7 ms·

Increasing Public Access to the Results of Scientific Research

217 points by ig1 14y ago

xaa 14y ago
As a scientist, it is so funny to read about the "valuable contributions that the scientific publishing industry provides". The scientific publishing industry does not write, review, or edit any of the content it publishes -- volunteer scientists do that. It literally takes a pre-formatted PDF or Word document and sticks it on a website, and maybe into a print edition. It charges multi-thousand dollar fees to authors to publish the articles, fees to institutions to access them, and still litters the website/journal with ads. And their profit margin is in the 40% area. This industry is an absolute scourge on human progress, and a 12-month embargo does not go nearly far enough. 12 months is an eternity in science. I will say that the publishing industry does do some very minor but useful things, like linkification of references, management of submitting the publication record to PubMed, etc. But the cost is exorbitant, and the government could provide these services for a fraction of the cost. Edit: Oh, and journal prices are rising much faster than the CPI. While at the same time most have reduced or eliminated a print edition, and increasingly require reformatting to be done by faculty. Hmm...
- brador 14y ago
  What's needed is a single day of coordinated action. Where all scientists and researchers move to free publications in one big move.
- return0 14y ago
  Google does a better job of cataloguing the journal records; i fear you are giving to the commercial publishers too much credit. I agree that their net contribution is negative and at this point they have become an impediment to scientific progress. The reasons they still exist is because they maintain an image of authority among scientists, and indirectly determine their career prospects (in the life sciences at least). This image is cultivated through marketing, lobbying, and vast connections to the mainstream press and media.
- ig1 14y ago
  Have you ever looked at the budget of an academic journal to see where the money goes ? The average journal profit margin is 20-30% and that's roughly the same whether you're talking about an open access journal like PLoS or a closed access one. They also have roughly the same operational (staff, etc.) costs. Most new journals tend to be run at a loss for a number of years being subsidised by the more successful ones. Marketing is another big cost, journals don't magically build reputations, they have marketing budgets to achieve mindshare and to establish a reputation. There are good reasons for open access, but lets not pretend that journals are cheaper to operate than they actually are.
  - xaa 14y ago
    I'd argue that the open-access model is not much better than the traditional model, because as you point out, it incurs basically the same expenses, but simply charges the author more to recoup the lost institutional subscription. Now that systems like ArXiV exist, researchers and taxpayers should not be paying for marketing and typography. But the real reason journals persist is because readers and promotion/tenure committees want a credibility filter. A really good technological solution to this problem hasn't been found (AFAIK), but I don't see that it would be too hard to build some algorithm to rank articles according to author prestige, institution prestige, number of citations, reader interest, etc. If people want a "hard" metric of article impact, they would be better off using number of citations than journal impact factor anyway.
    - rayiner 14y ago
      > A really good technological solution to this problem hasn't been found (AFAIK), but I don't see that it would be too hard to build some algorithm to rank articles according to author prestige, You're hand-waving away one the driving forces not only of the publishing industry, but much of the whole economy. Signals, filters, and branding account for the existence of everything from Louis Vuitton to hiring practices based on school prestige to Asian parents that push their kids to get into MIT. Signaling makes the world go around and you hand-wave it away by saying it shouldn't be hard to replace the branding with "some algorithm."
InvisibleCities 14y ago
>the need to ensure that the valuable contributions that the scientific publishing industry provides are not lost. Honestly, what value does the publishing industry provide? Search? Google, Microsoft Bing, and any number of other search providers could do that at the fraction of the cost. Peer review? No, that is performed by independent scientists, who are either not paid, or paid a negligible fee. Editing? Nope. Scientific journals are not edited for content or even proofread; I know a few professors who found that out the hard way after discovering typos in their own articles. Typesetting? OK. I'll give them that one. So, for the cost of thousands of dollars to the original researchers, on top of the outrageously high licensing fees paid by people who wish to read the articles, we get papers that have been typeset. Hoo boy, what a great deal.
- rayiner 14y ago
  > Honestly, what value does the publishing industry provide? Search? Google, Microsoft Bing, and any number of other search providers could do that at the fraction of the cost. You can't compare the curation you get in a proper journal to the shitsplatter of your typical search engine results. A very good example of how crappy search technology is for this sort of thing is to do legal research on Google Scholar versus Westlaw. The indexing, head notes, directories, and topical summaries you get from Westlaw make Google Scholar look like a toy. And why should we expect differently? We're comparing the product of human labor to the results of extremely primitive AI technology optimized not for research but for making sure that people can quickly find the latest celebrity nip slip photos.
