4 ms·

I totally get that researchers' incentives are not aligned toward publishing it, so no need to explain that further. There are costs and downsides and probably

by jcrites 10y ago

I totally get that researchers' incentives are not aligned toward publishing it, so no need to explain that further. There are costs and downsides and probably not enough benefit to them. That's fine. Everyone works within their system of incentives. If it's paid for by public dollars, then the code and data belong in the public domain eventually. I understand there are exceptions like hospital data affected by patient confidentiality - that's fine. However the code released by that researcher should be capable of reproducing their results with that data set plugged in (such as by someone else who has access to it). As a taxpayer, my concern for publicly funded research is maximizing benefit to the public good. I understand your point about follow-on research, and I'm not saying that I'd expect the code and data to be made available immediately with publication, but that deserves to be the case some reasonable time afterward (like a year). I understand that researchers' incentives are not necessarily aligned toward making it public; I am saying that people who fund research (including taxpayers through the political process) should require and expect it. Keeping it private indefinitely is a degree of self-centeredness that does not strike an appropriate balance between benefit to the researcher and to the public in my opinion.

aub3bhat 10y ago
I never understood the meme about "public funding" translating into "public domain". Just because research is "publicly funded", does not means that the "public" owns it or even has a right to ownership. Public education is publicly funded does not means that government can ask for every drawing drawn by 9 year old in classroom to be in the public domain :) . In fact its actually opposite (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh%E2%80%93Dole_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh%E2%80%93Dole_Act), given that Universities can and do patent inventions from publicly funded research. Further funding arrangements themselves are very complex, a professor typically procures funding from University, NSF, NIH, private companies, donors etc. In such cases if NSF adopts a hard line approach that any research touching its dollars ought to release code under say GPL, it would make it impossible to collaborate. Finally all requirements aside, one can always release intentionally poorly written code in form of MatLab .m and compiled mex files. I have observed several such cases, where the code can demonstrate a concept but is intentionally crippled. Finally graduate students, graduate and are paid for doing research which is publishing/presenting papers at peer reviewed conferences and journals. If what funding agencies really seek is ready made software they ought to fund / pay at the same level as software developers (as many companies do).
- jcrites 10y ago
  > Just because research is "publicly funded", does not means that the "public" owns it or even has a right to ownership. I didn't make the argument that the public owns it or has a right to ownership, though I suppose that some people might and so I can see why you would touch on that point. I would describe my view as like this: public funding is subject to the political process, and voting by taxpayers (directly or indirectly through voting of politicians or their appointees). As a taxpayer, I prefer to make public domain publication a requirement of publicly funded research, and I think every taxpayer should too. I consider the goal of public funding of science to be the benefit of public good, and believe that public good will best be served by public domain publication of all data, code, and analysis methods. (Whew, there's a lot of "pub" and "public" in there!) One might reach my position by working backwards from, "Why do we as taxpayers agree to fund science with government money?" It's certainly not to give researchers prestige or jobs! (Those may be necessary parts of achieving public good, but they're not the goal which is the public good, and if they're in tension with public good then the public good probably needs to win.) I don't seek ready made software; not at all. I only seek adequate disclosure of data and analysis methods sufficient for others to easily verify it and build on it. See for example the attempt at replication in http://www.peri.umass.edu/236/hash/31e2ff374b6377b2ddec04deaa6388b1/publication/566/ http://www.peri.umass.edu/236/hash/31e2ff374b6377b2ddec04dea... > In such cases if NSF adopts a hard line approach that any research touching its dollars ought to release code under say GPL, it would make it impossible to collaborate. I will need to think more about this issue. I might be willing to accept the downside as a taxpayer. I'm not sure I understand it well enough what the friction would be to collaboration at the moment. If you're referring to the GPL specifically, then yes I agree that's probably the wrong license - public domain would be more appropriate. I would be OK if this was simply an electronic log of the data as well as all machine commands that have been run on it - something that is recorded automatically by the operating environment. I am truly not looking for "working production code". But, those sequence of commands should be reproducible if someone "replays" them; a verifiable digital journal. Publishing an article that's difficult-to-reproduce feels like producing the least possible public good while still getting credit. Publishing an article that's fully and automatically reproducible, because it contains references to all of the data and code that yield the results as an executable virtual machine with source code, provides the maximum public good, and that's what I want science funded with public money (and ultimately all science) to work toward. (I realize that this is just like, my opinion man :)

