Slashdot Mirror
NIH Proposes to Open Tax-Funded Research
Johnny Mnemonic writes "The Washington Post is reporting that the NIH "has proposed a major policy change that would require all scientists who receive funding from the agency to make the results of their research available to the public for free." Scientific magazines are screaming, fearing that their subscriptions would diminish--but the common sense nature of the proposal is hard to refute. Why should Americans who funded the research with their tax dollars have to pay again to read the research? Particularly since the web makes pubishing said information inexpensive."
Shouldn't this be presented to the UN?
I mean, why should only America share their findings? Shouldn't all nations, no matter how small their medical research budget, share whatever they can?
Sounds good. Open is Better (tm)
I wonder if anything neat will come of this, now that everyone can use data collected from others research.
Chances are, probably not. The people who *do* read the research now are the ones who know enough about the field to be able to read the research critically. The people who don't probably won't be able to identify bogus research.
no one would be willing to pay for a subscription to Sports Illustrated if they can get the scores for free off the Internet.
There's more to these health journals than just the reports themselves, which provide commentary and editorial content above and beyond reports.
There will always be a need for scientific journals. They don't just exist to publish and sell physical copies of scientific papers. Obviously it's true that the same papers can be distributed over the internet as PDFs much cheaper. The more important purpose of journals is to lend credibility to the papers that they publish. Papers published in journals have to go through a critical peer review process. Simply looking at the which journal a paper was published in (ie. how prestigious the journal is) can give a scientist a rough idea of the quality of the work.
There is an alternative - author pays (see PLOS). There are downsides to this too. If you don't have grant money you don't publish. It is less of a problem in biology, but mathematics and theoretical physics will suffer.
Publishing on the web is not a good alternative. With paper journals and a university library you can find articles from 100 years ago or more. Strangely enough these old articles are useful sometimes :)
The problem came about because Springer decided make scientific journal publishing a more profitable business at the same time that libraries decided to cut costs by limiting paper journal subscriptions. IMHO, let's not make radical changes while we are in a state of flux.
This is the most sensible thing I've ever heard from the NIH!
That doesn't mean they haven't said things just as sensible in the past, of course, just that I've never noticed, if so. The stinky things people / organizations do tend to stick out more.
If something is or should be funded with tax dollars (a category I think is best kept small or smaller, but *if*!), then it had better be available to the people who pay those dollars in.
Moreover, any government spending at all should be made with a specific plan for making it best benefit the commonwealth. If the Federal government (remember, that is Microsoft's largest customer, by far) threw half as much money into Free software as they have into the one-way-only stuff, things like OpenOffice might have already passed Microsoft Office, etc.
On the other hand, they might not (the world is uncertain, and Microsoft employs smart people who honestly want to make their software worth its price), but the fact is the same here as it is when the government funds research with secret results: that money does *not* directly benefit the commonwealth, and should therefore fail the test of whether it deserves money collected by force from citizens of that commonwealth.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
And no patents may be granted arising from the research - all info automatically goes into the public domain.
I treat orphan diseases so often, I feel like Father Flanagan, MD. Do a lit search and find a reference that might help cure a child with a rare disease. Find that I can't read the thing because its only published in some obscure journal and they won't release the copyright without charging me a significant amount of money (especially considering that the article may not do anything at all for my patient, and that there may be 5-10 of these articles.) Much better to see these studies in the public domain. The journals charge obscene amounts for subscriptions, which is why their circulation is falling and libraries are shifting to more on line materials.
You paid for the Space Shuttle too. That doesn't mean you can take it out for a joy ride whenever you want, much less go for a ride along next time they head to the ISS.
Wow, what a load of male bovine excreta. Peer reviewers aren't paid. In my field (physics), journals typically require the author of the paper to submit it in LaTeX format, using a set of LaTeX macros that are defined by the journal. The journal does absolutely zero work in cleaning up the paper and getting it ready to go in the journal.
What seems a little ambiguous here is what would actually happen to the papers. AFAICT from the article, they're just talking about forcing recipients of NIH money to give their papers to NIH for free-as-in-beer distribution. But then what happens to the papers? In physics, we have arxiv.org, which is a free electronic depository for preprints and reprints, many of which have not yet been peer reviewed or published in a peer-reviewed journal. Is NIH planning to set up the equivalent of arxiv.org themselves? It seems like they're completely ignoring the recent efforts to start up free, electronic scientific journals.
