Creative Commons For Science

chrisspurgeon writes "The folks at Creative Commons are rolling out a new project aimed at improving the dissemination of scientific publications and data. The National Institutes of Health is already proposing mandated Open Access to all NIH-funded research, and many scientists welcome the free redistribution of their papers, they just don't know the legal details of how to do it. The Science Commons project will take on the copyright problems unique to scientists (things like pre and post prints, and electronic vs. paper journal distribution)."

Comments

fp

[Anonymous Coward]

fp?

They aren't the only ones!

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot is working on rolling out a new method to stop trolls. It is codenamed 404 and looks something like thi:

404 File Not Found
The requested URL (science/04/12/29/1528243.shtml?tid=188&tid=14) was not found.

If you feel like it, mail the url, and where ya came from to pater@slashdot.org.

this isn't the first post :.(...

[eh0d is my daddy]

eh0d is gonna be so mad at me. he's gonna yell and scream, start to hit me, bite me on my ankle... :.(... thanks you assholes. i'm gonna be sore for motherfucking weeks.

Man.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been having a real shitty day, and it's only 8:13am. Expect a lot of shit quality posts today.

Great

[spac3manspiff]

now he can get his stuff copyrighted too!

Re:Great

[Naikrovek]

copyrights are granted by default. For example, this post is copyright(c) 2004, Naikrovek, and I don't need to say that to get copyright.

If I were making this post or publishing work that I'd done for some government or company, then the copyright goes to that government or company, because that published work was written by an extension of the government or company (me) and is thier property.

If that guy invented CDs and DVDs (or the technology behind them) did so as part of his job, he will get nothing. Gallileo got nothing but prison time for his discoveries. Archimedes got nothing for his discoveries. Not fair, but a reality.

Re:Great

[EspressoMachine]

If I were making this post or publishing work that I'd done for some government or company, then the copyright goes to that government or company, because that published work was written by an extension of the government or company (me) and is thier property.

You are correct. The phrase you're looking for is "work for hire". Work prepared by an employee that falls within the scope of their employment is owned by their employer (all rights reserved).

Re:Great

[stanwirth]

True, but the situation could become a little bit more muddled when -- while you may be an employee of a university, but the funding (which you wrote the proposal for) comes from a government agency.

Some government agencies require that all work done with their funding pass into the public domain, and yet the University typically tries to claim copyright (and patent rights) over the publications and inventions produced, at the same time.

Yet -- your grant is already paying the University for the "privelege" of doing your research at their institution. Sometimes this sum that the University gets is actually more than what goes into the science. Ostensibly, this money goes to "overhead" -- paying for the electricity and water bill and "facilities" for example. Yet, you have to buy most of your own equipment with grant money -- which is also taxed for overhead -- as well.

This system is inherently unfair. Taxpayer pays to get research done, you do all the work -- and the University keeps all the goodies? For what?

In fact, old Larry's institution, Stanford, is one of the worst offenders in the overhead game.

Which may be why he's proposing alternatives to the "employer keep all" scheme--which is fine for a commercial venture, but NOT fine at all for publically funded research at private universities. Who knows, this could be the thin edge of a very interesting wedge to start cracking that system.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually your post is not copyrightable (and neither are most other posts on slashdot or other forums). They very rarely attain the neccassary height required to be copyrightable.

Re:Great

[DrZZ]

Some government agencies require that all work done with their funding pass into the public domain

Not the US federal government (including all NIH grants). The Bayh-Dole Act gives the copyright and patents rights to the grantee or contractor and retains only limited rights to the government and taxpayers. You certainly wouldn't be alone if you don't like this, but it is the law. The law was passed (in 1980) because of a perception that federally funded research was just sitting in labs and not actually being turned into anything useful to the public. It is pretty much uncontested that since its passage, much more federally funded research is being commercialized. Much of the criticism I've read (and I don't claim to know all that's out there) argues that the trend toward more use was already in place and the law might have accelerated it a bit, but didn't really affect where things were headed anyway. So to get rid of Bayh-Dole you have to go to lawmakers and say that there was a problem, Congress passed a law, things got better, but it didn't have anything to do with the law, so you should repeal it. I think it is obvious that that is going to be a tough sell.

The problems associated with universities requiring that staff turn over all right to them is a very important, but separate issue.

Go Larry

[cloudspot]

The battle for accessible culture is important, but the battle for accessible science is more important (IMO).

Keep up the good work!

Re:Go Larry

[Anonymous Coward]

STFU BITCH COME SUCK MY ROCKET LOOOOOLLL

posts on topic.
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If you want replies to your

Re:Go Larry

[Anonymous Coward]

We need to support creative commons efforts .. distribution of legitimate files via P2P is vital to keeping it legal.

Unfortunately if we can't show an extremely high fair use proportion the Nazis will make the technology illegal.

Tragedy of the scientific commons?

[stratjakt]

Will this not make it much easier for crackpots with agendas to spread bogus/bullshit scientific "facts"?

Re:Tragedy of the scientific commons?

[goldspider]

Global warming "scientists" have been pulling this off for years and years now without the help of a Creative Commons lisence. I don't see how this would really change anything.

Re:Tragedy of the scientific commons?

[Interrupt18]

All reputable scientific journals have a peer review system wherin the research to be published must first be scrutinized by other experts in the field. I don't see why free access to research publications would change this.

Re:Tragedy of the scientific commons?

[chrisspurgeon]

> Will this not make it much easier for crackpots with agendas to spread bogus/bullshit scientific "facts"?
I don't think so. The Creative Commons idea doesn't affect peer-review, reputation, etc., that are the bedrock of legitimate scientific publications. What it will do is make it easier for crackpots (and the rest of us) to read significant scientific publications.

Re:Tragedy of the scientific commons?

[Jeff Carr]

No, that's Slashdot that you're thinking of. :)

Re:Tragedy of the scientific commons?

