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If the up-front cost of producing the first instance of the product is paid by society, as is often the case with the type of work published in Elsevier journal
by octotod 14y ago
If the up-front cost of producing the first instance of the product is paid by society, as is often the case with the type of work published in Elsevier journals, than it does seem fair to distribute the product back to members of the funding society at the marginal cost (which is not quite zero, as hosting, editing, and curating do have costs).
The analogy can be made between scientific funding body and investor, where an investor expects a return on their investment. In this version of reality, the funding body would encourage distribution of the product at supra-marginal cost, with some percentage of that cost funneled back to the funder. This situation is rare in science, i.e. a journal company paying the NSF royalties on subscriptions whose content was paid for by the NSF.
- rayiner 14y agoIt's not really fair to say that the up front costs are paid by society. First, roughly half of university R&D budgets come from government funding. Second, even if the development of a product is fully funded by government money does not mean the government has fully paid for the result. E.g. say the government gives me a $1 million grant to pay the costs of developing some military technology. As part of the bargain, I get to keep any commercialization rights. Should the resulting technology be free to the public? No. Nobody sane works simply to cover their costs. The commercialization rights are my profit in the arrangement. If I had known that they would be rendered useless by the government giving away the resulting technology, I wouldn't have settled for a grant that simply covered my costs--I would have bargained for costs + profit.