product to competitor vc Janet. She didn't
| pay for that dev work, I did.
| logisticseh wrote:
| 1. There isn't as much of a difference here as you think.
| Contractors _do_ turn around and use components developed
| in public contracts for other consulting projects. Most
| commonly with other sovereigns, especially when the
| original contract was with a city or state, but sometimes
| at the national level as well.
|
| 2. With respect to R&D, one big difference is that the
| government _doesn 't_ provide seed funding. They provide
| grants. If the government wanted equity in research labs,
| they'd have to pay a lot more. You'll see this in
| practice if you ever have the extreme displeasure of
| doing non-useless research in academia. Companies that
| insist on IP ownership/sharing end up paying much higher
| premiums for university research contracts. Repealing
| Bayh-Dole would have no effect on the accessibility of
| actually useful research; universities and companies
| would privately fund the useful stuff and leave the
| government to fund the labs of politically-
| connected/twitter-famous but otherwise totally useless
| academics.
|
| (To be clear: we're on the same side here with respect to
| open access publications.)
| rcthompson wrote:
| I'm not sure the difference is as cut and dry as you're
| making it out to be. A big organization doesn't just pay
| Microsoft a zillion dollars for a million Office licenses
| and then never talk to them again. There's an ongoing
| support relationship, which for large enough customers
| might include things like developing features on request.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| The other difference is if you had to open source anything
| sold to the USG then no one would sell anything closed
| source to the USG.
|
| And there's lots of useful software the government wants to
| buy that is closed source.
| aaaaaaaaata wrote:
| Useful _to who_ , and for what?
| elil17 wrote:
| "public access to federally funded research results and data
| should be maximized in a manner that protects
| confidentiality, privacy, business confidential information,
| and security, avoids negative impact on intellectual property
| rights, innovation, program and operational improvements, and
| U.S. competitiveness, and preserves the balance between the
| relative value of long-term preservation and access and the
| associated cost and administrative burden"
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| It would have to be. It's simply part of it being military,
| state secrets, etc.
| jjk166 wrote:
| I don't think military R&D produces many academic papers, but
| anything going in a journal a foreign national can just buy
| should probably also be made available to the tax payer.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| > If one red cent of taxpayer money goes to it, the taxpayer
| should get it for free.
|
| This logic only works for easily-replicable goods, like
| information. It falls apart when you consider various goods and
| service that are not easily replicable, or where increased
| demand can mean increased funding is necessary. E.g.:
|
| * So public housing can't be at least partially paid for by the
| tenant, it must be completely free?
|
| * No bridge or road tolls anywhere, any time?
|
| * No paid street parking either, even in highly demanded areas,
| like the middle of big cities, where demand needs to be managed
| somehow
|
| * Any kind of license or permit or passport should all be free,
| even for businesses?
| rzazueta wrote:
| We rely too much on money as a determining factor for things.
| Money does not accurately reflect value, nor does it accurate
| reflect contributions made to society. So, in that vain, I
| agree with another poster who said this should all be free.
| Perhaps with some changes.
|
| > * So public housing can't be at least partially paid for by
| the tenant, it must be completely free?
|
| Depends on what you consider as payment. I'm in favor of
| temporary housing (e.g. a tenant is expected to stay in the
| area no more than five years) being owned and managed by the
| city in which it's located. "Rent" would go toward
| maintenance of the building and surrounds, with any extra
| going back toward city services. Rent could be offset by a
| number of things - tenant's physical contribution to the
| maintenance, stipends for public service (e.g. teacher,
| social workers, etc.), federal grants, etc. The city would be
| expected to keep rents low. Maintenance could be handled by
| parks and rec. This is, of course, all dependent on how the
| city is set up, but I like it as a model.
|
| Permanent housing would also be handled by the city, but only
| in terms of building and selling. Developers and real estate
| agents have a _LOT_ of incentive to keep housing prices
| climbing. Putting this in the hands of the city - not the
| state, not the feds - has greater potential to help influence
| positive growth with citizen input while reigning in costs.
|
| The part I have not solved for here is situations like
| Atherton, which is heavily populated by rich white weirdos
| who would rather no one other than their own live there, and
| actively work to discriminate against "undesirables" moving
| to their city (see the recent hullabaloo there regarding
| affordable housing). On the one hand, if that's what their
| democratically elected city government is pushing for, and
| the citizens agree, that's basically democracy at work. But
| you can't ignore the folks who are being left behind and
| simply make them the "problem" of the next city over.
|
| > * No bridge or road tolls anywhere, any time?