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Wow. Wow. Wow. Posted at 25 min after the hour, and still you have not been modded "troll". Wow. Have all the mods started New Years celebrations already? But of course you are right (unless it was a joke, in which case, very funny!).

Re:Tragedy of the scientific commons?

[bfields]

All reputable scientific journals have a peer review system wherin the research to be published must first be scrutinized by other experts in the field. I don't see why free access to research publications would change this.

The review system requires some work to administer (even when the reviewing itself is on a volunteer basis). People may worry that without exclusive distribution rights, publishers may not be able to raise the money to support such systems.

I don't know enough about the expenses here to say whether that's a real problem. The benefits of freer licensing are potentially so enormous I'd hope there's some way to do it without compromising the review process. (The full literature available anywhere on the internet, with full-text searching? Less hassle to teachers assembling compilations for courses? Etc., etc....)

--b.

Re:Tragedy of the scientific commons?

[RealAlaskan]

The review system requires some work to administer (even when the reviewing itself is on a volunteer basis). People may worry that without exclusive distribution rights, publishers may not be able to raise the money to support such systems.

I don't know enough about the expenses here to say whether that's a real problem.

Roughly speaking, there are no expenses.

The editor is usually a volunteer, and the reviewers are always volunteers. The editor sends your manuscript to two or three referees, who mark it up and write him a report. He then takes their names off the reports, and forwards them to you, with his decision (usually either ``forget it'' or ``revise and resubmit''). All this is done electronically, so costs are nil.

Reviewing is the price you pay for submitting to a journal: if you submit, you'll start getting articles to review. Doing a good job on these can only help your standing with the editor, and get you better referees and a better chance of helpful criticism on your next submission.

Aside from a secretary for the editor (not all publications have this), the only paid employees are the guys who run the printing press and the fat cats who take your checks to the bank. The authors and would-be authors do the writing, the peer review and the typesetting, and in return, the publisher takes the copyright and the profit.

Re:Tragedy of the scientific commons?

[wass]

Will this not make it much easier for crackpots with agendas to spread bogus/bullshit scientific "facts"?

I'm a physics grad student now, but let me give my take on it. The answer to your question is really yes or now. Much like the printing press and the internet let's any crackpot publish/disseminate bogus facts, but it gives the same abilities to people that have something worthwhile to say.

But how do you tell the good stuff from the bad? Firstly, most scientists worth their salt will be able to immediately distinguish whether a paper is written by an expert in the field, or someone bullshitting. Now as to someone outright lying, well the case of Jan Hendrick Schon reveals that problem can exist within the peer-reviewed literature too. However, seeing how afterwards he was exposed he was fired, and even had his PhD revoked by his university, can hopefully deter other would-be frauders. Scientific 'trolling' may be a harder problem to crack, though.

One such method to determine relative 'goodness' of an author, or a paper, is to see how many times it is cited by another paper. In fact, one of my former professors at U. Penn was one of the motivators for this method because she experienced alot of discrimination trying to get a faculty job. (In the old days, and even today to a smaller extent, female PhD physicists are underrepresented). She had to use these citation numbers to prove her work was as influential as some of the top men in the field.

Of course, with fully open access, it will be relatively easy to create many 'spam' articles that cite your own article to increase it's perceived importance. One way to combat this might be to weigh citing scores lower if they come from within an intimate circle. Another would be to have a moderation and meta-moderation system to acknowledge which papers in their field are worthy of being cited. Of course this goes back to the 'elite' problem of someone being unfairly shut out, but at least they can still publish their paper openly, if they need to point out 20 years down the line they were the first to publish a certain theory.

There actually already are such open venues, for example the arxiv will allow AFAIK anybody to publish a paper there.

Other than publications, the American Physical Society , for example, gets some federal funding and hence provide some public services. For example, at some of the larger meetings they might provide a room for presentations from non-physicists or others, kind of like the local public access station on cable TV. Sometimes talks are given on philosophy of physics, sometimes there are just crackpot talks, but any decent physicist will be able to tell by a talk whether it is worthwhile or not.

Re:Tragedy of the scientific commons?

[stratjakt]

I'm not worried about scientists, I'm worried about the average boob who believes anything he sees on TV, because a "certified scientician" says so.

Like that Clonex or whoever, the UFO cult who claimed they cloned a human being. Despite the fact they couldn't even produce a photograph of the cloned baby, the media (thanks to a slow news week) plastered this "breakthrough" everywhere.

The average dope still thinks it's true.

People think that abortions cause breast cancer, because some born-again christian "scientist" said so (with nothing to back it up). People hear "science" and think it's true, they don't do the research to find out that this guy is alone in his belief.

Hell, every other day the media feeds us a story about "wine is good for you! it prevents cancer", and then the next day "wine is bad for you! it causes cancer!"

The problem is more with the media than the scientific community, I just worry about a giant collection of catchy scientific headlines for slow news days.

Re:Tragedy of the scientific commons?

[wass]

The problem is more with the media than the scientific community, I just worry about a giant collection of catchy scientific headlines for slow news days.

But those problems you mention are independent of an open science publication service. Or perhaps maybe they'll get worse, but if you want to deceive people you can easily do so under the current system anyway.

Re:Tragedy of the scientific commons?

[venicebeach]

But his point is true, that the review process takes some funding to accomplish.

There are some journals that operate with a "volunteer" editor, but they have trouble competing with journals that have a paid full-time staff, like Nature for example. Running a journal of that size is a huge operation; it requires so much time and effort that it can't be done by volunteers.

Re:Tragedy of the scientific commons?

[RealAlaskan]

There are some journals that operate with a "volunteer" editor, but they have trouble competing with journals that have a paid full-time staff, like Nature for example.

Is Nature really a scientific journal? That's a serious question: it's not in my field, and I'm not familiar with it. As I recall, it's printed on glossy paper, and has advertisements?