by jcrites 10y ago

aub3bhat 10y ago

I never understood the meme about "public funding" translating into "public domain". Just because research is "publicly funded", does not means that the "public" owns it or even has a right to ownership. Public education is publicly funded does not means that government can ask for every drawing drawn by 9 year old in classroom to be in the public domain :) . In fact its actually opposite (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh%E2%80%93Dole_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh%E2%80%93Dole_Act), given that Universities can and do patent inventions from publicly funded research. Further funding arrangements themselves are very complex, a professor typically procures funding from University, NSF, NIH, private companies, donors etc. In such cases if NSF adopts a hard line approach that any research touching its dollars ought to release code under say GPL, it would make it impossible to collaborate. Finally all requirements aside, one can always release intentionally poorly written code in form of MatLab .m and compiled mex files. I have observed several such cases, where the code can demonstrate a concept but is intentionally crippled. Finally graduate students, graduate and are paid for doing research which is publishing/presenting papers at peer reviewed conferences and journals. If what funding agencies really seek is ready made software they ought to fund / pay at the same level as software developers (as many companies do).

jcrites 10y ago
> Just because research is "publicly funded", does not means that the "public" owns it or even has a right to ownership. I didn't make the argument that the public owns it or has a right to ownership, though I suppose that some people might and so I can see why you would touch on that point. I would describe my view as like this: public funding is subject to the political process, and voting by taxpayers (directly or indirectly through voting of politicians or their appointees). As a taxpayer, I prefer to make public domain publication a requirement of publicly funded research, and I think every taxpayer should too. I consider the goal of public funding of science to be the benefit of public good, and believe that public good will best be served by public domain publication of all data, code, and analysis methods. (Whew, there's a lot of "pub" and "public" in there!) One might reach my position by working backwards from, "Why do we as taxpayers agree to fund science with government money?" It's certainly not to give researchers prestige or jobs! (Those may be necessary parts of achieving public good, but they're not the goal which is the public good, and if they're in tension with public good then the public good probably needs to win.) I don't seek ready made software; not at all. I only seek adequate disclosure of data and analysis methods sufficient for others to easily verify it and build on it. See for example the attempt at replication in http://www.peri.umass.edu/236/hash/31e2ff374b6377b2ddec04deaa6388b1/publication/566/ http://www.peri.umass.edu/236/hash/31e2ff374b6377b2ddec04dea... > In such cases if NSF adopts a hard line approach that any research touching its dollars ought to release code under say GPL, it would make it impossible to collaborate. I will need to think more about this issue. I might be willing to accept the downside as a taxpayer. I'm not sure I understand it well enough what the friction would be to collaboration at the moment. If you're referring to the GPL specifically, then yes I agree that's probably the wrong license - public domain would be more appropriate. I would be OK if this was simply an electronic log of the data as well as all machine commands that have been run on it - something that is recorded automatically by the operating environment. I am truly not looking for "working production code". But, those sequence of commands should be reproducible if someone "replays" them; a verifiable digital journal. Publishing an article that's difficult-to-reproduce feels like producing the least possible public good while still getting credit. Publishing an article that's fully and automatically reproducible, because it contains references to all of the data and code that yield the results as an executable virtual machine with source code, provides the maximum public good, and that's what I want science funded with public money (and ultimately all science) to work toward. (I realize that this is just like, my opinion man :)