5 ms·

"Stealing" in the sense of depriving you access to the documents should be prohibited, but I see no problem if someone requested you immediately copy all of you

"Stealing" in the sense of depriving you access to the documents should be prohibited, but I see no problem if someone requested you immediately copy all of your research. In fact this is exactly the case with anyone working directly for the federal government, doing research or otherwise. You're told in no uncertain terms that at any moment information on your work laptop can be FOIA'd in which case you will have to immediately hand over the contents of your hard drive (if it has been determined there is a reasonable likelihood that it contains the FOIA'd information). Obviously if you're working on classified state secrets the process is different (also personal information is redacted from the documents). There's no reason research can't be accomplished successfully given the condition that the public has a right to that information at any given moment.

erikpukinskis 14y ago
> I see no problem if someone requested you immediately copy all of your research. Academia can be extremely competitive. Like, if a competing lab got ahold even of the title of your upcoming paper, they would and do rush to duplicate your results, and try to publish before you to get the scoop. For that reason, I don't know if open access to everyone's hard drives would work.
- cwkoss 14y ago
  I'd say "too bad" for slow researchers. If someone can reproduce your results and publish a quality paper before you, that is better for society. Nobody gets to "own" an idea. This possessiveness and reputational greed is what is causing all of these problems.
  - langarto 14y ago
    In my experience as a researcher, this competitiveness and haste to publish leads very frequently to lower quality in the research. For a researcher's career is often more profitable to quickly publish a half-baked paper than ensuring that everything is correct and well explained. This is a quite difficult problem to solve.
- kaonashi 14y ago
  Perhaps it should be more cooperative.

erikpukinskis 14y ago

> I see no problem if someone requested you immediately copy all of your research. Academia can be extremely competitive. Like, if a competing lab got ahold even of the title of your upcoming paper, they would and do rush to duplicate your results, and try to publish before you to get the scoop. For that reason, I don't know if open access to everyone's hard drives would work.

cwkoss 14y ago
I'd say "too bad" for slow researchers. If someone can reproduce your results and publish a quality paper before you, that is better for society. Nobody gets to "own" an idea. This possessiveness and reputational greed is what is causing all of these problems.
- langarto 14y ago
  In my experience as a researcher, this competitiveness and haste to publish leads very frequently to lower quality in the research. For a researcher's career is often more profitable to quickly publish a half-baked paper than ensuring that everything is correct and well explained. This is a quite difficult problem to solve.
kaonashi 14y ago
Perhaps it should be more cooperative.