10 ms·

Totally agree. I'd go even further and make free licenses on scientific source and datasets mandatory. Research that is funded by public money should lead to pu

by guaka 10y ago

Totally agree. I'd go even further and make free licenses on scientific source and datasets mandatory. Research that is funded by public money should lead to public code and data.

jeremysmyth 10y ago
What about defense research?
- zdkl 10y ago
  In that vein, what about {industrial|scientific|...} espionnage?
- amboar 10y ago
  Well, there's the GPL-styled approach: anyone with access to the results must also have access to the associated data. This doesn't mean it is mandatory to make it public, though you'd have to restrict the redistribution freedom.
  - wodenokoto 10y ago
    I recently used a large dataset of tweets in a research project. As far as I know, I do not have the rights to distribute these. I also used a dataset consisting of newspaper articles. It cost me $1.000 to get access to, and I definitely do not have the rights to redistribute it.
    - dagw 10y ago
      As long as you provide a detailed enough description of the source of your dataset that I can reproduce it myself then that is fine. So in your first case tell me what criteria you used to select your tweets and in the second tell me where to send my $1000 and what to ask for.
      - tnhh 10y ago
        Unfortunately not everyone reports this information. Here is a study that we did of over 500 papers using online social network data: http://tnhh.org/research/pubs/tetc2015.pdf http://tnhh.org/research/pubs/tetc2015.pdf While most authors would report high-level characteristics (e.g., which social network they measured), fewer authors reported how they sampled the network or collected data, and very few people reported on how they handled ethics, privacy and so forth.
dalke 10y ago
So, $1 of public funding triggers public code release? Or is there a threshold? No one has been able to tell me why the need for reproducibility requires software freedom. Consider the program 'nauty'. It is available in source code form for anyone to review, but it cannot be used for military purposes. That's not free, certainly. But isn't that enough to call it good science? Similarly, consider the clause "only for use in verifying the result of paper X". That's also not free. But it serves the goal of letting others be able to verify X. Also, you haven't gone far enough. It's not only the license that matters, but access. You have to mandate that either anyone can get access to the code for no/low cost for some years (since I can sell my GPL'ed software for $30,000 or take down the download link once published), or link publication with a required submission to some repository with the mission of keeping all that source and data around, available to anyone, at no cost.
- eru 10y ago
  > So, $1 of public funding triggers public code release? Or is there a threshold? Yes, 1$, no threshold necessary. For projects where the cost of publication of data is not worth the dollar, people will just not accept the dollar. (That's where a 'natural threshold' comes in.)
  - dalke 10y ago
    So, if I have a summer intern who is paid by the government, and helps on my otherwise non-government-funded project, then is that enough to trigger the requirement? Or, if I use a government facility, like a supercomputing center, then that also trigger the release requirement? Even if no money changes hands? What about a government network? It sounds very tricky. If I get a government grant to work on a project, and that grant buys equipment X, which I also use for another project, then must both projects be subject to this form of release? Even if the second project is 10 years later? If in working on project X, but in the process of working on X I find some new knowledge Y, and publish it, even though that has nothing to do with the grant from the original X, does that count? (Think AT&T's observation of the cosmic microwave background, when their goal was to reduce noise in terrestrial microwave communications.) It seems like a very complicated scheme.

by guaka 10y ago

Totally agree. I'd go even further and make free licenses on scientific source and datasets mandatory. Research that is funded by public money should lead to public code and data.

jeremysmyth 10y ago

What about defense research?

zdkl 10y ago
In that vein, what about {industrial|scientific|...} espionnage?
amboar 10y ago
Well, there's the GPL-styled approach: anyone with access to the results must also have access to the associated data. This doesn't mean it is mandatory to make it public, though you'd have to restrict the redistribution freedom.
- wodenokoto 10y ago
  I recently used a large dataset of tweets in a research project. As far as I know, I do not have the rights to distribute these. I also used a dataset consisting of newspaper articles. It cost me $1.000 to get access to, and I definitely do not have the rights to redistribute it.
  - dagw 10y ago
    As long as you provide a detailed enough description of the source of your dataset that I can reproduce it myself then that is fine. So in your first case tell me what criteria you used to select your tweets and in the second tell me where to send my $1000 and what to ask for.
    - tnhh 10y ago
      Unfortunately not everyone reports this information. Here is a study that we did of over 500 papers using online social network data: http://tnhh.org/research/pubs/tetc2015.pdf http://tnhh.org/research/pubs/tetc2015.pdf While most authors would report high-level characteristics (e.g., which social network they measured), fewer authors reported how they sampled the network or collected data, and very few people reported on how they handled ethics, privacy and so forth.

dalke 10y ago

So, $1 of public funding triggers public code release? Or is there a threshold? No one has been able to tell me why the need for reproducibility requires software freedom. Consider the program 'nauty'. It is available in source code form for anyone to review, but it cannot be used for military purposes. That's not free, certainly. But isn't that enough to call it good science? Similarly, consider the clause "only for use in verifying the result of paper X". That's also not free. But it serves the goal of letting others be able to verify X. Also, you haven't gone far enough. It's not only the license that matters, but access. You have to mandate that either anyone can get access to the code for no/low cost for some years (since I can sell my GPL'ed software for $30,000 or take down the download link once published), or link publication with a required submission to some repository with the mission of keeping all that source and data around, available to anyone, at no cost.

eru 10y ago
> So, $1 of public funding triggers public code release? Or is there a threshold? Yes, 1$, no threshold necessary. For projects where the cost of publication of data is not worth the dollar, people will just not accept the dollar. (That's where a 'natural threshold' comes in.)
- dalke 10y ago
  So, if I have a summer intern who is paid by the government, and helps on my otherwise non-government-funded project, then is that enough to trigger the requirement? Or, if I use a government facility, like a supercomputing center, then that also trigger the release requirement? Even if no money changes hands? What about a government network? It sounds very tricky. If I get a government grant to work on a project, and that grant buys equipment X, which I also use for another project, then must both projects be subject to this form of release? Even if the second project is 10 years later? If in working on project X, but in the process of working on X I find some new knowledge Y, and publish it, even though that has nothing to do with the grant from the original X, does that count? (Think AT&T's observation of the cosmic microwave background, when their goal was to reduce noise in terrestrial microwave communications.) It seems like a very complicated scheme.