I'm familiar with journals like Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) and American Economic Review (AER), which do have some paid staff, paid for through the American Economics Association dues and subscriptions. I'm also familiar with journals like the IEEE Spectrum and the American Statistics Association American Statistician (AMSTAT), which are glossy magazine with ads, and the Journal of the American Statistical Association (JASA), which has few or no ads.

Spectrum and AMSTAT are not considered serious journals in their fields, peer-reviewed or not, while AER and JASA are. The difference is that a non-Ph.D might read Spectrum or AMSTAT, but would not (probably could not) read JEL, AER or JASA. I think that Nature is in the same class as Spectrum, isn't it? It is intended for a broader audience than the few academics working in the field? It's not the primary journal of record for the discipline it covers? If so, I don't think that it's really the sort of thing this initiative is aimed at.

Re:Tragedy of the scientific commons?

[Pchelka]

wass wrote:

One such method to determine relative 'goodness' of an author, or a paper, is to see how many times it is cited by another paper. In fact, one of my former professors at U. Penn was one of the motivators for this method because she experienced alot of discrimination trying to get a faculty job. (In the old days, and even today to a smaller extent, female PhD physicists are underrepresented). She had to use these citation numbers to prove her work was as influential as some of the top men in the field.

I am a female physicist and I think using the number of times a paper was cited as the sole test of how good the work was is a dangerous idea. In the space sciences, there are so many papers published every year, in many different journals, that it is impossible for anyone to read them all. What happens is that a lot of scientists will only read papers by established, experienced scientists that have built a strong reputation over many years. This means that the papers cited most often tend to be written by older men, and papers written by younger scientists and women tend to be cited far less often.

I find this quite disturbing, since when I recently did a journal article search for papers on a particular topic, I found an article published by a well-respected scientist in a reputable, peer-reviewed journal that was total garbage. In spite of the fact that the paper was just terrible, it had been cited many times. I know a lot of people who will cite a paper in their own work that was cited in a paper they recently read without bothering to check the original paper first.

I wonder how many people have actually read some of these papers that have been cited more than 100 times. Probably less than 50% of the people who cite a particular paper have actually bothered to look up the paper and read it carefully.

Re:Tragedy of the scientific commons?

[venicebeach]

Is Nature really a scientific journal?

Absolutely. It carries some top science. It is cross-disciplinary, though, so it's supposed to be accessible to all scientists. The Nature Publishing Group is big business, and has a bunch of subsidiary journals that are also well-respected. For example, in my field, Nature Neuroscience publishes a lot of the top articles. Nature Neuroscience alone has a paid staff of about 10-15 people I think.

Re:Tragedy of the scientific commons?

[wass]

You are correct that using that standard as the sole test of 'goodness' of course is somewhat limiting, but it does give at least a 1st or 2nd order indication. Regarding your career, how long has it been since you received your PhD (I'm still in grad school, so perhaps you can claim I'm not fully exposed to the 'real world' yet)? It usually takes a few years for a scientist to establish themselves in the field anyway. You'll need to present your work at conferences, give talks at other institutions, as well as build on contacts through your advisor and fellow grad students first.

What you say about the space sciences tends to be true for all sciences (in my experience so far, at least). Of course nobody will read all the papers, but unless you're really studying something out in left field, there are usually some researchers in your area of specialty that will be interested in what you publish. There are even overlaps of things with no apparent connection. For example, some high-energy physicists realized some fluid-dynamics equations describing microscopic interactions of specific liquid crystal systems are very similar to general relativity on universal scales. I don't know how these two seemingly unrelated groups happened to find their common connection, but obviously some scientists have their eyes open.

You are correct that papers with the overall number of citations tend to be by older authors (usually written by men), but if you normalize the standard to number of citations per year, or something like that, you will get a better idea. Also - the main point of the thread's parent is not to find out who has the BEST paper, but to distinguish the 'real' science from the pseudoscience.

Who was the well-respected scientist that you mention in your post as having written an article that was "total garbage"? Is it 'garbage' because it's been proven wrong, or posits a highly contentuous theory? Or does it just have erroneous conclusions? Did the author write a followup? This is research is all about, the idea isn't to be right all the time, but to refine or change hypotheses to match with newly-available data. Even the best scientists will make mistakes, but a worthy scientist will acknowledge and learn from his/her mistakes.

As to citing your own work, in the current rankings I believe it counts as a cite, but self-cites shouldn't be counted in such a system. Similarly, repeated cites from within a small circle should be weighed less, to prevent colleagues from bolstering each other unneccessarily.

Regarding actually reading papers you cite, do you actually know that many people that cite a work without looking it up? I don't know where you do research or who you work with, but the physicists I work with, especially those in my group, have folders and folders of papers, going back many orders of recursion to the citations of the citations of the citations, etc. My advisor, and other paper authors I've spoken with, all know to great detail the specific papers that they cite. If your colleagues have questionable scientific standards, my advice would be to just to the best job you can, and be as honest to yourself and the Art as you can, and you're career will eventually make it's way.

Re:Tragedy of the scientific commons?

[Pchelka]

As for the "well-respected" scientist who published a paper I thought was total garbage mentioned in my earlier post, I am afraid to say who it was in a public forum. It wouldn't be that difficult for someone reading my posts on Slashdot to figure out who I am, and giving such a strong opinion of this person publically could ruin my career. I think the paper was garbage because it was not based on data analysis or simulations of any kind. The paper did cite many older papers, but it was not intended to be a review, as the well-respected scientist basically re-interpreted all of the earlier papers into a really bizarre framework that had no bearing on reality or the currently accepted paradigms. If I or another junior scientist had submitted this paper, it would have been rejected immediately because the theory had no support and the paper was not very well written. Because the scientist was alredy well-established when the paper was written, it appears that it was accepted by the journal editor mainly based upon the scientist's reputation. I have not seen this person publish anything else similar, and he continues to be highly regarded within the space sciences community.

