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This is one of those things that for the life of me I don't understand why we have to petition our government. Why in the heck wouldn't you set it up this way t

This is one of those things that for the life of me I don't understand why we have to petition our government. Why in the heck wouldn't you set it up this way to begin with?

mayneack 14y ago
Because before you set it up, you don't know there's a problem. Sure, you can say that everyone should get access to the research from the start, but when the framework for federal grants started, the cost of distributing journals was tied to shipping physical copies. No one had to think about whether or not you could legally share it because you had a much higher barrier in the logistics of sharing it. Now those things are still around through organizational inertia. The companies that existed to fill the (necessary) service of printing and shipping all these things don't want to become obsolete. It's not a good reason to keep it around, but it's why you need more than zero effort to change.
- icelancer 14y ago
  I agree. It's not an unreasonable thing to have to bring to the government's attention considering how quickly technology allowed for these advancements to occur. It is ridiculous that the response is taking forever and that they sought time to tell people why the death star isn't going to be built.
  - csense 14y ago
    > they sought time to tell people why the death star isn't going to be built. There is no political fallout from refusing to build a death star. The Republican Party's rapid backpedaling after publishing a memo outlining what many HN'ers consider a reasonable policy stance on copyright -- to the extent of firing the staffer who prepared it, never mind that it appears he got permission from the appropriate party channels to publish it as a policy document -- show that the copyright lobby has on its side some of the finest politicians that money can buy.
rayiner 14y ago
Because the article title is misleading. Purely publicly-funded research is freely available (e.g. NASA reports). What's at issue are e.g. papers written pursuant to research that is the subject of public funds, but by research teams who are otherwise employed by a university or research lab. In that case, the resulting paper isn't purely a product of public funding, so it's not obvious it should automatically be freely accessible. Also, these papers are generally the result of editing/publication processes by journals. The government isn't paying for those papers to be edited and published.
- rflrob 14y ago
  To some extent, they are though. Most peer reviewers are not paid for their time; instead, they are largely federally-funded academics. The journals have an incredible racket: they don't pay for their raw inputs, and they get a lot of their value-added for free as well. Since there's been a large shift away from the dead-tree versions being critical for researchers, the cost of transporting bits is a lot lower than stacks of paper.

This is one of those things that for the life of me I don't understand why we have to petition our government. Why in the heck wouldn't you set it up this way to begin with?

mayneack 14y ago

Because before you set it up, you don't know there's a problem. Sure, you can say that everyone should get access to the research from the start, but when the framework for federal grants started, the cost of distributing journals was tied to shipping physical copies. No one had to think about whether or not you could legally share it because you had a much higher barrier in the logistics of sharing it. Now those things are still around through organizational inertia. The companies that existed to fill the (necessary) service of printing and shipping all these things don't want to become obsolete. It's not a good reason to keep it around, but it's why you need more than zero effort to change.

icelancer 14y ago
I agree. It's not an unreasonable thing to have to bring to the government's attention considering how quickly technology allowed for these advancements to occur. It is ridiculous that the response is taking forever and that they sought time to tell people why the death star isn't going to be built.
- csense 14y ago
  > they sought time to tell people why the death star isn't going to be built. There is no political fallout from refusing to build a death star. The Republican Party's rapid backpedaling after publishing a memo outlining what many HN'ers consider a reasonable policy stance on copyright -- to the extent of firing the staffer who prepared it, never mind that it appears he got permission from the appropriate party channels to publish it as a policy document -- show that the copyright lobby has on its side some of the finest politicians that money can buy.

rayiner 14y ago

Because the article title is misleading. Purely publicly-funded research is freely available (e.g. NASA reports). What's at issue are e.g. papers written pursuant to research that is the subject of public funds, but by research teams who are otherwise employed by a university or research lab. In that case, the resulting paper isn't purely a product of public funding, so it's not obvious it should automatically be freely accessible. Also, these papers are generally the result of editing/publication processes by journals. The government isn't paying for those papers to be edited and published.

rflrob 14y ago
To some extent, they are though. Most peer reviewers are not paid for their time; instead, they are largely federally-funded academics. The journals have an incredible racket: they don't pay for their raw inputs, and they get a lot of their value-added for free as well. Since there's been a large shift away from the dead-tree versions being critical for researchers, the cost of transporting bits is a lot lower than stacks of paper.