I would like to see something like this:
Find free books.
Perheaps you could use some of their products to make your braincells function again...
Yes it is a ripoff because a particular company was gifted the money to make its monopoly and thus exorbitant pricing work. On something the public paid for. The proper way would be to have all generic drug makers make it.
You have fallen pray to the classic scam run by drug companies who make big eyes and in cute tearful voice say: "but, but ... we cure people, we need public resarch, governmeny grants, patent laws for protection .." (and as soon as they get it, cue change to an evil monster and snickering voice) "And give us all your fucking money or die, suckers! And you cant make anyone else make this drug cheaper, we own it, yes we own your asses!"
Mentioning is miles away from being real policy. Maybe things work differently enough in the EU that a 'mention' means real propriety, but I'm afraid in the US a mention would be the first step to forgetting there ever was such a proposal.
Never underestimate the power of the voices of a few thousand corporations.
Either the cure is worth the money or it isn't. If it isn't, then you're saying you'd rather have the money than the cure.
The type of advocacy you're engaged in -- if it were turned into action -- would result in fewer cures.
That's what drug companies do: cure people for a profit. You might want to make that harder for them. I don't.
You wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>
"Socialism is a good idea, but not if you want a growing, vibrant economy."
>>>>>>>>.
yeah! And when the slavers were running slaves to the South and the plantation owners were making a fortune growing cotton, THAT was a "growing, vibrant economy," too. Problem was the slave lifestyle, well, it kinda sucked, dude. You might wanna go meditate on the idea that a "growing, vibrant economy" aint what we want. We want a high quality of life, instead.
You also wrote:
>>>>
"Capitalism assures that those who are best able to use resources to produce more will end up controlling them."
>>>>
Naw, I don't think so.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
It is very important and good news:
many authors of research papers,
especially in medicine, have to transfer
copyrights to journals in order to publish
(and get tenure or senior positions in
their institutions).
Copyrighted material is then owned by journals
that are NOT necessary nowdays. Peer review
can be done in better way over the Net,
since peer reviewers rarely get any money
for their effort. Some money gets into
editors pockets, but even that is often
minor. So, why should researchers give
copyright to journals who are not important
anymore, and also reduce accessibility to
their papers. That is definitely the next step
in freeing science (which is based on openness
for many centuries).
BTW, related site:
http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html
Netscape: "But that would put us out of business!"
----
Apple: "Your O/S license is hereby yanked."
Clones: "But that would put us out of business!"
----
Repeat with AT&T, IBM, Standard Oil, Newspapers, employment offshoring, or anything else that puts people out of business.
Am I the only one who thinks its utterly bizarre that we have so many people on Slashdot who mindlessly think that putting someone out of business is always a good thing? Do these people not have jobs?
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
This has nothing to do with altering people's reading habits to read scientific papers as you postulate.
It has to do with providing access to tax-funded research without additional costs incurred by interested researchers, which is for the greater scientific good.
I'm in complete support of this proposal.
If this is the beginning of the end for the traditional publication system (hopefully in *all* fields -- computer science has a large chunk of papers freely available, but not all fields, and not all are so lucky) I will be overjoyed. Free access to research data is *huge*.
Now, the possible spectre is if research journals can't make money by charging $200 to view a research paper, we might lose the existing mechanism supporting peer review. However, I'd much rather build a new one (The cost is in distribution and trust management, ne? We *love* designing new systems to manage these on the Internet! P2P + PGP + some idiot-proof front ends, and we're talking.)
This also means that cutting-edge knowlede spreads more quickly, and is available to people "outside the field" -- i.e. those that don't buy in to the expensive journals that mark you as being "in the field".
I am overjoyed. I'm not sure who initiated this policy shift, but they deserve major kudos.
May we never see th
In this case the taxpayers (THATS US) are already paying for it. Why should we have to pay for it twice?
That they do. Emphasis on profit. Deemphassis on cure.
The type of advocacy you're engaged in -- if it were turned into action -- would result in fewer cures.
No. There would be less frivolous drugs (viagra?) which consume bulk of the private research funds. Instead there would be publically founded research (which apparently is already done) coupled with a large array of generic drug makers, competing on manufacuring quality and price.
It is simply a choice of two approaches: 1 where everything is done for the drug companies to enable them monopoly status and vast profits at the expense of dying people and 2. where research is done for the benefit of all and the drug companies are competing aggressively on delivery of that research.
