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NASA paywalls first papers arising from Curiosity rover – I am setting them free

569 points by rflrob 13y ago

benwerd 13y ago
NASA is not a government agency as such, and its work is not required to be released as public domain. Instead, it falls under the Federal Acquisition Regulations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Acquisition_Regulations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Acquisition_Regulations Which isn't to say that I disagree with making its findings available publicly. But the facts are worth noting.
deleted 13y ago
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badave 13y ago
Aaron Swartz would be proud of you.
eliteraspberrie 13y ago
Not everything remotely related to the MSL mission is performed by NASA or US government employees. Non-US scientists cannot be employed directly by NASA due to citizenship requirements. NASA avoids cutting itself off from the world scientific community as a result by granting contract work to, or simply cooperating with, non-US scientists. Indeed, some of the work "freed" here was performed by European scientists, using NASA data -- which is available to the public in the US and out -- but without a penny of US government funding. These works are certainly not in the public domain. Most scientists would be happy to share their research. Just ask.
- derefr 13y ago
  > Indeed, some of the work "freed" here was performed by European scientists, using NASA data -- which is available to the public in the US and out -- but without a penny of US government funding. These works are certainly not in the public domain. I think most information-should-be-free advocates are under the assumption that work performed using public data should be public; i.e., that taxpayer-dollars transitively "infect" projects sponsored atop them with taxpayer-ownership, somewhat like the GPLv3 does.
- devindotcom 13y ago
  Yes, a quick review of the papers shows what you say - the authors belong to a plethora of institutes and centers, American and otherwise. NASA got the data and has made it available, yes? Further work using it is being done by third (fourth, fifth...) parties who feel their work would be most visible in a top-shelf journal like Science. I'm all for liberation of data, and for scientific papers in particular having wide and free dissemination. We should really be working on alternative funding models for research and alternative business models for journals rather than calling out individual teams for putting their work where they think it will receive the most attention.
  - mturmon 13y ago
    Yes, the data is free. One link for the calibrated data is: http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/tools/subscription_service/SS-20130610.shtml http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/tools/subscription_service/SS-201306... If you really wanted to work with the data, you'd want to get in touch with the instrument team. At this relatively early stage, there will be quirks that will not be corrected for/documented. Poking around with the data is fine, but you might spend a lot of time on something that is a known instrumental artifact. One caveat with this "free" data -- usually there is an embargo period (there was with MSL, something like 90 days). During that first 90 days, a few hundred people came to be resident at JPL where the mission is controlled. They all worked in a few large rooms there, largely on Mars time. So the first batch of papers (some of which are already published) are done by the instrument teams. And this is clearly not a level playing field. (The thing is, those teams worked hard on a lot of un-fun calibration and infrastructure-building.) Other missions have much longer embargo periods (years in some cases), and some have effectively no embargo at all. It's partly about the culture of the discipline.
- Al-Khwarizmi 13y ago
  The work performed by European scientists was probably mainly funded by European taxpayers, and the same argument that American taxpayers should be able to access the work they fund can be applied to Europeans too. As an European taxpayer (and scientist, BTW), I think freeing this work from the paywalls is morally great, even though it's illegal. And paywalled academic journals should adapt or die.
  - PeterisP 13y ago
    There is no parallel between "works funded by American taxpayers" and "works funded by EU taxpayers". The un-copyright of works funded by American taxpayers comes from a specific exception in USA laws - there is no such statement in European legislation; so while ethically the situations may seem the same, legally they are very different.
wheelerwj 13y ago
Fuck man, let NASA have the $20. I understand the consternation but of all the agencies who need money... just let people pay for it. We aren't talking about pirating lil'wayne's next album or someone who has too much money.
- rflrob 13y ago
  NASA doesn't see a penny of that $20, which is the problem; it goes to the publishers of Science (the AAAS, which is, to be fair, a non-profit organization). While musicians don't get much from the average record sale, scientists get exactly nothing.
  - wheelerwj 13y ago
    yeah... that's lame. NASA should take a cut. in fact, new decree.. all sales from academic papers should go to NASA. agreed?
    - wheelerwj 13y ago
      since when does HN support downvotes?
      - stan_rogers 13y ago