  - MBlume 14y ago
    The curation is done by scientists volunteering their time to the journals. The publishers add nothing. They are parasites and deserve swift, merciless death.
    - rayiner 14y ago
      Volunteer scientists do not do the curation. They do editing and peer review, but they don't do the editorial work of deciding what articles are published, how they are presented, what's featured, etc.
ig1 14y ago
Why was the title changed ? - the new title removes the fact that this is the official government response to the open access petition and not just a discussion piece.
- mmanfrin 14y ago
  Exceptionally strict moderation policy. There have been many threads pushing back against objectively poor title edits, but the mods won't listen.
  - rikacomet 14y ago
    what is to mod, when it is 'actually' the official white house response!?
    - mmanfrin 14y ago
      The original title of this HN submission included 'Official Whitehouse Response'; HN mods changed it to something much less informative.
      - rikacomet 14y ago
        yes, I had read it before it was changed. I know the need of modding, been a mod myself elsewhere, but it has to have some grounds, unlike in this case. Would someone please fix this?
- anigbrowl 14y ago
  In fairness, the fact that it's from Whitehouse.gov pretty much tells you it's the official response. I don't disagree with your complaint though.
rikacomet 14y ago
I applaud this step, and the timeline given for effective action is pretty much justified as well. Though I'm having some doubts(naturally!) about: - the $100 million threshold -the overall implementation (lets see on Jan 1/July 1 next year) - the effective length of which excuses are held valid, and which are not. I feel the white house should take clear stand, and declare which research groups were excused and why. Then again, I must congratulate US govt on this. Something like this is ages away in my country.
ljd 14y ago
I had to read that twice... did a petition actually work? Regarding: "Federal agencies that directs those with more than $100 million in research and development expenditures to develop plans to make the results of federally-funded research publically available free of charge within 12 months after original publication" I really hope they do something easy like a REST/JSON API.
- bendmorris 14y ago
  What would be available via the API? I think this is referring to published papers becoming freely available after 12 months. I imagine the delivery will be identical to the way papers are delivered online now, but with the explicit 12-month open access mark.
- ewillbefull 14y ago
  > did a petition actually work No. Notice that this petition met its goal a year ago, and they never issued a response until now. It's more likely they were designing a plan and waited until they were done to respond to the petition.
  - chad_oliver 14y ago
    What's wrong with "designing a plan and [waiting] until they were done to respond to the petition"? That sounds like a very logical thing to do. Better to get a measured response that a populist response.
    - ewillbefull 14y ago
      There's nothing wrong with planning, just that likely the petition had nothing to do with their internal discourse over open access reform. Obama's advisers probably already had deliberations going on. "Hey, there's a petition for this! Let's wait until we're done and respond to the petition." I sure hope that this petition wasn't the only reason why they decided to issue these orders.
mmanfrin 14y ago
I feel like they missed the point of this petition. The decision is to make all federal agencies with $100mil+ research stipends publish findings, but this does nothing to change the Journal-Paywall system.
- price 14y ago
  No, it's much broader than to make the agencies publish the results of their own research -- they're to make sure the results of the research they fund is available. That covers the vast majority of scientific research in the United States. The journals might still have paywalls on their own sites, but what's the impact of a paywall when the exact same paper is on the open web where Google can index it? The allowance for a 12-month embargo is a bummer -- I'd rather research be available to the public immediately when it's published -- but there's a ton of research out there more than a year old, so this is a great advance. A sibling comment linked to Peter Suber's reaction: https://plus.google.com/109377556796183035206/posts/8hzviMJeVHJ https://plus.google.com/109377556796183035206/posts/8hzviMJe... Suber has been following this issue for a long time and written more about it than anyone, so his interpretation carries weight.
- rikacomet 14y ago
  care to explain please? the Journal-Paywall system?
  - mmanfrin 14y ago
    Research by individuals granted public grants is generally only published in scientific journals that cost thousands of dollars -- which means that normal people have a very difficult time of accessing research that they contributed (via taxes) to the funding of.
    - ig1 14y ago
      "make the results of federally-funded research publically available free of charge within 12 months after original publication."" Hence this research will have to be made available freely.
michael_nielsen 14y ago