What we have now instead is the worst combination of all: an incestous relationship between people in government, handing out public funds and research to their cronies in chosen corporations to make a killing, and at the same time to try to appear as "saviours" of sick people.
If a journal wants to own all the publication rights for a piece of taxpayer-funded research, allow them to do that if they agree to refund the taxpayers for whatever amount the government spent on the research.
---------
There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
Particularly the ones who died by not being to afford the $400 a day.
If you have a less-expensive model that has a long term track-record of producing more and better drugs, let's see the link.
Ah the age old cry of a thieving tyrant. You know, that is probably exactly the same tone in which some two-bit lordling in the middle ages would say to a rebellious peasant: "And if there is a place the likes of you have a voice in any of the kingdoms about, show me! No? Off with your head.".
Times on the other hand showed there was a better way after all.
On a serious note, yes, there are places like Canada, where at least partially an effort is being made. In Canada in return for the priviledge of 20 year patents, the drug prices are controlled. Perheaps you heard of that slight spat that the Northrn states are having with the FDA over importing those drugs to save their dying seniors?
A signifiant number per capita (the only measure that counts). I am personally familiar with some of those operations due to my line of business.
All this "thieving tyrant" talk isn't really curing anyone of cancer, is it?
No but it might help bring thieves to account and discourage further thievery. And if lucky, it might also result in a lot of lives being saved by making both research efficient and drug pricing low.
---This, however, doesn't add so much value---
Editors do a lot more than just hands on editing of papers. They spend a lot of time soliciting articles for their journal, requesting review articles, news articles and book reviews, determine the direction of the journal (and keep it moving that way), solicit and edit art, answer author queries, get and grant reprint permission for figure re-use and just generally deal with the day to day crap necessary to keep a journal running. Most journals have several editors on staff full time. Do you really think you're going to find volunteers to do a full time job for no pay? How many scientists have a spare 8-12 hours a day to devote to these things?
---Copy editors for academic journals do nothing - authors do the proofreading.---
Not true at all. I've read brilliant submissions that were indecipherable due to the poor English skills of the authors, and I've read absolute crap that was beautifully written. Again, you're asking scientists to devote valuable research time to picking up English skill, and writing and rewriting their papers. Don't forget layout, and correcting of figures for publication (I'm amazed at how many scientists still don't understand the concept of RGB vs CMYK).
Sometimes you have to pay so you don't have to spend all day doing crap. I'm worried that in this rush to make everything open, most scientists don't realize what they're going to have to take on for themselves if the journals go away.
Furthermore, the first journals to die are those run by the scientific societies. Which means all of those societies will die as well. Meanwhile, the behemoths like Elsevier will persevere on and pick up all those little journals' niches until they rule the world all by themselves.
The people who didn't die of cancer reaped most of the rewards.
And the people whose tax dollars funded the research, then couldn't afford the drugs to save their lives? What reward did they get out of it?
It seems to me that if public money funds development of something, whether it's a drug or a widget or a standrad, then it should be available to the people who paid for it -- namely the citizens of the country in question -- for the cost of production and distribution. They already paid for its development. If a company wants to rake in huge profits off of something, then they should spend their money to develop it, not mine.
Look at it another way: I want to create a computer game. You're a venture capitalist, and you put up the money for development. I hire some coders, some artists, etc., and bring out a really kickass computer game. Then I tell you no, you can't have your investment back. No, you don't own any stake in the company. No, you don't even get a copy of the game you just paid to develop. If you want it, go to GameStop and pay full retail like everyone else. Would you consider that reasonable? Or would your hands be around the throat of your attorney who approved the contract?
as a scientist, i have to say that its very important for the nih to address the public's access to publicly funded research results. i suspect that the nih is also trying to indirectly combat another problem - the enormous power and economic interest private science publishing groups wield. these publishing groups (nature publishing group is probably the best example) get to decide, by in large, what the scientific community pays attention to and what it ignores (.e. whats hot and whats not). this fact makes the nih nervous, as part of its policy mandate is to direct health research in the U.S.
the recognition that public investment implies public access in science research has important implications for pharmaceutical companies. these companies reap the benefits of publicly funded research in developing drugs (only 0.15c out of every drug company dollar is spent in R/D) and then make ridiculous profit selling drugs to the very same taxpayers who funded their development. if the nih were to extend this open access philosophy to the actual content of scientific publication, mandating that all publicly funded research remained in the public domain, the pharmaceutical industry as we know it would cease to exist. what would happen after that remains the subject of speculation - some say drug development would collapse due to the lack of (cash) incentive, others argue that it would revolutionize the healthcare industry by dramatically decreasing costs. either way, im glad to see the nih beginning to address these issues.