        Since the proverbial dawn of time. You have to have reached a certain karma threshold in order to have access to downvoting, though.
      - rbanffy 13y ago
        Anyone with karma high enough can - and should - downvote comments that detract from the overall quality of the discussion. Your karma is close to that point. When you get there, use it wisely.
        mturmon 13y ago
        Errm, I think the commenter may be farther away than you believe...the threshold for downvoting is at least 500 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3782174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3782174).
gph 13y ago
To be fair, it is the norm in the scientific community to publish research in Journals... and while the Journals make money off it they do provide some level of editorial standards. What would have been the alternative here, self-publishing? I suppose that would be possible for NASA, but it would be highly unprecedented. And besides, like the top comment says, some of these papers aren't actually done by NASA scientists, but others using NASA's data.
- Blahah 13y ago
  The correct thing to do would have been to publish the article as open access. That means nobody has to pay to read it. It costs a small extra fee from the authors to the journal to make it open access forever.
  - morpher 13y ago
    I don't know about other fields, but in physics, the "small extra fee" is $1700 - $2700.[1] Many researchers prefer to spend this money on actual research. Fortunately, most physics journals also allow the author to retain publishing rights (just not on the final typeset version). So, sites like arxiv.org provide a better alternative. Free-to-reasearcher publishing in a prestigious journal plus free-to-researcher-and-public publishing elsewhere. [1] http://publish.aps.org/edannounce/CC-launch-press-release http://publish.aps.org/edannounce/CC-launch-press-release
    - fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
      >Many researchers prefer to spend this money on actual research. Compared to the cost to license journal access from Elsevier and the other parasites 3k per published item is cheap. The problem being that it comes from your grant funds instead of the Uni's general fund, or the Dep't funds.
    - rflrob 13y ago
      When you compare that small extra fee to the "color figure fee" (for Science, I think it's ~$700 for the first +$200 per figure thereafter), the difference starts to become negligible compared to just publishing in an OA journal.
tzs 13y ago
His assumption that these works must be public domain is questionable. It is true that US government works are generally not subject to copyright in the US, but that is when they are works of government employees producing the works within the scope of their employment. There are two big limitations on this. First, if the government work incorporates outside copyrighted work, only the parts authored by the government employee operating within the scope of his employment are public domain. Second, this only applies to government employees. It does NOT apply to contractors. What happens with copyright of works produced by contractors under a government contract is determined by the terms of the contract. The Curiosity project is largely run at JPL. JPL is managed for NASA by Caltech. Almost all JPL employees are neither government employees nor government contractors. They are Caltech employees. To figure out the copyright status of works authored by JPL employees, we'd need to look at their employment contract with Caltech, and with Caltech's contract with NASA.
- mturmon 13y ago
  Well put. I can answer your last question. Publications that have a JPL main author go through an approval process in which copyright is retained by the Government. Back in the old days, JPL's lawyers used to intercede directly when, say, IEEE said you needed to release copyright to IEEE in order to get your paper published. (You have to savor those moments when the lawyers work in your favor.) That said, as pointed out elsewhere, most of the papers did not have JPL first authors, and their copyright status will be less clear. Even the project scientist, John Grotzinger, is not officially JPL (he's Caltech): http://msl-scicorner.jpl.nasa.gov/ScienceTeam/ http://msl-scicorner.jpl.nasa.gov/ScienceTeam/ If copyright was "retained by the Government", it's OK to put the paper content up on a public web site. But I don't think anyone is actively doing so, e.g., for all such NASA work.
  - fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
    >Even the project scientist, John Grotzinger, is not officially JPL (he's Caltech): Grotzinger and any other scientists, postdocs, engineers, and other collaboration members are going to be working under their own grants; almost always funded by a gov't agency. Caltech, incidentally will be taking 40%-60% of those funds as rent (overhead).
rd108 13y ago
God bless you, Michael Eisen. May the force be with you
dmlorenzetti 13y ago
I work at a National Lab, and all my publications are available for free. However, that's not done through the website of the publishing journal, it's done through my Lab's portal. The main requirement journals have is that we don't distribute the journal's marked-up final version. So we make them available as "Lab Reports" with our own typesetting, front cover, and so on.
- mzs 13y ago