The key language notes that the Whitehouse has "issued a memorandum today [...] to Federal agencies that directs those with more than $100 million in research and development expenditures to develop plans to make the results of federally-funded research publically available free of charge within 12 months after original publication." This suggestion is similar to the NIH public access policy (adopted in 2008), which requires the results of NIH-funded research to be made freely available within 12 months of publication. The new memorandum gives agencies some freedom in how they respond - they don't need to adopt exactly the NIH policy - but it is clearly in the same spirit. Here's an analysis from Peter Suber, a leading advocate of open access: https://plus.google.com/109377556796183035206/posts/8hzviMJeVHJ https://plus.google.com/109377556796183035206/posts/8hzviMJe... Suber focuses on the connection to FASTR, a major piece of open access legislation introduced into Congress a few days ago. Broadly, FASTR has a lot of overlap with the White House directive. FASTR would require every Federal agency with a budget over 100 million to adopt an open access policy. A significant difference - and one that I expect is of interest to HN - is that FASTR has provisions to enable text mining. That would potentially be of interest to some startups. Much more info here: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/hoap/Notes_on_the_Fair_Access_to_Science_and_Technology_Research_Act http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/hoap/Notes_on_the_Fair_Access_t... If you'd like to support open access, take a few minutes to look at the Alliance for Taxpayer Access's (ATA) call to action on FASTR: http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/action/FASTR_calltoaction.shtml http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/action/FASTR_calltoaction.shtm... It is also of interest to follow the responses from John Wilbanks and Heather Joseph, two of the authors of the petition (and long-time advocates for open access): https://twitter.com/wilbanks https://twitter.com/wilbanks https://twitter.com/hjoseph https://twitter.com/hjoseph Wilbanks notes that the memo covers research from "NSF, Ed, EPA, NASA, USDA, HHS, Commerce, Interior, Defense, Energy, Trans, DHS, Ag, State, Smithsonian". He also implies that while this memo is great progress, it falls short of a full open access mandate enabling reuse and text-mining of content.
- kanzure 14y ago
  This is a fantastic development. What are the chances of any of this applying retroactively to papers that are already published?
JOnAgain 14y ago
Wow wow wow. Slow down. Did this petition actually accomplish something? This doesn't seem to be the typical "here's why we're not going to do anything" response.
- sinak 14y ago
  It was a reasonable ask and got a reasonable response. Hopefully the unlocking petition gets the same treatment.
return0 14y ago
12 months is not enough. In many fast moving fields scientific research can be old news within a year. Why not just require immediate open publication? That would be a great boost to publishers like PLoS and Frontiers, and would increase both the quality of the work published and of the peer reviewing process of open access journals, since their impact factor would be impacted in that case. There is always the argument of keeping the editorial quality high and that competition among publishers enables better scholarship. The truth is, however, that science politics have long now invaded most high-impact commercial journals and publishers to the point where this argument no longer holds. Most scientists don't really have strong feelings about open access, since for academics access to journals is practically guaranteed through their workplace subscriptions. But it is possible that most scientists are not aware of the wonderful possibilities that open access enables, such as text mining and other sorts of meta-analysis. Not to mention that everyone would be able to read any study on their phone at any time/place.
zapdrive 14y ago
Action too late, too little. The publicly funded research should to be available immediately to the public. The "scientific publishing industry" can still continue making money by charging the researchers/authors to have their studies published in their journals.
- czr80 14y ago
  Interestingly, this is how it works today. All federally funded researchers are required to provide detailed research reports, and these are freely available.
merraksh 14y ago
... make the results of federally-funded research publically available free of charge within 12 months after original publication. Doesn't that shift the burden on agencies rather than publishers, allowing them to publish on paid-for journals but then making them available after a year by paying some open access fee to the publisher? Also, if publicly funded research is to be publicly available, shouldn't it be so right away? I just feel that this measure is incomplete and tries to keep at least part of the publishers' inflow of cash.
revelation 14y ago
the need to ensure that the valuable contributions that the scientific publishing industry provides are not lost Holy newspeak. These are companies, they don't make contributions out of the good of their heart, _they extract value for their shareholders_, who are neither the taxpayers nor the scientists. The ridiculous gross margins and nonexistent competition suggests they do so in what can only be called rent-seeking.
EdwardTattsyrup 14y ago
Twelve months after original publication? They oughtta require that it's in the hands of the general public within twelve freakin' microseconds of original publication. Twelve months makes no sense.
phaus 14y ago
The White House wants to find a solution that will be fair to all stakeholders. The only stakeholder that should be considered is the U.S. tax payer. We funded the research, whether we wanted to or not, under penalty of imprisonment or death, and in a manner that violates the intent of the Constitution. Why then, are we prohibited from seeing the results of our investment?