When I read papers, I often will look up some of the papers cited. I have a whole file cabinet full of papers I have looked up as well as a big disk full of pdf files. I have discovered so many papers that incorrectly summarize the results of the papers they cite that I have lost count. I even reviewed a paper once that incorrectly cited one of my own papers. It sure feels horrible when the only person who bothers to cite your paper misrepresents it and may not have actually read it. Some papers that are commonly cited in the space science journals are in obscure journals or conference proceedings that are extremely difficult or even impossible to obtain. I have been told many times by senior scientists in my field that everybody thinks people should reference some of these "classic" papers, but that no one really goes back and reads all of them.

I have had my Ph.D. for about 5 years and I am still stuck working as a post-doc due to the politics of the space sciences, in spite of having published several long papers and giving dozens of presentations at scientific meetings. I get asked to review journal articles/proposals every couple of months, so people know I am here. On the surface it might seem like I am becoming established in my career, and I am earning the respect of the scientific community. However, if you dig a little deeper, you will see otherwise. Even though the reviewers of my papers generally have had good things to say about my work, my papers have not been cited much at all. There are so many papers published in the space sciences, it is difficult for a younger scientist to be noticed among all of the famous names.

It sounds like you are having a much more positive experience as a graduate student in your field than I did in the space sciences. There recently was a big report on ethics in Physics Today, I think in either the October or November 2004 issue. I have either witnessed a lot of the types unethical behavior described in this article myself, or know other scientists who have been victims of it. It sounds like you work in a pretty good group now, but you may not be so lucky later on in your career. I suggest taking a look at the Physics Today article on ethics to prepare yourself for the vast scientific battlefield that lies ahead.

Re:Tragedy of the scientific commons?

[Salis]

You might find this interesting:

If you consider the citation network as a directed graph, the degree of the nodes follow a power law. See authors Strogatz, Albert, and Barabasi for the details.

One of the familiar results of power law networks is that, out of all papers, only 20% of them are cited 80% of the time. The famous get more famous and the obscure stay obscure.

IANAGT - I Am Not a Graph Theoretician

Thank God!

Re:Tragedy of the scientific commons?

[sunhou]

I can relate to your complaint about being cited in inappropriate or disappointing ways. Twice now one of my papers has been cited, and an exact phrase I used in my paper was directly quoted. Fine, except that quote was not at all the point of my paper. The interesting thing is, both people quoted exactly the same phrase, so I think what happened is the second person read the first person's paper who quoted me, and then simply cited the same quote from my paper. It really makes me wonder if the second person even ready my paper.

I haven't read that second paper yet, only glanced at it, but I'll be reading it shortly, since the journal sent it to me to review it!

Oh, and I have seen utter crap published in decent journals now and then. One of the worst examples I remember was not from scientists who were known to me, so I don't think their paper passed peer review simply based on their reputations. I think you must realize there is a large degree of stochasticity in the review process -- you can write a great paper, but when 3 people review it, for whatever reasons, one or even two of them may simply decide they don't like it, then you're out of luck. If you could re-submit it to the same journal and have them select 3 new reviewers, there's a very good chance they'd all like it (of course, journals don't allow you to do this, but you can submit the same paper to another journal of equal "quality" later and all the reviewers may love it, even though you didn't change a thing).

So I can believe that a crap paper can pass review just by luck sometimes, if it happens to get a cohort of "easy" reviewers assigned to it. Although admittedly, in the example you mention, the reviewers may very well have been swayed by the author's reputation. I don't have enough experience yet to say whether or not the journal editor was also likely influenced in this way, but I'd really like to think he/she wasn't.

My most brutal trip through peer review was last year, when one journal had 7 (!) people review my paper. I don't believe it was because the paper was of questionable quality, either. I think maybe they asked a bunch of people to review it, figuring X% of them would say "yes", but that in fact they ALL said yes. I got back a MOUNTAIN of comments to respond to. Then, right after that I banged out a little paper in a few weeks and sent it to another journal of equal standing, and they wrote back in about a month and said they'd publish it as-is, with no changes at all (and in fact I didn't even get any reviewers' comments back). Now I know that second paper wasn't as "good" as the first one, but it was 100 times easier to publish it.

Oh, and just to put all this in context, I got my PhD 3 years ago, and am in my 3rd year in a tenure-track position, and my field is theoretical biology.

past discussions

[LegendOfLink]

With all the discussions in previous years regarding the government trying to decide what scientists can and cannot post in journals, I am hoping this can further put the government at a distance and allow free information to remain, well, free.

Excellent.

[9-bits.tk]

It can good for education and learning, for home educators and schools.

Re:Excellent.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, just wait until the lawyers get their teeth into this...I, unfortunately, don't think this will go very far, due to the injustices of the current legal system(s). Hell, SCO's existence is a perfect example...sigh.

It won't affect for-profit science though...

[jacobcaz]

Do you think Eli Lilly will allow its scientists to publish under this creative commons license? Of course not, because then everyone could (potentially) have access to the next Prozac.

I think this is excellent, but only academic and possibly government funded research will use this. The pharmaceutical and bio-tech companies will continue to do their own thing and make billions.

Re:It won't affect for-profit science though...

[bhima]

Yes, we will. Truthfully some of our work is government funded but it's already well partitioned to begin with. I don't see how any of this can be a bad thing for either big pharma or the creative commons, science edition.

Re:It won't affect for-profit science though...

[bhima]

Let me clarify: It is possible / likely that big pharma will publish work under the creative commons license system and it is a guarantee that we will continue to make billions of dollars.

Re:It won't affect for-profit science though...

[Boanerge]

Good. They spend billions. I don't want to bite the hand that cures me. If they make my life better then I am more than willing to hand money over to them.