  Exactly, the first one via a simple google search on the first author's name: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2013/pdf/1685.pdf http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2013/pdf/1685.pdf So it is a conference paper, freely available now too. Looking that over, it seems it's that typical short dense sort. Conferences tend to limit the length of papers. Science being more general interest, I would expect that paper to have more prose, background info, and images.
lelandbatey 13y ago
Well, I hope this doesn't come back and bite me too badly :l I've mirrored the files here in case the original author decides to take them down: http://lelandbatey.com/science/ http://lelandbatey.com/science/
- danielrmay 13y ago
  Do you think this was a wise decision?
- belorn 13y ago
  Good. It really is up to the publication to prove that they hold the copyright. By providing mirrors, it spreads the work further for the authors, lowering the chance that they would add their support to take it down.
javajosh 13y ago
Actually, the real question is why the raw data isn't free. Note: I worked briefly as a contractor at JPL in 2011 on a project related to Curiosity image-processing and distribution (among other things). I argued at the time (fairly strenuously) that the raw data (the data that was used by the scientists in this paper) should be public. The reason the data is not released immediately to the public is both understandable and frustrating: scientists around the world compete for control of Curiosity's precious mission time. The mission is refreshed every day, each move is voted on and the results uploaded to the rover. The data is not released to give the "winning" scientists first crack at interpreting the data. It's about prestige - if you released the data and get "scooped" by Joe Public it's embarrassing but it's also a lost opportunity for scientific prestige. The same basic reasoning is why so many JPL-produced datasets (particularly astronomical but also terrestrial - JPL does a lot of weather research) are not public. Personally, I'd like to see this change. I want all publicly-funded non-military research projects have an open data policy. Clearly this would not apply to research with straight-up defense applications. But Mars rover data? I suspect that scientists will be incentivized without being granted artificial monopolies on that data.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- vowelless 13y ago
  But, considering this research is tax-funded (that includes my taxes), shouldn't I, a funder of this research, be allowed to access the raw results?
  - seanherron 13y ago
    (disclaimer - I'm a former NASA contractor and current federal employee, though not at NASA) Yes - and, in fact, the Administration released a memo on this topic earlier this year ("Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research" - http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/ostp_public_access_memo_2013.pdf http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ost...). However, each agency is responsible for developing their own individual plan on how to carry this out, and I don't believe NASA's has been published yet.
deleted 13y ago
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- akjj 13y ago
  In case you are not aware, the author's father committed suicide: http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1282 http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1282 I have no particular point here, but I just feel that any discussion of your comment should take place with an awareness of this fact.
  - joshlegs 13y ago
    ah. was not aware. now i feel like douche. will delete original because of ignorance.
contingencies 13y ago
As an emerging space power, I believe this campaign needs to get some media coverage in China.
unreal37 13y ago
The problem with vigilante justice is, the vigilante usually gets the wrong person. These scientists don't work for NASA, most of them work for private institutes and some are based in Europe, the work is entitled to be copyrighted, and basically you're stealing it and giving it away for free. I love science, I love space, I think Nasa's budget should be tripled (at the expense of a few less fighter jets). But these scientists didn't do anything wrong by publishing THEIR works (not Public Domain works) behind a pay wall. Let's get the facts straight at least.
- ggchappell 13y ago
  > These scientists don't work for NASA, most of them work for private institutes and some are based in Europe, ... Yes. Also Canada. > ... the work is entitled to be copyrighted, ... You're heading in the right direction here, but copyright does not work quite that way in the modern world. No one copyrights (verb) things anymore. Rather, copyright exists in most works upon their creation. So, yes, these are copyrighted works. (And so is your HN comment, by the way.) > ... and basically you're stealing it and giving it away for free. The scientists already gave it away to the journal for free. Journals, which provide nothing in the modern world except prestige, now hold the copyright and charge for access. No one is stealing anything, since everyone who had a copy before still has a copy. Yes, the papers are now being given away free to the public, probably against the wishes of the copyright holder (the journal). > But these scientists didn't do anything wrong by publishing THEIR works (not Public Domain works) behind a pay wall. Close. The scientists assigned the copyright to the journal, for no payment (but for the prestige of it). The journal is the one publishing behind a paywall, and the journal is the one getting any money collected. Now, to the real point: "wrong" is not the same as "illegal". Yes, the journal holds the copyright to the paper, and it is legally entitled to charge for access. But what about the moral issue? I funded this work. Me. My taxes paid for it. If you are a U.S. taxpayer, then you paid for it, too. And yet now I'm supposed to pay to see it? There's a problem there. This would be illegal[1] if these guys were medical researchers funded by the NIH, which has a policy that publications coming out of projects they fund must be freely accessible.