Who sorts through the info to determine the junk from the real science?
Vote for Pedro
> Am I the only one who thinks its utterly bizarre that we have so many people on Slashdot who mindlessly think that putting someone out of business is always a good thing? Do these people not have jobs?
Possibly. The whole point is that scientists, being
dependent on publications to keep the grant money
flowing are practically forced to publish in the
mostly highly regarded journals. Ergo: such publications
become valuable, simple because they are scarce.
(There is only so much room in Nature, Science, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci.,
Cell, Phys. Rev. Lett, and all the rest). Ergo:
publishers raise their prices to extortionate levels.
This is all the more scandalous since the whole
peer review process costs absolutely nothing.
Anyways, what the NIH now seem to be doing (and very
rightly so) is to force the scientists to use different
journals to publish in. In other words, they are
trying to do away with a completely artificial
monopoly.
Economic theory says that monopolies are always
deleterious. It has nothing to do with putting people
out of work; quite the contrary. Money not spent
lining the pockets of Elsevier and others will
be spent for other, hopefully better purposes.
There would be less frivolous drugs (viagra?) which consume bulk of the private research funds. Instead there would be publically founded research (which apparently is already done) coupled with a large array of generic drug makers, competing on manufacuring quality and price.
This is nonsense. A drug such as Viagra doesn't "consume" private research funds. Viagra makes money for Pfizer, who can then invest the profits in other research projects. And it is worth noting that the basic science behind Viagra is also relevant to finding treatments for less "frivolous" (although I wouldn't use that word to anybody actually suffering from erectile disfunction) ailments.
The push to open access is probably only the beginning of an overdue restructuring of the whole enterprise of scientific publication,
The current structure of scientific journals is an arcane system that derives its organization from a time when you actually had to go to the library and read the journals. Because a person could only read a dozen or two journals per week, a few journals became more important than others - the ones that were well positioned at the time or had some other competitive advantage. Their standing depended on the fact that people read them, which then drew better papers and better reviewers - which caused more people to read them. But the underlying driving force that generated this hierarchy of journals is now gone - because you scan all of them in (0.25 seconds). There are probably two things that tend to keep the hierarchy in place. The most important is academic promotion and grants - review panels look at the journal names, and use them to judge the success of junior faculty or grant applicants. The "good" journals also tend to have better reviewers, which improves the quality of the journal. But in the absence of fundamental driving force - I believe these two advantages will wane. One reason they will wane is that the big journals have a significant old boy component to them; members of their editorial boards and their friends publish stuff in the journals that others could never get accepted. That means that poor science gets in and good science goes elsewhere. This will tend to erode other metrics of journal quality, such as impact factor (essentially how many times others cite papers in that journal). Review panels will begin to notice, the good reviewers will have less incentive to review mostly for the big journals, and the playing field will become increasingly level.
When one thinks about the issues above and why we have the journal selection we do - I don't think that it is unreasonable to consider the possibility (in my view likelihood) that scientific journals as we know them will go away entirely. What they will be replaced is an interesting question for which I am sure the Slashdot crowd is not lacking suggestions.
... when any scientist could publish to more people, faster, cheaper?
Because Nature does the work for the reader of selecting what is worth looking at-- both by peer review and by editorial policy. That's what you're paying for: not the actual printed text.
So how about this: publish all papers free on the Web but ban any mention of whether they're also published in Nature? [since it's not fair to freeload on the value that the journal has added]
A different Modest Proposal: use Slashdot to publish scientific papers. It already has an incorruptible peer review system after all.
Do it.
This will be a great way to educate all americans. Usually reporters are not trained enough to interpret scientific results, and end up making judgements and generalizations not supported by the research. Like Kevin Costner said: publish the study and they will read it.
It's simple in my view... the tax-payer pays for the research and the magazine-subscriber pays for the peer-review and the consequent confidence in the ACCURACY of the research. Separating the funding of these two activities is important - it ensures that responsibilities for each are not mixed, and that there is no conflict of interest. This is in the best interests of all, especially at a time when science/scientists seem to be regarded with some suspicion by the public (due largely to ill-informed/educated media hyperbole).