217 points by ig1 14y ago

xaa 14y ago

As a scientist, it is so funny to read about the "valuable contributions that the scientific publishing industry provides". The scientific publishing industry does not write, review, or edit any of the content it publishes -- volunteer scientists do that. It literally takes a pre-formatted PDF or Word document and sticks it on a website, and maybe into a print edition. It charges multi-thousand dollar fees to authors to publish the articles, fees to institutions to access them, and still litters the website/journal with ads. And their profit margin is in the 40% area. This industry is an absolute scourge on human progress, and a 12-month embargo does not go nearly far enough. 12 months is an eternity in science. I will say that the publishing industry does do some very minor but useful things, like linkification of references, management of submitting the publication record to PubMed, etc. But the cost is exorbitant, and the government could provide these services for a fraction of the cost. Edit: Oh, and journal prices are rising much faster than the CPI. While at the same time most have reduced or eliminated a print edition, and increasingly require reformatting to be done by faculty. Hmm...

brador 14y ago
What's needed is a single day of coordinated action. Where all scientists and researchers move to free publications in one big move.
return0 14y ago
Google does a better job of cataloguing the journal records; i fear you are giving to the commercial publishers too much credit. I agree that their net contribution is negative and at this point they have become an impediment to scientific progress. The reasons they still exist is because they maintain an image of authority among scientists, and indirectly determine their career prospects (in the life sciences at least). This image is cultivated through marketing, lobbying, and vast connections to the mainstream press and media.
ig1 14y ago
Have you ever looked at the budget of an academic journal to see where the money goes ? The average journal profit margin is 20-30% and that's roughly the same whether you're talking about an open access journal like PLoS or a closed access one. They also have roughly the same operational (staff, etc.) costs. Most new journals tend to be run at a loss for a number of years being subsidised by the more successful ones. Marketing is another big cost, journals don't magically build reputations, they have marketing budgets to achieve mindshare and to establish a reputation. There are good reasons for open access, but lets not pretend that journals are cheaper to operate than they actually are.
- xaa 14y ago
  I'd argue that the open-access model is not much better than the traditional model, because as you point out, it incurs basically the same expenses, but simply charges the author more to recoup the lost institutional subscription. Now that systems like ArXiV exist, researchers and taxpayers should not be paying for marketing and typography. But the real reason journals persist is because readers and promotion/tenure committees want a credibility filter. A really good technological solution to this problem hasn't been found (AFAIK), but I don't see that it would be too hard to build some algorithm to rank articles according to author prestige, institution prestige, number of citations, reader interest, etc. If people want a "hard" metric of article impact, they would be better off using number of citations than journal impact factor anyway.
  - rayiner 14y ago
    > A really good technological solution to this problem hasn't been found (AFAIK), but I don't see that it would be too hard to build some algorithm to rank articles according to author prestige, You're hand-waving away one the driving forces not only of the publishing industry, but much of the whole economy. Signals, filters, and branding account for the existence of everything from Louis Vuitton to hiring practices based on school prestige to Asian parents that push their kids to get into MIT. Signaling makes the world go around and you hand-wave it away by saying it shouldn't be hard to replace the branding with "some algorithm."

InvisibleCities 14y ago

>the need to ensure that the valuable contributions that the scientific publishing industry provides are not lost. Honestly, what value does the publishing industry provide? Search? Google, Microsoft Bing, and any number of other search providers could do that at the fraction of the cost. Peer review? No, that is performed by independent scientists, who are either not paid, or paid a negligible fee. Editing? Nope. Scientific journals are not edited for content or even proofread; I know a few professors who found that out the hard way after discovering typos in their own articles. Typesetting? OK. I'll give them that one. So, for the cost of thousands of dollars to the original researchers, on top of the outrageously high licensing fees paid by people who wish to read the articles, we get papers that have been typeset. Hoo boy, what a great deal.

rayiner 14y ago
> Honestly, what value does the publishing industry provide? Search? Google, Microsoft Bing, and any number of other search providers could do that at the fraction of the cost. You can't compare the curation you get in a proper journal to the shitsplatter of your typical search engine results. A very good example of how crappy search technology is for this sort of thing is to do legal research on Google Scholar versus Westlaw. The indexing, head notes, directories, and topical summaries you get from Westlaw make Google Scholar look like a toy. And why should we expect differently? We're comparing the product of human labor to the results of extremely primitive AI technology optimized not for research but for making sure that people can quickly find the latest celebrity nip slip photos.
- MBlume 14y ago
  The curation is done by scientists volunteering their time to the journals. The publishers add nothing. They are parasites and deserve swift, merciless death.
  - rayiner 14y ago
    Volunteer scientists do not do the curation. They do editing and peer review, but they don't do the editorial work of deciding what articles are published, how they are presented, what's featured, etc.