[2] It is not illegal here; I think it should be. And one more thing that many people don't catch: the researchers would probably love to have their papers more accessible. They are not sending papers to pay-walled journals because they like limited access. They are doing it because these are the journals that give them prestigious publications. The journals can trade on their prestige to enforce conditions on the researchers, like limited access. No one likes this except the journals. If NASA made a policy that papers from their projects must be made freely available, then the journals would either have to allow it, or else stop publishing all NASA-based works. Experience strongly suggests that they would do the former. [EDIT--One more quick note before the editing period closes: It appears the author of the post might not be clear on the distinction between researchers working on NASA projects and researchers doing projects using data that NASA has made available for anyone to use. I am primarily addressing the former situation here. However, what I said about the journals being the only ones with any interest in limited access, applies to academic researchers in general.] [1] Or maybe not quite illegal, but rather against regulations. Almost but not quite the same thing. [2] http://publicaccess.nih.gov/ http://publicaccess.nih.gov/
coldcode 13y ago
The American taxpayer paid for the freaking rover without which no one can generate any research whatsoever. Thus we should be able to read the results without a paywall in the way.
- unreal37 13y ago
  Same can be said for a lot of things. The American taxpayer paid for the road on which you use to drive to work. Should you get no salary as a result? If you think that the rover funding and the independent non-NASA, non-American scientists who spent months analyzing that data and coming up with their interpretations should be connected, you are entitled to think that. But they currently aren't.
aheilbut 13y ago
Also, Science is run by, um, the AAAS, which is "an international non-profit organization dedicated to advancing science around the world by serving as an educator, leader, spokesperson and professional association" Couldn't the membership just have a vote to make Science go open access already?
kartikkumar 13y ago
I am pursuing a PhD in the field of planetary sciences at the moment, and I can definitely vouch for the fact that there is a lot of discussion amongst the "younger folks" about the elistism of science, particularly for missions like Curiosity. The last few conferences I've been to (Division on Planetary Sciences, European Planetary Science Congress, American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting) have highlighted how worried publishers like Elsevier are about the changing attitudes in the field. I've been to a number of dedicated PR seminars at these conferences, where it is clear that the pitch is that publishers that require payment for the publication of scientific papers are not preventing taxpayers from gaining access to results, but are rather simply seeking appropriate compensation for their efforts in coordinating peer-review processes and bringing the results to the attention of the wider community. I very openly tell my colleagues that change is necessary to make it clear that investment in missions like MSL, MESSENGER, JUICE etc. is for the mutual benefit of everyone. I think as a scientist, I have an OBLIGATION to communicate my results to those that make my work possible. Open access journals are making some headway, but unfortunately, until the bigwigs in the field really make a clear statement of intent to shift from the traditional publishing houses to these new publishers, the status quo will be maintained. I applaud the OP's efforts to make these results accessible to to everyone, and sincerely hope that there are no legal repercussions.
godber 13y ago
Links to the PDF documents have been made available by the MSL mission. http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=1523 http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAct... These are published in a manner that is consistent with Science's publication rules.
dnautics 13y ago
> The only ambiguity in the case of these Curiosity papers is that not all of the authors are US Government employees, and thus the work is, I am told “co-owned” by the authors. Amazingly, this is an almost exact re-hashing of the debates on IP that occurred between Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker in the 19th century. Tucker presented Spooner with a thought experiment: If two people should co-invent, how should the property be allocated. Spooner, of course, said 50-50. Then Tucker rejoined - what if one of the co-inventors should choose to give the patent freely, does that impinge on the property rights of the one who does not so choose (if you choose to disallow the scenario, does the holding of the patent impinge on the property right of the one who would choose to give it away)?
MrBra 13y ago
way to go