|
| Nope. Tax the companies that ship goods on those roads and
| bridges fairly and you'll recoup those costs. As should the
| fees for vehicle licensing.
|
| > * No paid street parking either, even in highly demanded
| areas, like the middle of big cities, where demand needs to
| be managed somehow
|
| Nope. Parking is self-managed - if there's no spot, you can't
| park. Adding money only fills the coffers of the local
| government, it doesn't really do much to actually address the
| issue. You may argue that the money could go toward adding
| more parking structures, but I'd argue back it's wiser to
| build cities that don't rely so heavily on motorized transit
| for access. The more parking we add, the less room we have
| for things like homes and small, locally owned businesses.
|
| > Any kind of license or permit or passport should all be
| free, even for businesses?
|
| Licensing and passports and all that aren't public goods -
| they're methods of tax collection, authentication (license
| ID, passport) and authorization (you need a passport to
| travel internationally). The fees you pay for them are what
| ought to ultimately be paying for those services (in
| addition, yes, to the other taxes we collect).
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| > We rely too much on money as a determining factor for
| things. Money does not accurately reflect value, nor does
| it accurate reflect contributions made to society.
|
| Yes, but nevertheless money works better than not doing
| anything for stuff like street parking. It's simple and
| effective. Perhaps another system would work better on
| paper for allocating street parking, but I'm guessing most
| other suggestions would be a lot more complicated and
| brittle in practice.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Free parking is actually bad, particularly in cities,
| though it's bad for reasons largely specific to cars.
|
| > Putting this in the hands of the city - not the state,
| not the feds - has greater potential to help influence
| positive growth with citizen input while reigning in costs.
|
| I'm leery of this; cities have generally shown themselves
| to be easily swayed by NIMBY's when it comes to housing
| policy. Just look at how California the state is constantly
| trying to get cities to build more housing semi-willingly
| through their local policies, and how pretty much all the
| coastal cities (who are the same sort of liberals elected
| to state-wide office, mind) just ignore that and do their
| best to do the bare minimum.
|
| > Tax the companies that ship goods on those roads and
| bridges fairly and you'll recoup those costs.
|
| Why though? Like, why is doing taxes on companies superior
| to, say, general/road tax funds + bridge tolls?
|
| I'm open to the idea of making things free to the user, but
| I'm not so dogmatic as to think it's the right answer 100%
| of the time.
|
| > The fees you pay for them are what ought to ultimately be
| paying for those services (in addition, yes, to the other
| taxes we collect).
|
| Right, and I'm saying that this reasoning can apply to
| other things as well. Just because something is at least
| partially paid for by tax funds somewhere doesn't mean it
| should have zero cost to the user (though certainly
| sometimes that's true).
|
| I think this is more of an issue of the GP not having
| explained _why_ they believe a single cent of public money
| should mean zero cost for use.
| elliotec wrote:
| I see no reason why the answer shouldn't be "yes" to each of
| those bullets. I don't think the logic falls apart. Public
| goods and services should be public goods and services, full
| stop.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| It depends on the specific scenario. For parking, for
| example, not charging for it when it's in high demand is
| generally a bad idea, because you get "overconsumption":
| people who barely even need it end up using it anyway (hey,
| it's free!) while people who _really_ need it have a hard
| time finding any available. So you 'll have, say, people
| who are just storing their occasionally-used car for weeks
| between uses on the street, while people who are just
| parking to unload something right now can't get their stuff
| done.
|
| Then you also end up with people spending a lot of time
| circling around downtown looking for elusive free parking,
| which is bad for both traffic and the environment. In
| contrast, charging a "market rate" that usually leaves
| 10-15% of parking spots open means that scenario is now
| transparent and fast: you know you can usually quickly find
| parking, you know how much it's gonna cost, you can make
| the calculation ahead of time and execute fast.
| vosper wrote:
| One reason to put tolls on roads is to make the people who
| use the infrastructure also the people who pay for it's
| maintenance and improvements. Public goods are provided by
| public money, and in some cases it might be fairer to get
| some/most/all of that public money from the portion of the
| public that are using the thing.
|
| Also as a disincentive to use something. Like we want
| people to drive less in the urban core to reduce congestion
| and also the air pollution that's killing thousands of
| people every year. So we're going to put a charge on using
| those roads.
| CyanBird wrote:
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| I don't see how any of this applies.
|
| The infrastructure isn't paid for when it's built (including
| the public house). It's financed on debt. Pay-by-use is just
| a form of tax payment.
|
| It's just that the "use" for information is nearly free, so
| it doesn't make sense to charge for usage.
|
| If the road was already completely paid for by tax-payers (no
| debt), and then a toll company wanted to operate the road for
| a 99% margin - you'd see a lot more people complaining about
| that.