Re:It won't affect for-profit science though...

[another blockhead]

If Eli Lilly (or any other for-profit research sponsor) allows its scientists to publish, it will do so because it anticipates a benefit from doing so. The benefit might be publicity, or goodwill, or simply making it easier to attract and retain highly competent scientists.

Those of us in academia also publish in the expectation of a benefit from doing so. Whether we do so for altruistic reasons, or for tenure, or in hopes of attracting the attention of the MacArthur Foundation, doesn't matter -- we publish to make our work known.

Academics and industry scientists have the same interests -- to the extent that we are able to publish our work, we would like it to be read widely, the more widely the better. Eli Lilly will likely keep the secrets of the next Prozac secret ... but if they have anything they want to publicize, they will want more publicity, not less, and if they can have more by using the CC license, they will use it.

Re:It won't affect for-profit science though...

[miu]

only academic and possibly government funded research will use this.

Since I'm not a scientist I may be talking out my ass here, but I've always had the notion that government and academic research is the larger part of the research done in the US.

The pharmaceutical and bio-tech companies will continue to do their own thing and make billions.

As they should. I dislike greedy and parasitic companies that have their lawyers lay exclusive claim to anything they can get their mitts on, but I don't see how anyone would have a problem with companies making a profit from actual research that they funded themselves.

Re:It won't affect for-profit science though...

[jarich]

Do you think Eli Lilly will allow its scientists to publish under this creative commons license

Exactly! Before this happens, IBM will start shipping the Apache web server and Sun will release the Solaris source code!

Big corporations will never see the benefit to letting other eyes look over source code or bio research!

Oh, wait...

Re:It won't affect for-profit science though...

[Eric Giguere]

I think most of the research gets published anyhow as part of various governmental approval processes. Certainly anything patented gets published. Really, this initiative is more about republication rights and increasing access to published material than about getting it published in the first place.

Eric
See your HTTP headers here

Re:It won't affect for-profit science though...

[Anonymous Coward]

It will if it gives open science prior art. EliLilly & Glaxo doesn't own everybody yet.

Nope...

[reality-bytes]

It has never been difficult for crackpots with agendas to spread rubbish; usually with a purchased 'of the shelf' diploma under their belt.

What would be an idea is a repository of CC licenced scientific papers which academic critics can review.

Alternatively, Universites could run their own dedicated sites for papers; they *only* allow papers from their University to be made available there but anyone can read / reproduce them under the terms of the licence.

Re:Nope...

[stratjakt]

Accept the "academic critics" are just random crackpots on the web.

So I can publish a "scientific" paper about linux causing aids, and have it "peer-reviewed" by the good folks at the GNAA, next thing you know, people will believe it.

Re:Nope...

[Stradenko]

If anything, Linux prevents AIDS by causing all you nerds to abstain from having sexual relations.

Safe sex is in the palm of your hand.

Re:Nope...

[tacokill]

" It has never been difficult for crackpots with agendas to spread rubbish"

Can you say "peer review"? Many many crackpots have spread much more rubbish than you care to imagine -- and in the end, they were right.

Review is what separates the crackpots from the geniuses.

US government does this already (sometimes)?

[squidfood]

I'm a US government scientist, just found out that journals must have two types of copyright agreements, don't know if this is universal:

1. For most people, all rights go to [journal].

2. If more than X co-authors are US. government employees, the work must be Public Domain.

I believe this is forced on the journals as the price of accepting work from government scientists. This, is a Good Thing the government is doing (for once) over publishing industry. Don't know if this is universal across agencies, journals, sorry if the above paraphrase is impeferfect (legalese isn't in front of me right now).

Re:US government does this already (sometimes)?

[squidfood]

Legalese aside, here's a random example of a publishing policy description from American Meteorlogical Society

"It should be pointed out that when an article is declared a "work of the U.S. Government" it is not simply that the copyright cannot be transferred to the AMS, but rather, that the work is declared public domain and no copyright protection exists for it at all. Despite numerous articles published each year in AMS journals that have been declared U.S. Government works by the authors, the AMS attempts to carry on its role of steward of the authors' intellectual property for these articles by trying to ensure that the scientific integrety of the work is preserved in any reuse and that proper attribution is given the original authors."

Re:US government does this already (sometimes)?

[another blockhead]

AFAIK this is universal. Similar rules apply in the UK, where Crown copyright is retained in publications from publicly funded research.

Re:US government does this already (sometimes)?

[Buran]

I just assisted in the submission of a paper to J Cell Biol today (in fact, am still working on it -- preparing some stuff that needs to be sent via fedex/USPS) and here's the copyright assignment form the lab PI had to sign:

http://www.jcb.org/misc/copyright.pdf

There are apparently special terms for government employees (see the huge box with special info in it?) but as we're at a private university, that doesn't directly apply to us even though we are mostly funded by a federal agency (NIH).

Scientific Journals

[stupidfoo]

But how will all those poor Scientific journals continue to make money off of publically funded research?

(yes - the answer is that they'll be publishing the highest quality research results and providing a service to their readers by sifting throught the garbage, but still, how long will it take for HighQualityPublicResearch.com to come along?)

Re:Scientific Journals

[Kainaw]

Another answer is near the end of the article - a proposed six month delay between release of research findings and addition to the public database. That gives the mags a good 6 months to get stuff to print before everyone can view it for free.

You also have to take into account the fact that a lot of people still like reading magazines instead of reading computer monitors. How else could newspapers stay in business when most of the news comes off the public news feeds that are available for free off the internet?

Re:Scientific Journals

[stratjakt]

It's not just that people enjoy printed material, there's a trust factor.

I'd trust a trade magazine or reputable scientific journal before I'd trust something I saw on the 'web. For the same reason I'd trust Encyclopedia Britannica over Wikipedia.

