4 ms·

Everytime something like this comes up I feel compelled to remind everyone that in most cases I know of (NSF and NIH funded research) US taxpayer funded researc

Everytime something like this comes up I feel compelled to remind everyone that in most cases I know of (NSF and NIH funded research) US taxpayer funded research must be made freely available. See https://publicaccess.nih.gov/ https://publicaccess.nih.gov/ and https://www.research.gov/research-portal/appmanager/base/desktop?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=research_node_display&_nodePath=/researchGov/Service/Desktop/AboutPublicAccess.html https://www.research.gov/research-portal/appmanager/base/des... . Don't get me wrong, I think the current publishing model is archiac, exploitative, and needs to change, but this whole "taxpayer funded research should be freely available argument" seems to me to oversimplify the issue and ignore the facts.

freeone3000 8y ago
Mostly papers are thrown up on arxiv. I don't see why we should have to pay to host our own papers when we could just host our own papers. Seriously, three grand? How many months of AWS S3 does that pay for?
- stilley2 8y ago
  In my experience those high fees usually only apply when publishing open access. In our lab we publish using the free closed access method, and then a free version goes on PubMed (potentially after an embargo). So the research is available for free, the lab still gets the journal prestige, and it doesn't cost the lab anything. This is by no means a perfect system, but it's not as dire as a lot of these articles want us to think.
  - Vinnl 8y ago
    Unfortunately, it does cost your institution a lot, in terms of the subscription to that journal.
- Moter8 8y ago
  It's not the hosting, but the publication process, I think. I am not involved in this stuff, just read quite some posts on StackExchange Academia.
- cossatot 8y ago
  Only math/physics/CS papers are put on arxiv. These are a small fraction of the total academic and industrial research output. In my own field, earth science, there is an arxiv-clone (eartharxiv.org) that is a few months old. I bet the majority of earth scientists (and certainly 90% of geologists) have never heard of arxiv. Furthermore, many people just put pre-prints on arxiv etc. and don't update after peer review. Peer review is painful at best and quite flawed but the median paper is actually better after it, and many papers rightly don't make it through. Having open-access curated journals makes a lot of this better.
- Vinnl 8y ago
  Because as a researcher, you're not paying to have your papers hosted or even to have the feedback process facilitated, but you're paying so you can say your articles have been published in <journal x>, which helps you when applying for grants or tenure.
aeorgnoieang 8y ago
Are you claiming that most research is already freely available and yet everyone is, for some unspecified reason, still paying publishers for an extraneous service? The NIH site links right to PubMed Central from which it seems like it'd be 'easy' to find a paper for which I know the title. None of the pages on the NSF site ever seemed to be intended for someone that's not contributing to the 'public access repository'. Would you demonstrate your claim and provide a link, for an article published in Nature, to the same freely available version that "must be made"? It seems pretty fantastic that libraries would spend taxpayer money for access to journals containing papers that are already freely available. I'm very confused why that would be.
- gowld 8y ago
  Can you give an example of a publicly-funded paper that you couldn't find on PubMed or another server, but a Nature or another closed journal offers for sale?
  - aeorgnoieang 8y ago
    No. I usually assume that a paywalled article is just not (legitimately) available for free. But for the last paper I did want to read, I was able to find a free version.
  - cjlars 8y ago
    I don't have the time to dig up an example, but it is a fairly common problem to run into. I went through the exercise of reviewing everything I could find related to a relatively specific business problem (marketing attribution) a few years ago and there were several papers that were locked behind a paywall without a free version available.
  - nonbel 8y ago
    Sure, go to Nature Medicine: https://www.nature.com/nm/ https://www.nature.com/nm/ Click the first research article they show. It has various public funding sources: "The collection of the ELC and genetic data for the American samples was supported by direct funding from the Intramural Research Program of the NIMH to the Clinical Brain Disorders Branch (D.R.W., PI, protocol 95-M-0150, NCT00001486, annual report number: ZIA MH002942-05), with supplemental analytic support from the Clinical and Translational Neuroscience Branch (K.F.B., PI). G.U. received partial support from P50MH094268." https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-018-0021-y https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-018-0021-y Check that other site: https://par.nsf.gov/search/term:%22Convergence%20of%20placenta%20biology%20and%20genetic%20risk%20for%20schizophrenia%22 https://par.nsf.gov/search/term:%22Convergence%20of%20placen...
jly 8y ago
This is true, but with a couple huge caveats. NIH-funded papers published before April 7, 2008 are not applicable to the public access requirements. Research published using NSF grant proposals submitted before Jan 25, 2016 is also exempt. This encompasses the vast majority of all existing NIH and NSF-funded work, and includes many yet-to-be-published NSF papers. In addition, NSF-funded research does not need to be made public access until a full 12 months after initial journal publication.
Vinnl 8y ago
Unfortunately, the issue is really complicated, yet almost everyone who learns more about it will come to the conclusion that the current publishing model is ridiculous. Simplification is an effective way to introduce the issue, and in this case doesn't even lead people to conclusions they wouldn't otherwise arrive at. Ideally, of course, we'd never have to simplify, but that's life.