|
| Street parking is an interesting example in that the demand
| charge is probably unrelated to the underlying cost. However,
| it's just one of the many examples of taking tax dollars from
| Pot A to pay for things in Pot B.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| > The infrastructure isn't paid for when it's built
| (including the public house). It's financed on debt. Pay-
| by-use is just a form of tax payment.
|
| Sorry, I don't understand the relevance here.
|
| > It's just that the "use" for information is nearly free,
| so it doesn't make sense to charge for usage.
|
| Exactly. It's easy to provide the information to
| essentially infinite people for free, and there's no real
| downside to doing so.
|
| > If the road was already completely paid for by tax-payers
| (no debt), and then a toll company wanted to operate the
| road for a 99% margin - you'd see a lot more people
| complaining about that.
|
| For sure. Of course, real world charges for roads/parking
| is a little more complicated than that.
|
| > Street parking is an interesting example in that the
| demand charge is probably unrelated to the underlying cost.
| However, it's just one of the many examples of taking tax
| dollars from Pot A to pay for things in Pot B.
|
| Yeah, the most obvious reason to do this for street parking
| is because you actively want to manage demand of a highly
| demanded, finite resource. You don't really need the money,
| but charging gets you other changes you want. Ditto for
| congestion charges.
| fudged71 wrote:
| Does "public" here refer to nationally-available, or
| internationally? Should I be able to access your taxpayer's
| research?
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| All persons. The principals enshrined in the first paragraph
| of the Declaration of Independence specify no nation in
| particular.
|
| Freedom of information is a direct extension of the
| Declaration of Independence.
| elil17 wrote:
| I would say the real reason is that it's pretty impractical
| to limit it to just Americans given that we don't have any
| sort of national e-identity.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| we do through the international patent system. We should
| get money back for our tax dollars, simple as that. We
| could work it into international patents. I know some
| countries ignore those, but we can make them pay in other
| ways like tariffs and treaties.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| We should be able to use the international patent system for
| that. Make it publically open to any single "citizen" any
| international corp seizing on it should have to pay patent
| fees to the general fund of the US treasury or something set
| up to feed it back into our government sponsored R&D
| programs.
| Test0129 wrote:
| I was thinking nationally but honestly there's nothing
| constitutionally that would prevent a non-citizen from
| accessing the research. I guess, aside from
| military/encryption research of course.
|
| I see no problem with publicly funded stuff being available
| world-wide. But given the choice between nothing or taxpayer
| only, the taxpayer should get first dibs.
| biomcgary wrote:
| Although I am generally supportive of research products
| (data, papers, reagents) being broadly open, I think there is
| the possibility of a perverse incentive to free-ride on the
| scientific funding of other nations. As the velocity of
| information (i.e., faster spread) and international mobility
| of academics increases, the perverse incentive goes up.
| mlindner wrote:
| > If one red cent of taxpayer money goes to it, the taxpayer
| should get it for free. Hopefully the trend continues.
|
| I wouldn't go this far. Part of the current revolution in the
| private space industry is precisely allowing companies to own
| products that were partially funded by taxpayer dollars. As it
| encourages companies to fund their own money into it, rather
| than simply relying 100% on government funding.
|
| Further if the government wants to encourage some industry, by
| using tax dollars to fund it they would instead destroy that
| industry. Many companies would end up simply refusing
| government grants because they know they could never profitably
| sell it if it would simply be copied. Or they would charge the
| government significantly more for the product.
|
| Now yes, if the research is done at federal centers that simply
| exist for research rather than creating products, yes
| absolutely put it out for free immediately, so that it can get
| into products faster.
| briffle wrote:
| Yep, that is how the Chinese government and industry has
| gotten so far ahead in Flow Batteries:
| https://www.opb.org/article/2022/08/03/the-u-s-made-a-
| breakt...
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the US doesn't need a revolution in the
| federal government subsidizing private business ventures.
| We've got more than enough of that already. The idea of
| federal funding being verboten in the corporate world is more
| akin to an ideal state, rather than one to be avoided.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I feel the same about NIH funded research and development in
| the medical space.
| hyperbovine wrote:
| NIH-funded research goes up on PubMed Central within 12
| months of publication:
|
| https://www.nih.gov/health-information/nih-clinical-
| research...