569 points by rflrob 13y ago

NASA is not a government agency as such, and its work is not required to be released as public domain. Instead, it falls under the Federal Acquisition Regulations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Acquisition_Regulations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Acquisition_Regulations Which isn't to say that I disagree with making its findings available publicly. But the facts are worth noting.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

badave 13y ago

Aaron Swartz would be proud of you.

eliteraspberrie 13y ago

Not everything remotely related to the MSL mission is performed by NASA or US government employees. Non-US scientists cannot be employed directly by NASA due to citizenship requirements. NASA avoids cutting itself off from the world scientific community as a result by granting contract work to, or simply cooperating with, non-US scientists. Indeed, some of the work "freed" here was performed by European scientists, using NASA data -- which is available to the public in the US and out -- but without a penny of US government funding. These works are certainly not in the public domain. Most scientists would be happy to share their research. Just ask.

derefr 13y ago
> Indeed, some of the work "freed" here was performed by European scientists, using NASA data -- which is available to the public in the US and out -- but without a penny of US government funding. These works are certainly not in the public domain. I think most information-should-be-free advocates are under the assumption that work performed using public data should be public; i.e., that taxpayer-dollars transitively "infect" projects sponsored atop them with taxpayer-ownership, somewhat like the GPLv3 does.
devindotcom 13y ago
Yes, a quick review of the papers shows what you say - the authors belong to a plethora of institutes and centers, American and otherwise. NASA got the data and has made it available, yes? Further work using it is being done by third (fourth, fifth...) parties who feel their work would be most visible in a top-shelf journal like Science. I'm all for liberation of data, and for scientific papers in particular having wide and free dissemination. We should really be working on alternative funding models for research and alternative business models for journals rather than calling out individual teams for putting their work where they think it will receive the most attention.
- mturmon 13y ago
  Yes, the data is free. One link for the calibrated data is: http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/tools/subscription_service/SS-20130610.shtml http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/tools/subscription_service/SS-201306... If you really wanted to work with the data, you'd want to get in touch with the instrument team. At this relatively early stage, there will be quirks that will not be corrected for/documented. Poking around with the data is fine, but you might spend a lot of time on something that is a known instrumental artifact. One caveat with this "free" data -- usually there is an embargo period (there was with MSL, something like 90 days). During that first 90 days, a few hundred people came to be resident at JPL where the mission is controlled. They all worked in a few large rooms there, largely on Mars time. So the first batch of papers (some of which are already published) are done by the instrument teams. And this is clearly not a level playing field. (The thing is, those teams worked hard on a lot of un-fun calibration and infrastructure-building.) Other missions have much longer embargo periods (years in some cases), and some have effectively no embargo at all. It's partly about the culture of the discipline.
Al-Khwarizmi 13y ago
The work performed by European scientists was probably mainly funded by European taxpayers, and the same argument that American taxpayers should be able to access the work they fund can be applied to Europeans too. As an European taxpayer (and scientist, BTW), I think freeing this work from the paywalls is morally great, even though it's illegal. And paywalled academic journals should adapt or die.
- PeterisP 13y ago
  There is no parallel between "works funded by American taxpayers" and "works funded by EU taxpayers". The un-copyright of works funded by American taxpayers comes from a specific exception in USA laws - there is no such statement in European legislation; so while ethically the situations may seem the same, legally they are very different.

wheelerwj 13y ago

Fuck man, let NASA have the $20. I understand the consternation but of all the agencies who need money... just let people pay for it. We aren't talking about pirating lil'wayne's next album or someone who has too much money.

rflrob 13y ago
NASA doesn't see a penny of that $20, which is the problem; it goes to the publishers of Science (the AAAS, which is, to be fair, a non-profit organization). While musicians don't get much from the average record sale, scientists get exactly nothing.
- wheelerwj 13y ago
  yeah... that's lame. NASA should take a cut. in fact, new decree.. all sales from academic papers should go to NASA. agreed?
  - wheelerwj 13y ago
    since when does HN support downvotes?
    - stan_rogers 13y ago
      Since the proverbial dawn of time. You have to have reached a certain karma threshold in order to have access to downvoting, though.
    - rbanffy 13y ago
      Anyone with karma high enough can - and should - downvote comments that detract from the overall quality of the discussion. Your karma is close to that point. When you get there, use it wisely.
      - mturmon 13y ago
        Errm, I think the commenter may be farther away than you believe...the threshold for downvoting is at least 500 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3782174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3782174).