Re:Scientific Journals

[iabervon]

Academic institutions, recognizing their value, will keep their subscriptions even though they aren't actually necessary for access to the articles. For that matter, NIH could give grants to respected journals for finding good articles. I bet, in fact, that academic institutions would agree to keep their subscriptions as a prerequisite to being able to submit articles regularly (which is to say that the journal may publish submissions from non-subscibers if they seem likely to support the journal's reputation and an editor happens to read it, but they'll be sure to look at any submission from a subscriber while still only publishing it if it seems good).

In general, if the thing that people get when they pay (articles) isn't the same as the value the people they pay add (review), it's possible to change the business model, because there's nothing inherently right about the current model.

Re:Scientific Journals

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, many of us in Basic science research are highly concerned by this. There are some specialized journals that will probably go out of print (e.g. Journal of Comparative Neurology) because if the articles published therein are made free (no subscription needed, or allowed), they can't cover their publishing costs. The proposal to cover costs in the absence of maintaing current subscription levels is to pass the costs along to the authors - most estimates fall around $5000 USD per article. Most scientists will not be able to pay this, and so the field will narrow considerably. Even if they could, they'd have to spend taxpayer money to do so! Most likely, what will happen is the journals will simply fold, and consequently, neuroanatomists will lose the most highly respected journal devoted to this discipline, and by default, there will be fewer venues for scientific publication, and less advancement in general.

Pharmaceutical research will probably suffer too, since they tend to rely on basic science research for their ideas/targets.

Besides, most of the public wouldn't understand a damn thing in any one of these articles. And if you really want access, you can write to the corresponding author and request a reprint (most scientists are more than willing to give them out).

Re:Scientific Journals

[jonbryce]

It is already the case in the legal field. The law is public domain, but you pay large sums of money for legal journals and databases that pick out the relevant stuff.

BBC Radio 4

[JaxWeb]

BBC Radio 4 did a radio program about the publish problems in Science, especially Physics, recently. I thought it was very good.

You can listen to it online from the BBC website. It requires Real Player, however.

Rules

[nurb432]

The government can still mandate what is restricted and cant be released.. They can declare anything they want as 'not subtable for public knowledge due to national security reasons'

Whatever is left over is free game for this good idea...

Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

If they make it free there's still no guarantee anyone will want to read it...

hell if you want /.s to read it toss in some naked pix of Heidi Wall.

Astrologists, paranormal researchers surrender!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, not really.

PLOS

[midgley]

This is a steady progression toward using the "publisher pays" model of scientific publication. The Public Library of Science has been doing it for a while now www.plos.org

Re:PLOS

[another blockhead]

I think you meant "author pays" (although commonly publication costs are paid from the grant that funds the research, or from the authors' institution(s)).

For years, journals have imposed "page charges" to defray part of the publication costs; PLOS and others recover essentially all of the costs from their authors (but since most or all of their distribution is electronic, their costs are lower than for traditional print journals). Their authors' fees are higher than typical "page charges" since they have no income from subscribers.

Re:PLOS

[midgley]

Indeed. Or authors...

Q. How many PhDs does it take to change a light bulb?
A. 4. One to screw in the bulb, and 3 to co-author the paper.

Taxpayer funded reseach is not for profit

[Anonymous Coward]

If the government funds your research, you should not be able to patent it and must make it, your source data, your computer programs, and your source code publically available for free.

That data, source code must be public domain or at least a BSD style license. This follows the federal government in that its publications are public domain.

Additionally, a financial statement of how you spent your taxpayer funded research money should be available for free, and be published on the internet.

In other words,
a. You can't profit from goverment grants
b. You cannot hide what you do with the grant money
c. Anyone can take your work without licensing fees or licensing legal agreements for any purpose.

Re:Taxpayer funded reseach is not for profit

[tolleyl]

One of the difficulties with the 'no profit from grants' rule is the difficulty in determining whether the research from which you are trying to profit was a direct result of the grant or not. If I have multiple grants for my cancer research lab then some might be from the government and some might be from other sources. In reality, it's still the same group of graduate students who slave away in the lab. If they invent something with profit potential then I could just claim that that particular invention was funded by the private grants rather than money from the government.

Many government grants do require some sort of public access to the data and results, but they do not require everything to be free. There are many grants from the military where they require a certain amount of secrecy for obvious reasons.

Re:Taxpayer funded reseach is not for profit

[Anonymous Coward]

You may want things to be this way, but it is not the current law in the US. Discoveries made during work under a US grant or contract are patented by the discoverer and the US government has only limited rights. Search for Bayh-Dole Act. Universities are getting quite agressive in pressuring faculty to patent. It's one of the reasons I laugh at most of the "pharma is ripping off academia" types. If a pharma company gets something from academia, it almost certainly is paying for it, every bit as much as the university tech office could get out of them.

Re: yer sig

[aristus]

What part of "well regulated Militia" don't you understand?

Why, that's right! Amend II is self-contradictory. Is that why every gun-nut conveniently forgets the first half of it?

Well damn......

[obunai]

I thought I was a badass with two... Now I must make a 10 dvr computer!! MUAHAHAHAHA!!!! *burp*

Peer review is not everything

[October_30th]

Peer review is an absolute prerequisite for publishing any serious science, but even after a peer review I'd feel uncomfortable publishing my research in a free access journal.

I don't know. Maybe it's just because most free access journals are unknown startups with no established history. If you submit a manuscript to one of the established and prestigious scientific journals such as Science, Nature or PRL (at least in my field), it's not only going to be peer reviewed but it's going to be subjected to a peer-review-from-hell. That, on the other hand, is unlikely to happen if you submit it to a free access journal...

