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."

Comments

Probably Not

[orion024]

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.

It's a bit like saying...

[Hamster Lover]

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.

It's not the publishing

[geneing]

that's expensive. Proofreading and editing is expensive. Sending out papers for peer review and keeping track of the comments. Keep in mind that many scientific journals publish less then a thousand copies.

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.

How would it actually work?

[bcrowell]

And without journals, who would do the expensive work of selecting, peer-reviewing and editing research results into the clean and scientifically reliable products upon which scientists and the public have come to rely?
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:

• Traditional print journals (ones that charge subscription fees) should all be forced out of business. They're dinosaurs. They have absolutely no excuse for continuing to exist.
• The success of arxiv.org should be emulated in other sciences besides physics. But note that this has nothing to do with peer review.
• There should be nonprofit peer-reviewing societies; peer reviewing is already unpaid work, so this is something that should be possible to accomplish with fairly easily. It should be hard to get the seal of approval of the most selective peer-reviewing societies (as hard as publishing in Phys Rev Letters), and easy to get the seal of approval of the least selective ones (as easy as publishing in Phys Rev).

Re:How would it actually work?

[Hoplite3]

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.

That's the way it is my my field too (math). The print journals are yesterday's way of paying organizers to setup peer review systems. Now they exist to tax research institutions with subscription costs. No one wants to photocopy articles out of a journal. They get the preprint online. There are other electronic preprint archives, such as the Stanford one.

The essential problem is to pay an administrator to parcel out reviewing assignments to researchers. These people could be effectively funded by a coalition of universities, because god knows they'll get that money from government grants anyway.

Re:What about patents?

[IgnoramusMaximus]

What a ripoff. A company gets almost 2 billion dollars and all their customers get is "not dying from cancer"?

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!"

Re:It's about time

[3opan]

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

Re:Go science

[Reality Master 101]

Microsoft: "Let's add a browser to the operating system."

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?

This is fantastic

[0x0d0a]

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.

Re:What about patents?

[IgnoramusMaximus]

That's what drug companies do: cure people for a profit

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.

Re:What about patents?

[IgnoramusMaximus]

think the people who didn't die of cancer would argue with your emphasis.

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?

Re:Go science

[Megasphaera Elsdenii]

> 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.