gph 13y ago

To be fair, it is the norm in the scientific community to publish research in Journals... and while the Journals make money off it they do provide some level of editorial standards. What would have been the alternative here, self-publishing? I suppose that would be possible for NASA, but it would be highly unprecedented. And besides, like the top comment says, some of these papers aren't actually done by NASA scientists, but others using NASA's data.

Blahah 13y ago
The correct thing to do would have been to publish the article as open access. That means nobody has to pay to read it. It costs a small extra fee from the authors to the journal to make it open access forever.
- morpher 13y ago
  I don't know about other fields, but in physics, the "small extra fee" is $1700 - $2700.[1] Many researchers prefer to spend this money on actual research. Fortunately, most physics journals also allow the author to retain publishing rights (just not on the final typeset version). So, sites like arxiv.org provide a better alternative. Free-to-reasearcher publishing in a prestigious journal plus free-to-researcher-and-public publishing elsewhere. [1] http://publish.aps.org/edannounce/CC-launch-press-release http://publish.aps.org/edannounce/CC-launch-press-release
  - fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
    >Many researchers prefer to spend this money on actual research. Compared to the cost to license journal access from Elsevier and the other parasites 3k per published item is cheap. The problem being that it comes from your grant funds instead of the Uni's general fund, or the Dep't funds.
  - rflrob 13y ago
    When you compare that small extra fee to the "color figure fee" (for Science, I think it's ~$700 for the first +$200 per figure thereafter), the difference starts to become negligible compared to just publishing in an OA journal.

tzs 13y ago

His assumption that these works must be public domain is questionable. It is true that US government works are generally not subject to copyright in the US, but that is when they are works of government employees producing the works within the scope of their employment. There are two big limitations on this. First, if the government work incorporates outside copyrighted work, only the parts authored by the government employee operating within the scope of his employment are public domain. Second, this only applies to government employees. It does NOT apply to contractors. What happens with copyright of works produced by contractors under a government contract is determined by the terms of the contract. The Curiosity project is largely run at JPL. JPL is managed for NASA by Caltech. Almost all JPL employees are neither government employees nor government contractors. They are Caltech employees. To figure out the copyright status of works authored by JPL employees, we'd need to look at their employment contract with Caltech, and with Caltech's contract with NASA.

mturmon 13y ago
Well put. I can answer your last question. Publications that have a JPL main author go through an approval process in which copyright is retained by the Government. Back in the old days, JPL's lawyers used to intercede directly when, say, IEEE said you needed to release copyright to IEEE in order to get your paper published. (You have to savor those moments when the lawyers work in your favor.) That said, as pointed out elsewhere, most of the papers did not have JPL first authors, and their copyright status will be less clear. Even the project scientist, John Grotzinger, is not officially JPL (he's Caltech): http://msl-scicorner.jpl.nasa.gov/ScienceTeam/ http://msl-scicorner.jpl.nasa.gov/ScienceTeam/ If copyright was "retained by the Government", it's OK to put the paper content up on a public web site. But I don't think anyone is actively doing so, e.g., for all such NASA work.
- fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
  >Even the project scientist, John Grotzinger, is not officially JPL (he's Caltech): Grotzinger and any other scientists, postdocs, engineers, and other collaboration members are going to be working under their own grants; almost always funded by a gov't agency. Caltech, incidentally will be taking 40%-60% of those funds as rent (overhead).

rd108 13y ago

God bless you, Michael Eisen. May the force be with you

dmlorenzetti 13y ago

I work at a National Lab, and all my publications are available for free. However, that's not done through the website of the publishing journal, it's done through my Lab's portal. The main requirement journals have is that we don't distribute the journal's marked-up final version. So we make them available as "Lab Reports" with our own typesetting, front cover, and so on.