ig1 14y ago

Why was the title changed ? - the new title removes the fact that this is the official government response to the open access petition and not just a discussion piece.

mmanfrin 14y ago
Exceptionally strict moderation policy. There have been many threads pushing back against objectively poor title edits, but the mods won't listen.
- rikacomet 14y ago
  what is to mod, when it is 'actually' the official white house response!?
  - mmanfrin 14y ago
    The original title of this HN submission included 'Official Whitehouse Response'; HN mods changed it to something much less informative.
    - rikacomet 14y ago
      yes, I had read it before it was changed. I know the need of modding, been a mod myself elsewhere, but it has to have some grounds, unlike in this case. Would someone please fix this?
anigbrowl 14y ago
In fairness, the fact that it's from Whitehouse.gov pretty much tells you it's the official response. I don't disagree with your complaint though.

rikacomet 14y ago

I applaud this step, and the timeline given for effective action is pretty much justified as well. Though I'm having some doubts(naturally!) about: - the $100 million threshold -the overall implementation (lets see on Jan 1/July 1 next year) - the effective length of which excuses are held valid, and which are not. I feel the white house should take clear stand, and declare which research groups were excused and why. Then again, I must congratulate US govt on this. Something like this is ages away in my country.

ljd 14y ago

I had to read that twice... did a petition actually work? Regarding: "Federal agencies that directs those with more than $100 million in research and development expenditures to develop plans to make the results of federally-funded research publically available free of charge within 12 months after original publication" I really hope they do something easy like a REST/JSON API.

bendmorris 14y ago
What would be available via the API? I think this is referring to published papers becoming freely available after 12 months. I imagine the delivery will be identical to the way papers are delivered online now, but with the explicit 12-month open access mark.
ewillbefull 14y ago
> did a petition actually work No. Notice that this petition met its goal a year ago, and they never issued a response until now. It's more likely they were designing a plan and waited until they were done to respond to the petition.
- chad_oliver 14y ago
  What's wrong with "designing a plan and [waiting] until they were done to respond to the petition"? That sounds like a very logical thing to do. Better to get a measured response that a populist response.
  - ewillbefull 14y ago
    There's nothing wrong with planning, just that likely the petition had nothing to do with their internal discourse over open access reform. Obama's advisers probably already had deliberations going on. "Hey, there's a petition for this! Let's wait until we're done and respond to the petition." I sure hope that this petition wasn't the only reason why they decided to issue these orders.

mmanfrin 14y ago

I feel like they missed the point of this petition. The decision is to make all federal agencies with $100mil+ research stipends publish findings, but this does nothing to change the Journal-Paywall system.

price 14y ago
No, it's much broader than to make the agencies publish the results of their own research -- they're to make sure the results of the research they fund is available. That covers the vast majority of scientific research in the United States. The journals might still have paywalls on their own sites, but what's the impact of a paywall when the exact same paper is on the open web where Google can index it? The allowance for a 12-month embargo is a bummer -- I'd rather research be available to the public immediately when it's published -- but there's a ton of research out there more than a year old, so this is a great advance. A sibling comment linked to Peter Suber's reaction: https://plus.google.com/109377556796183035206/posts/8hzviMJeVHJ https://plus.google.com/109377556796183035206/posts/8hzviMJe... Suber has been following this issue for a long time and written more about it than anyone, so his interpretation carries weight.
rikacomet 14y ago
care to explain please? the Journal-Paywall system?
- mmanfrin 14y ago
  Research by individuals granted public grants is generally only published in scientific journals that cost thousands of dollars -- which means that normal people have a very difficult time of accessing research that they contributed (via taxes) to the funding of.
  - ig1 14y ago
    "make the results of federally-funded research publically available free of charge within 12 months after original publication."" Hence this research will have to be made available freely.

