9 ms·
Half of taxpayer funded research will soon be available to the public
- emiliobumachar 13y agoDoes this law allow the government to break copyright owned by the paywalled distributors? Because many of them simply require submitters to transfer all copyrights of the articles to them.
- Fomite 13y agoThe way this is currently handled is that when an author identifies that their article is funded by the NIH, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute or some others, it is automatically flagged to become public access in a year. Several of my own articles that were behind paywalls are now open access under said system. Free access and copyright transfer aren't necessarily in opposition.
- geoka9 13y agoWhy only half?
- logn 13y agoBecause the other half are done by research orgs with budgets less than $100MM and the law doesn't apply to them.
- greenyoda 13y agoThe article says: "Deep inside the $1.1 trillion Consolidated Appropriations Act for 2014 is a provision that requires federal agencies under the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education portion of the bill with research budgets of $100 million or more..." Restricting the law to only those three government departments excludes a lot of agencies with huge research budgets: the National Science Foundation (with a 7 billion dollar annual budget[1]), the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense, NASA, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Agriculture, etc. In fact, the research published by the Department of Labor and the Department of Education probably has little value to the private sector compared to the research done by the departments that I listed. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Science_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Science_Foundation
- dnautics 13y agoto be fair, NIH is huge.
- dnautics 13y agoand DARPA. Military contracted research, which includes stuff like "1000 molecules" (https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=b756b30c85f1cac1f670609dcc33ea6c&tab=core&_cview=0 https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=b756b30...) should obviously not be open access, because if they were accountable it would be a disaster. /sarcasm
- obblekk 13y agoWhat value do publishers provide? Why don't new companies disrupt the space seeing that physical mediums are long gone?
- sparkie 13y agoPublishers provide cock-waving value. That is, most academics are concerned with advancing their careers (or lack of), and well-established journals are still a big thing for the people running the institutions. The physical medium is long gone, but for format is still the same - essentially non-interactive PDFs which emulate the paper.
- Fomite 13y ago> The physical medium is long gone, but for format is still the same - essentially non-interactive PDFs which emulate the paper. A surprising number of academics, including young academics (and myself) print out PDFs of papers. Most papers I actually use in my research end up with highlighter marks, different sections circled, annotations and notes to myself in the margins, etc.
- sparkie 13y agoPaper will probably still be used for as long as it is more convenient - as long as the software and hardware isn't as readily available to do what you need with the same ease. I've gotten used to using Okular with a graphics tablet for highlighting and annotations, but the biggest benefit of electronic copies is organization.
- Fomite 13y agoFirst, as I noted in a lower comment, the physical mediums aren't long gone. Second, Publishers provide some value - they aggregate editors and peer reviewers, they provide copy editing and layout services, and yes, they produce actual physical copies of the journals. These could be provided by other means, but most of those involve more work for the researcher. And after reading a vast swath of LaTeX layout papers, I value their layout services if nothing else. Third, you seem to be assuming new companies aren't "disrupting the space". PLoS has been doing so for years, and PeerJ and eLife are picking up steam.
- sparkie 13y agoWhen is the taxpayer going to be given the right to use inventions funded with their own money? It's pretty terrible that some academic can take public money to fund his research, then take out a patent on the result and prevent his financiers from using an 'invention'. Actually, the most stupid part about the whole thing it is that the government gets some rights to use these publicly-funded patented inventions. (As if the government, not the taxpayer funded it)
- tostitos1979 13y agoIt is not as simple/obvious as you may think it is. It depends on what the goals of the govt are. If the govt is trying to encourage progress on cancer drugs, they can certainly give grants to stimulate that research direction. If the govt said if you get even 1 cent of grant money from us, you can't patent your drug. Well .. few researchers will take that money. The govt can of course fund a new lab that does cancer research. It can choose to make all IP that comes out of this lab public. I think in the former case, there is a bigger multiplier effect/leverage from the same amount of money (without the IP restriction). You need to realize that IP is an artificial monopoly granted by the govt for a purpose.
- hdevalence 13y agoI don't think that the OP doesn't understand what "intellectual property" is, they just disagree with the assessment that it's necessary (or maybe proper) for the government to grant private monopolies on scientific knowledge. You need to realize that people can know what IP is and still disagree with you.
- tostitos1979 13y agoFrankly, I am against patents but I understand why they are there :)
- throwawaykf03 13y agoMaybe the OP understands what "IP" is, but it seems they do not understand the economics of research or why IP is still applicable to publicly funded research. If one knows the concept of IP but not why it's needed in these situations, one is still arguing from a position of incomplete understanding.
- MWil 13y agoI hope PACER follows suit soon. We are paying under the guise of the government having the burden of being the sole provider when it could very easily be distributively hosted with a verification system built-in. Doesn't eliminate all costs but that's never been the point. The point is to pay for costs that make sense.
- mindcrime 13y agoHuman Knowledge Belongs To The World
- melling 13y agoYeah, but someone has to pay for it and someone has to do all of the work.
- tbagman 13y agoThe compromise that intellectual property strives for is to encourage innovation by rewarding inventors with time-limited exclusive rights in exchange for disclosure. The world gains the knowledge through the disclosure, the inventor gains the opportunity to commercialize and earn rewards through the advantage that time-limited exclusion gives them, and once the IP reverts to the public domain, everybody gets the chance to use the invention. But, factors like patent sharking, the ridiculous extension of copyright terms, the inability of patent offices to properly assess issues like novelty and obviousness, and so on, make it possible for all parties to abuse this compromise. I think the spirit of the compromise is valid. I think its implementation today has become flawed, but not irreparably so.
- sliverstorm 13y agopish posh, why should we care about implementation details?
- melling 13y agoI guess you'll just have to wait until someone else works out the details. Soon you will discover that not much is going to get done sitting on your hands waiting for everyone else to do the work.
- sliverstorm 13y agook, so once they spend the money and do the work though, we get to take it from them right?
- kriro 13y agoUnfortunately the glass is still half empty. But good starts are good.
- kartikkumar 13y agoYes! Very good news, and it's only the start. We need to keep pushing for more top-quality open access journals, open access to data sets, and open access to scientific software. I try my best to stick to this myself, and I've open-sourced all my PhD research code for the exact reason that I know that it's non-negotiable, given that public funding has enabled me to pursue something I love and further science as a result. I'm all for this, and I've even brainstormed ways with a few others in my field of actually trying to put together a community-based, peer-review system that makes use of arxiv.org. This space NEEDS innovation!
- tzs 13y agoTerrible headline, as almost all taxpayer funded research is already available to the public. This is about making it more conveniently available. Currently, you might have to go through a paywall for online access, or visit a library for free access. This should make much of it available online at no cost. Actually, a lot more than most people realize is fairly easily available online (with publisher permission) for cheap via DeepDyve [1], including from publishers that we normally think of as being very expensive. Here's a page at DeepDyve that lets you browse by subject, journal, or publisher [2], which should give a good idea of what they have available. Not as nice as open access, of course, but still pretty useful. [1] http://www.deepdyve.com http://www.deepdyve.com [2] http://www.deepdyve.com/browse/ http://www.deepdyve.com/browse/
- tyang 13y agoWhat is the other half? Defense and intelligence related research?