4 ms·

Cannot do that - too much classified work :) Also, some places where funding matches are used to bring stuff to fruition would lose significant funding from bo

Cannot do that - too much classified work :) Also, some places where funding matches are used to bring stuff to fruition would lose significant funding from both sides: private would not in many cases invest where the results would be given away for free, and govt could not invest or match to help bring things to market. For example the SBIR program would face significant problems, and it's responsible for a lot of good research and products. DARPA stuff would face the same issues. Or, to keep such stuff not public, groups that currently publish would simply not publish in order to get funding to continue working. Then the public again loses access to knowledge. Also, there is no such thing as zero cost - someone is going to have to pay to make such materials available - and that cost (even though small) will likely be borne by the taxpayers. For example, arxiv costs a few million a year to run. Such solutions are unlikely to yield the results you want.

oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago
It seems like copyleft is a solution to that sort of problem in the software domain but obviously not really in this context. Another issue is that animal researchers are at risk of being targeted by a smear campaign by anti-animal research groups as they often take advantage of sunshine laws to cherry pick less than flattering footage. This has led to a weird culture of where scientists are very hesitant to share any data with other scientists at public universities.
throwaway81523 6y ago
Simple fix: anything govt funded that's published (say in a journal) must be made open access. Anything that's not published is not affected. This deal doesn't sound so great for UC. It doesn't appear to apply to the traditional closed journals which includes most of the high prestige ones. UC was doing fine with no active subscriptions, per a thread a few days ago.
- kkylin 6y ago
  Not arguing with your broader point, but the passage quoted above lists all Cell Press & Lancet journals. These would include, e.g., Cell, Neuron, etc., which are top-tier journals in their respective fields.
rfrey 6y ago
Funding institutions wouldn't match grants because the resulting paper was available for free rather than by paying $50 to a publisher?
- ChrisLomont 6y ago
  Not all scientific papers become public. The OP wants to make them so. So in cases where the resulting papers would be classified or in proprietary publications these could no longer touch public money, no matter how small. This affects every part of the research process. Buy an electron microscope with $1 of govt money and 1m of private, then can this be used for any research that is not 100% freely given to the public? The cross contamination problems would be a nightmare. It's a terrible proposal.
  - mannerheim 6y ago
    It works for NIH already. Don't like it, don't take the money.
    - ChrisLomont 6y ago
      PubMed costs a few hundred million a year to run, paid for by taxpayers. If you want us to just pay all journals to run directly from taxes, that's one solution. Then Elsevier can cut out the middleman. If you don't want taxpayers paying publishers directly, then your solution will result in a lot less publications. I'm not sure either is going to be a better solution for society.
      - mannerheim 6y ago
        I'm not sure where you're getting these figures from. > PubMed Central (PMC) costs US taxpayers about $4.45 million per year to run, according to documents recently obtained by an ongoing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2013/07/16/the-price-of-posting-pubmed-central-spends-most-of-its-budget-handling-author-manuscripts/ https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2013/07/16/the-price-of-... The National Library of Medicine's entire budget is $341 million, and they have brick and mortar buildings to maintain and many other responsibilities - there's no way that almost their entire budget would go to paying for PubMed.
ta988 6y ago
The US is probably one of the countries that declassify the most though. Try to get a European country or China to do that.
ta988 6y ago
For those interested: financial reports of arxiv https://arxiv.org/about/reports-financials https://arxiv.org/about/reports-financials
ta988 6y ago
I don't think anybody wants to make confidential info open here. We are talking about things that end up in publishers hands not trade secrets, defense or what else. DARPA funds a ton of open research too. I find your comment a bit misleading here.

oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago

It seems like copyleft is a solution to that sort of problem in the software domain but obviously not really in this context. Another issue is that animal researchers are at risk of being targeted by a smear campaign by anti-animal research groups as they often take advantage of sunshine laws to cherry pick less than flattering footage. This has led to a weird culture of where scientists are very hesitant to share any data with other scientists at public universities.

throwaway81523 6y ago

Simple fix: anything govt funded that's published (say in a journal) must be made open access. Anything that's not published is not affected. This deal doesn't sound so great for UC. It doesn't appear to apply to the traditional closed journals which includes most of the high prestige ones. UC was doing fine with no active subscriptions, per a thread a few days ago.

kkylin 6y ago
Not arguing with your broader point, but the passage quoted above lists all Cell Press & Lancet journals. These would include, e.g., Cell, Neuron, etc., which are top-tier journals in their respective fields.

rfrey 6y ago

Funding institutions wouldn't match grants because the resulting paper was available for free rather than by paying $50 to a publisher?

ChrisLomont 6y ago
Not all scientific papers become public. The OP wants to make them so. So in cases where the resulting papers would be classified or in proprietary publications these could no longer touch public money, no matter how small. This affects every part of the research process. Buy an electron microscope with $1 of govt money and 1m of private, then can this be used for any research that is not 100% freely given to the public? The cross contamination problems would be a nightmare. It's a terrible proposal.
- mannerheim 6y ago
  It works for NIH already. Don't like it, don't take the money.
  - ChrisLomont 6y ago
    PubMed costs a few hundred million a year to run, paid for by taxpayers. If you want us to just pay all journals to run directly from taxes, that's one solution. Then Elsevier can cut out the middleman. If you don't want taxpayers paying publishers directly, then your solution will result in a lot less publications. I'm not sure either is going to be a better solution for society.
    - mannerheim 6y ago
      I'm not sure where you're getting these figures from. > PubMed Central (PMC) costs US taxpayers about $4.45 million per year to run, according to documents recently obtained by an ongoing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2013/07/16/the-price-of-posting-pubmed-central-spends-most-of-its-budget-handling-author-manuscripts/ https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2013/07/16/the-price-of-... The National Library of Medicine's entire budget is $341 million, and they have brick and mortar buildings to maintain and many other responsibilities - there's no way that almost their entire budget would go to paying for PubMed.

ta988 6y ago

The US is probably one of the countries that declassify the most though. Try to get a European country or China to do that.

ta988 6y ago

For those interested: financial reports of arxiv https://arxiv.org/about/reports-financials https://arxiv.org/about/reports-financials

ta988 6y ago

I don't think anybody wants to make confidential info open here. We are talking about things that end up in publishers hands not trade secrets, defense or what else. DARPA funds a ton of open research too. I find your comment a bit misleading here.