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I meant with regard to the ability for anyone to use it
| without, say, violating patents. Plenty of drugs discovered
| and developed with NIH money go on to be patented by
| private companies.
| hyperbovine wrote:
| When was this? The NSF has had a 12-month open access policy in
| place for almost a decade now:
| https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2016/nsf16009/nsf16009.jsp#q1
| andrewon wrote:
| They should do the same for patent. I see companies and now
| universities freely take tax payer money to develop their own
| products. It just becomes an additional source of funding with
| little string attached.
|
| It's fine to use tax dollar if there's potential for public good,
| but the tech developed should be released to the public domain
| right away. I have seen a selfless act from an academic group
| making decision not to patent a technology because they felt its
| an important one that many other things can be built on. Now tens
| of companies were started based on that tech and counting. I hope
| our gov understand how much value can be unlocked by public
| domain technology.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| So, we don't have to pay for the access, great.
|
| But searching for and collating all these tens of thousands of
| papers in each federal repository will have to be done...
| manually... by every researcher.
|
| .....Oh. You wanted search? You wanted indexing? You wanted a
| centrally managed service to pull from all those different
| federal repositories? Well, you're gonna need a company to
| develop all that and run it. You can use it for a subscription
| fee. That just happens to be the same cost as access to journals.
| Or if you're lucky, subsidized by ads for Subway and Nike.
|
| There is no such thing as a free lunch, people.
| hedora wrote:
| Shh!!! if someone at Usenix finds out, the entire organization
| will disappear in a puff of logic!
| aaaaaaaaata wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Sci-Hub is still illegal. If they made a completely separate
| legal entity that respected copyright, sure, something like
| that could work. Until that happens, the choice will be "do
| everything manually" or "break the law", and I don't think a
| whole lot of universities or corporations will be condoning
| the latter.
| pksebben wrote:
| perhaps the law needs to change.
|
| There's also more interests in the world than corporations
| and universities. an organizational Monopoly on ideas is
| dangerous - it stifles innovation and destroys competition.
| k099 wrote:
| USG already publishes a ton of free data, like weather and
| maps. The ecosystem of repackaging and building improved
| services seems to be working fine because it opens up a broad
| range of competitive options, not a paid embargo to a few.
| ml_basics wrote:
| As someone in the ML community where arxiv rules supreme, I
| really do not understand why other communities do not also have
| something similar.
|
| I get that there are some perverse incentives around, but there
| is a relatively straightforward solution to all of the problems
| with journals - just publish your work on the internet first so
| that it's out in the open, then send it to some journal who can
| make money from your hard work without adding any value, if you
| still want to.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| The humanities are weird, people write and defend their PhD and
| then they can keep their _PhD thesis_ confidential _for
| years_!?
|
| The theory seems to be that the thesis doesn't count as a
| publication so you must keep it secret while they turn it into
| papers/book??
| derbOac wrote:
| There are similar things in other fields, but I think formal
| peer review still supercedes them, at least as it's perceived.
| Things are changing though.
|
| I do think unless there are some significant changes to the
| system there will be some tipping point where journals will
| start being ignored but I'm not sure how that will occur.
| aaaaaaaaata wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub
| Undercouves wrote:
| I have a friend in economy, which is also a very clossed field
| with respect to publishing research, and he said that doing so
| might result in legal action taken against you, or pressure at
| the least.
|
| That said, I'm in physics and everybody publishes on the ArXiv,
| either before or after submiting to the journal. From what I
| see (thanks to SciHub) the information on either of them is the
| same, except when there is an update it usually is only
| submited to the ArXiv.
| nojito wrote:
| Awesome!
|
| Now do patents.
| franciscojgo wrote:
| At last. I genuinely believe there should be classes in high
| school teaching how to read papers as well.
|
| Around COVID, I'm sure +90% of the population relied on online
| news sources giving their click-bait-y interpretation of studies.
| (if at all read, perhaps just the abstract)
| notacop31337 wrote:
| I love this idea, maybe we can put it alongside the taxation
| class along with all the other shit that should be taught to
| create sensible, well adjusted humans.
| dcroley wrote:
| About damn time.
| gigatexal wrote:
| I 100% support this. This should happen. Tax payers paid it. Let
| me have it all. F the middle men companies making a killing being
| gatekeepers. Screw 'em
| xor99 wrote:
| Open source and replicable studies means going back to the
| fundamentals of the scientific method so this is a good step. I
| would love to see more peer-to-peer peer review technologies and
| websites developed though. There really is no reason to have
| publishing intermediaries in most cases. For example, many
| conferences and proceedings are essentially run by associations
| and societies etc.
| songeater wrote:
| Isn't this a big deal? Anyone have stats on how many research
| papers (esp in fields like healthcare etc) have some federal
| funding? Would funding received from a university/college (most
| of whom receive federal funding in turn) also qualify?
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