mzs 13y ago
Exactly, the first one via a simple google search on the first author's name: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2013/pdf/1685.pdf http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2013/pdf/1685.pdf So it is a conference paper, freely available now too. Looking that over, it seems it's that typical short dense sort. Conferences tend to limit the length of papers. Science being more general interest, I would expect that paper to have more prose, background info, and images.

lelandbatey 13y ago

Well, I hope this doesn't come back and bite me too badly :l I've mirrored the files here in case the original author decides to take them down: http://lelandbatey.com/science/ http://lelandbatey.com/science/

danielrmay 13y ago
Do you think this was a wise decision?
belorn 13y ago
Good. It really is up to the publication to prove that they hold the copyright. By providing mirrors, it spreads the work further for the authors, lowering the chance that they would add their support to take it down.

javajosh 13y ago

Actually, the real question is why the raw data isn't free. Note: I worked briefly as a contractor at JPL in 2011 on a project related to Curiosity image-processing and distribution (among other things). I argued at the time (fairly strenuously) that the raw data (the data that was used by the scientists in this paper) should be public. The reason the data is not released immediately to the public is both understandable and frustrating: scientists around the world compete for control of Curiosity's precious mission time. The mission is refreshed every day, each move is voted on and the results uploaded to the rover. The data is not released to give the "winning" scientists first crack at interpreting the data. It's about prestige - if you released the data and get "scooped" by Joe Public it's embarrassing but it's also a lost opportunity for scientific prestige. The same basic reasoning is why so many JPL-produced datasets (particularly astronomical but also terrestrial - JPL does a lot of weather research) are not public. Personally, I'd like to see this change. I want all publicly-funded non-military research projects have an open data policy. Clearly this would not apply to research with straight-up defense applications. But Mars rover data? I suspect that scientists will be incentivized without being granted artificial monopolies on that data.

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vowelless 13y ago
But, considering this research is tax-funded (that includes my taxes), shouldn't I, a funder of this research, be allowed to access the raw results?
- seanherron 13y ago
  (disclaimer - I'm a former NASA contractor and current federal employee, though not at NASA) Yes - and, in fact, the Administration released a memo on this topic earlier this year ("Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research" - http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/ostp_public_access_memo_2013.pdf http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ost...). However, each agency is responsible for developing their own individual plan on how to carry this out, and I don't believe NASA's has been published yet.

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akjj 13y ago
In case you are not aware, the author's father committed suicide: http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1282 http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1282 I have no particular point here, but I just feel that any discussion of your comment should take place with an awareness of this fact.
- joshlegs 13y ago
  ah. was not aware. now i feel like douche. will delete original because of ignorance.

contingencies 13y ago

As an emerging space power, I believe this campaign needs to get some media coverage in China.

unreal37 13y ago

The problem with vigilante justice is, the vigilante usually gets the wrong person. These scientists don't work for NASA, most of them work for private institutes and some are based in Europe, the work is entitled to be copyrighted, and basically you're stealing it and giving it away for free. I love science, I love space, I think Nasa's budget should be tripled (at the expense of a few less fighter jets). But these scientists didn't do anything wrong by publishing THEIR works (not Public Domain works) behind a pay wall. Let's get the facts straight at least.