freeone3000 8y ago

Mostly papers are thrown up on arxiv. I don't see why we should have to pay to host our own papers when we could just host our own papers. Seriously, three grand? How many months of AWS S3 does that pay for?

stilley2 8y ago
In my experience those high fees usually only apply when publishing open access. In our lab we publish using the free closed access method, and then a free version goes on PubMed (potentially after an embargo). So the research is available for free, the lab still gets the journal prestige, and it doesn't cost the lab anything. This is by no means a perfect system, but it's not as dire as a lot of these articles want us to think.
- Vinnl 8y ago
  Unfortunately, it does cost your institution a lot, in terms of the subscription to that journal.
Moter8 8y ago
It's not the hosting, but the publication process, I think. I am not involved in this stuff, just read quite some posts on StackExchange Academia.
cossatot 8y ago
Only math/physics/CS papers are put on arxiv. These are a small fraction of the total academic and industrial research output. In my own field, earth science, there is an arxiv-clone (eartharxiv.org) that is a few months old. I bet the majority of earth scientists (and certainly 90% of geologists) have never heard of arxiv. Furthermore, many people just put pre-prints on arxiv etc. and don't update after peer review. Peer review is painful at best and quite flawed but the median paper is actually better after it, and many papers rightly don't make it through. Having open-access curated journals makes a lot of this better.
Vinnl 8y ago
Because as a researcher, you're not paying to have your papers hosted or even to have the feedback process facilitated, but you're paying so you can say your articles have been published in <journal x>, which helps you when applying for grants or tenure.

aeorgnoieang 8y ago

Are you claiming that most research is already freely available and yet everyone is, for some unspecified reason, still paying publishers for an extraneous service? The NIH site links right to PubMed Central from which it seems like it'd be 'easy' to find a paper for which I know the title. None of the pages on the NSF site ever seemed to be intended for someone that's not contributing to the 'public access repository'. Would you demonstrate your claim and provide a link, for an article published in Nature, to the same freely available version that "must be made"? It seems pretty fantastic that libraries would spend taxpayer money for access to journals containing papers that are already freely available. I'm very confused why that would be.

gowld 8y ago
Can you give an example of a publicly-funded paper that you couldn't find on PubMed or another server, but a Nature or another closed journal offers for sale?
- aeorgnoieang 8y ago
  No. I usually assume that a paywalled article is just not (legitimately) available for free. But for the last paper I did want to read, I was able to find a free version.
- cjlars 8y ago
  I don't have the time to dig up an example, but it is a fairly common problem to run into. I went through the exercise of reviewing everything I could find related to a relatively specific business problem (marketing attribution) a few years ago and there were several papers that were locked behind a paywall without a free version available.
- nonbel 8y ago
  Sure, go to Nature Medicine: https://www.nature.com/nm/ https://www.nature.com/nm/ Click the first research article they show. It has various public funding sources: "The collection of the ELC and genetic data for the American samples was supported by direct funding from the Intramural Research Program of the NIMH to the Clinical Brain Disorders Branch (D.R.W., PI, protocol 95-M-0150, NCT00001486, annual report number: ZIA MH002942-05), with supplemental analytic support from the Clinical and Translational Neuroscience Branch (K.F.B., PI). G.U. received partial support from P50MH094268." https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-018-0021-y https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-018-0021-y Check that other site: https://par.nsf.gov/search/term:%22Convergence%20of%20placenta%20biology%20and%20genetic%20risk%20for%20schizophrenia%22 https://par.nsf.gov/search/term:%22Convergence%20of%20placen...

jly 8y ago

This is true, but with a couple huge caveats. NIH-funded papers published before April 7, 2008 are not applicable to the public access requirements. Research published using NSF grant proposals submitted before Jan 25, 2016 is also exempt. This encompasses the vast majority of all existing NIH and NSF-funded work, and includes many yet-to-be-published NSF papers. In addition, NSF-funded research does not need to be made public access until a full 12 months after initial journal publication.

Vinnl 8y ago

Unfortunately, the issue is really complicated, yet almost everyone who learns more about it will come to the conclusion that the current publishing model is ridiculous. Simplification is an effective way to introduce the issue, and in this case doesn't even lead people to conclusions they wouldn't otherwise arrive at. Ideally, of course, we'd never have to simplify, but that's life.