Re:Peer review is not everything

[Daniel Dvorkin]

In bioinformatics, some open access journals -- PLoS Biology comes to mind -- are getting a lot of citations from authors in the field's traditional printed, subscription-based journals such as Bioinformatics and J. Comp. Bio. And the citation process can be considered a kind of secondary peer review; if you're getting cited, that's a sign that people take you seriously. Science and Nature were new journals once, too ... I think what it takes is for major scientists and professional associations to sign on to the open access model. When that happens, the stigma disappears.

Re:Peer review is not everything

[RealAlaskan]

If you submit a manuscript to one of the established and prestigious scientific journals such as Science, Nature or PRL (at least in my field), it's not only going to be peer reviewed but it's going to be subjected to a peer-review-from-hell.

That surely sounds as if peer review is everything.

That is unlikely to happen if you submit it to a free access journal.

Remember how the peer review system works (I know you know, but this is for the folks who don't)? The reviewers are folks like you, who've submitted articles in the past. They try to do a good job of reviewing your article, to impress the editor so that he'll send their next articles to good reviewers, rather than rejecting them out of hand or sending them to that guy who sits on them for a year.

That editor and those reviewers can function the same way, regardless of the method or terms of publication. If a free journal had a stable of submitters like Science or Nature has, they'd do the same good job of peer review at the free journal.

Re:Peer review is not everything

[October_30th]

That surely sounds as if peer review is everything.

Yep. I realized that soon after I posted - it was ambiguous. What I meant to say was that having a journal with a peer review practise does not necessarily mean that the journal is of a high scientific quality. The quality of the peer review is everything.

That editor and those reviewers can function the same way, regardless of the method or terms of publication.

Fair enough. I suppose it'll just take to build it.

Re:Peer review is not everything

[RealAlaskan]

Yes, it'll take time.

Once you have tenure, submit your work to the best Libre journals in your field, and let the editors of the journals you're currently submitting to know that you eagerly await the day that their journals allow access without copyright restrictions, so that you can resume your relationship with them.

Until you have tenure, of course, you can't do that.

YOU fAIL IT

[Anonymous Coward]

anda distrAction

Riiiiiiiiight!

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

It has never been difficult for crackpots with agendas to spread rubbish; usually with a purchased 'of the shelf' diploma under their belt.

This quote is really a steaming pile. Like today public and private school degrees are anything but purchased products? Get real. In the United States (and certain Caribbean islands), a university "education" is purchased for a price just like anything else. Rarely do grades and actual knowledge have much to do with obtaining a degree.

Re: yer sig

[nurb432]

Moron. Read your history books. For a brief, targeted lesson, read the part of my journal that applies to this subject.

Hopefully it wont be too far above your head.

However, the short version is that the 'militia' by definition excludes all PROFESSIONAL ARMIES and their members. In other words, THE PRIVATE CITIZENS are the militia.. Even you, dear citizen, belong to the militia as defined in the time of our founding fathers. No 'modernized' definition may apply.

Oh, and mini lesson 2: "Well regulated" as defined in their time also, meant 'well trained'. It does not mean regulated by encumbered laws designed to restrict ( remove ) citizens rights as defined, and twist the original intentions.

So a person that defends his rights is called a 'gun nut'? What do you call a person that believes in, and defends his right to free speech?

BBC Radio 4documentary on Free Publishing revoluti

[Cally]

The BBC came through yet again with an excellent documentary on the free journal publishing movement - info here http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/publishorbedam ned.shtml. Hit the 'science' link on the left-hand-side navbar for details of the amazing breadth and depth of science coverage on Radio 4. (To b fair Radio 4 has far better coverage of anything factual than any of the other four main radio stations or main two TV channels. though BBC 3 and BBC 4 TV occaisionally have something good and BBC2's long-running Horizon series is still getting interviews with real, working scientists as well as 'science journalists',even tho' it has tended to get a bit sensationalist of late.

To listen to the programme http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/rams/publish.r am 'Listen Again' service will happily send a RealAudio stream of the programme which mplayer --dump-stream will happily rip for you. (The Beeb say they can only offer streaming media because their rights agreements don't cover other formats :/ ) No, I'm not connected with Aunty Beeb in any way, I'm just a Radio 4 junkie :)

Good thing!

[Quixote]

The National Institutes of Health is already proposing mandated Open Access to all NIH-funded research

This is a very good thing. If my tax dollars are going to support the research, I hope it benefits as many people as possible (instead of just the big PHaRMA ).

I had heard that the Pharma people have a way around this. They will co-sponsor research with NIH, and when it comes time to publish, claim that all of the good stuff came from their share of the funding (and hence claim it as their IP). I don't know how true this is, but that's what I've heard.

I have been on the lookout for quality (human) Microarray data for doing predictive data mining with some exciting new techniques, but can't find too many such sets around. Looking at the revenues of Affymetrix (for instance), one would think there would be oodles of data out there; but this is not the case. Yes, I am aware of the SMD, etc.

Re:Good thing!

[Anonymous Coward]

For large sets of data take a look at DTP Molecular target data. Lots of characterizations of 60 human tumnor cell lines, including 2 large microarray sets. There is also growth inhibition data for ~44K compounds in those cell lines and ~250K chemical structures

You may thank RMS for this (in part)

[ponos]

This is the idea of "free" as in speech, people. And this is why the free software paradigm is more important than just getting stuff done and providing low-cost solutions. Bio-research is extremely heavily encumbered with patents and costs. I'm extremely happy to see several initiatives (see for example the BIOS initiative and the open access initiative) slowly gain momentum.

Hell, we had to pay to get an article published (quite common) and then pay another 30$ to get a copy of the journal issue (and, no, there is not such thing as free internet access for high-profile journals) to read our own article.

I really want publishers and research companies to make money, but public funded research must be free for all. This is humanity's intellectual property, not the coca-cola recipe!

P.

Public service announcement: True Love Waits

[October_30th]

Safe sex is in the palm of your hand

Hehe... I wonder if the True Love Waits crowd would like that as a slogan. ;)

Just to clarify..