ggchappell 13y ago
> These scientists don't work for NASA, most of them work for private institutes and some are based in Europe, ... Yes. Also Canada. > ... the work is entitled to be copyrighted, ... You're heading in the right direction here, but copyright does not work quite that way in the modern world. No one copyrights (verb) things anymore. Rather, copyright exists in most works upon their creation. So, yes, these are copyrighted works. (And so is your HN comment, by the way.) > ... and basically you're stealing it and giving it away for free. The scientists already gave it away to the journal for free. Journals, which provide nothing in the modern world except prestige, now hold the copyright and charge for access. No one is stealing anything, since everyone who had a copy before still has a copy. Yes, the papers are now being given away free to the public, probably against the wishes of the copyright holder (the journal). > But these scientists didn't do anything wrong by publishing THEIR works (not Public Domain works) behind a pay wall. Close. The scientists assigned the copyright to the journal, for no payment (but for the prestige of it). The journal is the one publishing behind a paywall, and the journal is the one getting any money collected. Now, to the real point: "wrong" is not the same as "illegal". Yes, the journal holds the copyright to the paper, and it is legally entitled to charge for access. But what about the moral issue? I funded this work. Me. My taxes paid for it. If you are a U.S. taxpayer, then you paid for it, too. And yet now I'm supposed to pay to see it? There's a problem there. This would be illegal[1] if these guys were medical researchers funded by the NIH, which has a policy that publications coming out of projects they fund must be freely accessible.[2] It is not illegal here; I think it should be. And one more thing that many people don't catch: the researchers would probably love to have their papers more accessible. They are not sending papers to pay-walled journals because they like limited access. They are doing it because these are the journals that give them prestigious publications. The journals can trade on their prestige to enforce conditions on the researchers, like limited access. No one likes this except the journals. If NASA made a policy that papers from their projects must be made freely available, then the journals would either have to allow it, or else stop publishing all NASA-based works. Experience strongly suggests that they would do the former. [EDIT--One more quick note before the editing period closes: It appears the author of the post might not be clear on the distinction between researchers working on NASA projects and researchers doing projects using data that NASA has made available for anyone to use. I am primarily addressing the former situation here. However, what I said about the journals being the only ones with any interest in limited access, applies to academic researchers in general.] [1] Or maybe not quite illegal, but rather against regulations. Almost but not quite the same thing. [2] http://publicaccess.nih.gov/ http://publicaccess.nih.gov/

coldcode 13y ago

The American taxpayer paid for the freaking rover without which no one can generate any research whatsoever. Thus we should be able to read the results without a paywall in the way.

unreal37 13y ago
Same can be said for a lot of things. The American taxpayer paid for the road on which you use to drive to work. Should you get no salary as a result? If you think that the rover funding and the independent non-NASA, non-American scientists who spent months analyzing that data and coming up with their interpretations should be connected, you are entitled to think that. But they currently aren't.

aheilbut 13y ago

Also, Science is run by, um, the AAAS, which is "an international non-profit organization dedicated to advancing science around the world by serving as an educator, leader, spokesperson and professional association" Couldn't the membership just have a vote to make Science go open access already?

kartikkumar 13y ago

I am pursuing a PhD in the field of planetary sciences at the moment, and I can definitely vouch for the fact that there is a lot of discussion amongst the "younger folks" about the elistism of science, particularly for missions like Curiosity. The last few conferences I've been to (Division on Planetary Sciences, European Planetary Science Congress, American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting) have highlighted how worried publishers like Elsevier are about the changing attitudes in the field. I've been to a number of dedicated PR seminars at these conferences, where it is clear that the pitch is that publishers that require payment for the publication of scientific papers are not preventing taxpayers from gaining access to results, but are rather simply seeking appropriate compensation for their efforts in coordinating peer-review processes and bringing the results to the attention of the wider community. I very openly tell my colleagues that change is necessary to make it clear that investment in missions like MSL, MESSENGER, JUICE etc. is for the mutual benefit of everyone. I think as a scientist, I have an OBLIGATION to communicate my results to those that make my work possible. Open access journals are making some headway, but unfortunately, until the bigwigs in the field really make a clear statement of intent to shift from the traditional publishing houses to these new publishers, the status quo will be maintained. I applaud the OP's efforts to make these results accessible to to everyone, and sincerely hope that there are no legal repercussions.

godber 13y ago

Links to the PDF documents have been made available by the MSL mission. http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=1523 http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAct... These are published in a manner that is consistent with Science's publication rules.

dnautics 13y ago

> The only ambiguity in the case of these Curiosity papers is that not all of the authors are US Government employees, and thus the work is, I am told “co-owned” by the authors. Amazingly, this is an almost exact re-hashing of the debates on IP that occurred between Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker in the 19th century. Tucker presented Spooner with a thought experiment: If two people should co-invent, how should the property be allocated. Spooner, of course, said 50-50. Then Tucker rejoined - what if one of the co-inventors should choose to give the patent freely, does that impinge on the property rights of the one who does not so choose (if you choose to disallow the scenario, does the holding of the patent impinge on the property right of the one who would choose to give it away)?

MrBra 13y ago

way to go