michael_nielsen 14y ago

The key language notes that the Whitehouse has "issued a memorandum today [...] to Federal agencies that directs those with more than $100 million in research and development expenditures to develop plans to make the results of federally-funded research publically available free of charge within 12 months after original publication." This suggestion is similar to the NIH public access policy (adopted in 2008), which requires the results of NIH-funded research to be made freely available within 12 months of publication. The new memorandum gives agencies some freedom in how they respond - they don't need to adopt exactly the NIH policy - but it is clearly in the same spirit. Here's an analysis from Peter Suber, a leading advocate of open access: https://plus.google.com/109377556796183035206/posts/8hzviMJeVHJ https://plus.google.com/109377556796183035206/posts/8hzviMJe... Suber focuses on the connection to FASTR, a major piece of open access legislation introduced into Congress a few days ago. Broadly, FASTR has a lot of overlap with the White House directive. FASTR would require every Federal agency with a budget over 100 million to adopt an open access policy. A significant difference - and one that I expect is of interest to HN - is that FASTR has provisions to enable text mining. That would potentially be of interest to some startups. Much more info here: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/hoap/Notes_on_the_Fair_Access_to_Science_and_Technology_Research_Act http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/hoap/Notes_on_the_Fair_Access_t... If you'd like to support open access, take a few minutes to look at the Alliance for Taxpayer Access's (ATA) call to action on FASTR: http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/action/FASTR_calltoaction.shtml http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/action/FASTR_calltoaction.shtm... It is also of interest to follow the responses from John Wilbanks and Heather Joseph, two of the authors of the petition (and long-time advocates for open access): https://twitter.com/wilbanks https://twitter.com/wilbanks https://twitter.com/hjoseph https://twitter.com/hjoseph Wilbanks notes that the memo covers research from "NSF, Ed, EPA, NASA, USDA, HHS, Commerce, Interior, Defense, Energy, Trans, DHS, Ag, State, Smithsonian". He also implies that while this memo is great progress, it falls short of a full open access mandate enabling reuse and text-mining of content.

kanzure 14y ago
This is a fantastic development. What are the chances of any of this applying retroactively to papers that are already published?

JOnAgain 14y ago

Wow wow wow. Slow down. Did this petition actually accomplish something? This doesn't seem to be the typical "here's why we're not going to do anything" response.

sinak 14y ago
It was a reasonable ask and got a reasonable response. Hopefully the unlocking petition gets the same treatment.

return0 14y ago

12 months is not enough. In many fast moving fields scientific research can be old news within a year. Why not just require immediate open publication? That would be a great boost to publishers like PLoS and Frontiers, and would increase both the quality of the work published and of the peer reviewing process of open access journals, since their impact factor would be impacted in that case. There is always the argument of keeping the editorial quality high and that competition among publishers enables better scholarship. The truth is, however, that science politics have long now invaded most high-impact commercial journals and publishers to the point where this argument no longer holds. Most scientists don't really have strong feelings about open access, since for academics access to journals is practically guaranteed through their workplace subscriptions. But it is possible that most scientists are not aware of the wonderful possibilities that open access enables, such as text mining and other sorts of meta-analysis. Not to mention that everyone would be able to read any study on their phone at any time/place.

zapdrive 14y ago

Action too late, too little. The publicly funded research should to be available immediately to the public. The "scientific publishing industry" can still continue making money by charging the researchers/authors to have their studies published in their journals.

czr80 14y ago
Interestingly, this is how it works today. All federally funded researchers are required to provide detailed research reports, and these are freely available.

merraksh 14y ago

... make the results of federally-funded research publically available free of charge within 12 months after original publication. Doesn't that shift the burden on agencies rather than publishers, allowing them to publish on paid-for journals but then making them available after a year by paying some open access fee to the publisher? Also, if publicly funded research is to be publicly available, shouldn't it be so right away? I just feel that this measure is incomplete and tries to keep at least part of the publishers' inflow of cash.

revelation 14y ago

the need to ensure that the valuable contributions that the scientific publishing industry provides are not lost Holy newspeak. These are companies, they don't make contributions out of the good of their heart, _they extract value for their shareholders_, who are neither the taxpayers nor the scientists. The ridiculous gross margins and nonexistent competition suggests they do so in what can only be called rent-seeking.

EdwardTattsyrup 14y ago

Twelve months after original publication? They oughtta require that it's in the hands of the general public within twelve freakin' microseconds of original publication. Twelve months makes no sense.

phaus 14y ago

The White House wants to find a solution that will be fair to all stakeholders. The only stakeholder that should be considered is the U.S. tax payer. We funded the research, whether we wanted to or not, under penalty of imprisonment or death, and in a manner that violates the intent of the Constitution. Why then, are we prohibited from seeing the results of our investment?