[sleighb0y]

So many of you seem to be saying "Grants don't allow companies sell the technology" or "A business should not profit from public money".

But let me share something with you..

There is a program called SBIR (Small Business Inovation Research). In which small businesses ( under 500 employees) can submit for grants for very (typically) very specific "problems" the various federal agencies want to have solved. With an end result being commercialization of your product/technology.

It goes like this..
1. Feds put out a list of solicitations
2. You submit a paper describing your idea and how commercially viable it is
3. You may or may not get "Phase I" funding for research.

4. Now, if you did well in Phase I you can submit for "Phase II" funding. Which gives you more money. This step is primarily to help get your product into the market. So you better have a good set of sales numbers ready.

Sometimes the "product" is something that the Feds will want to buy from you (e.g. NASA, US Army, etc..) and other times it will have civilian application. So if you want it to have civilian application, you can work on that too with the grant money.

And in regards to IP, you retain exclusive rights to ALL work you have done. And the US Govt. also has right to the technology, but not to sell it, just to use/improve/rework it.

This is not free money, you do need other sources of capital in order to progress in the funding. They aren't giving out free money without you doing some work and showing you can generate outside interest.

The point of the program is to grow the US economy and also to provide the US Govt. with R&D for technology it finds it has a need for.

There are many details that I have just glossed over. But you can find out more here.

There is a national conference twice a year to learn more about the program. You can find out about that by going here.

It has a sister-program called STTR which allows you to work with a university and use their labs and staff. You can learn about both at the conference, I find them quite informative.

Re:Just to clarify..

[LaCosaNostradamus]

Nice propaganda. Now let me tell you the thing you either don't know, or omitted:

Some company/researcher uses his connections into the military-industrial complex to convince some SBIR flunky to put the ideas from the company/researcher into whatever RFP applies to them. The RFP is printed, the company/researcher "applies" to it, and whaddaya know ... they "win" the contract.

After helping apply for 2 SBIRs in the materials field, I came to understand that too many SBIRs are like that. To put it simply: The game is rigged. The proposals tend to be written with some recipient in mind who has already been selected behind the scenes.

Hell, this happens all the time. I see a lot of job "interviews" that fall into that game. The interviews are conducted just to make it all look good for compliance with Federal labor law.

And for the record, we didn't "win" our SBIR until we naturally arranged to have a carefully worded RFP issued from our government contacts, which we "applied" for, and of course ... we won it. Big shock, eh?

Re:Just to clarify..

[sleighb0y]

Have you ever attended an SBIR conference?

The feds and previous SBIR awardees so much as tell everyone that, not in the way you say it though. You make it sound as though it is a conspiracy to give away public money to the "friends" of the govt.

It is stated plainly that you should seek assitance from other federal agencies or businesses when wording your RFP.

And they do have some blanket solicitations that can get your project in the door and perhaps it will be considered for a future solicitation.

The intent of the conferences is education and networking amonst SBIR participants.

I have not submitted a proposal before. But nobody says it is easy money, you have to work for it.

Maybe they'll have a solicitation for mind-control blocking devices to wear on your head and you can get submit a proposal.

Re:Just to clarify..

[LaCosaNostradamus]

But nobody says it is easy money, you have to work for it.

When you write the words for the RFP that you will "apply" for, I strongly contest your definition of "work for it". Setting up the conditions for the test, that you yourself will undergo, is called "rigging the game". I'm sure that in today's crony-capitalism environment, you probably don't even understand what the hell I'm saying here.

As for conferences ... yes, once the company founder started playing the game of "rigging the game", we obtained our funding in due course. But it's not the game that's advertised to the public. It's advertised as a precisely reversed process than what is actually functioning.

That's fraud, you know. You do know what fraud means, right? You do know it's criminal and immoral, right?

As for more criminal behavior, we discovered one government agency was "evaluating" our technology by simply handing it over to our competitors in the aerospace-materials field and letting them look it over. They were more than uncomfortable when we informed them that handing proprietary technology to others outside the NDA is prima facie evidence of a crime. But it just pointed out how the process out of the public view is rife with fraud and other assorted criminal behavior.

Mod Parent Up

[Anonymous Coward]

I listened to this on Boxing day and found it interesting. It talks about the use of the internet in publishing.

Re: yer sig

[Anonymous Coward]

A 'beer nut'?

Flamebait? Try funny.

[Anonymous Coward]

Moderators need to get a sense of humor.

CC License Welcome But Unnecessary to Self-Archive

[harnad]

This has come up before on Slashdot:
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=82084& cid=7217869

On the Deep Disanalogy
Between Text and Software and
Between Text and Data
Insofar as Free/Open Access is Concerned

A CC License is always desirable and welcome, but it is unnecessary for the self-archiving of authors' own peer-reviewed journal articles. With 93% of journals having already given their authors the green light to self-archive
http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php
what is needed is that authors should now go ahead and self-archive -- not waste yet another decade
http://www.infotoday.com/IT/oct04/poynder.shtml
-- this time needlessly trying to negotiate a CC license with their publishers!

See also:
"Apercus of WOS Meeting: Making Ends Meet in the Creative Commons"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci /3797.html

Stevan Harnad
Moderator,
AMERICAN SCIENTIST OPEN ACCESS FORUM:
A complete Hypermail archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open access to the peer-reviewed research literature online (1998-2004) is available at:
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Am sci/index.html To join or leave the Forum or change your subscription address:
http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Sci entist-Open-Access-Forum.html
Post discussion to: american-scientist-open-access-forum@amsci.org

open access to science

[petersuber]

Here are some links for those who want more background and detail on the open access movement:

Open Access Overview
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm
(my introduction to OA for those who are new to the concept)

Open Access News blog
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html
(my blog, updated daily)

SPARC Open Access Newsletter
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/arch ive.htm
(my newsletter, published monthly)

FAQ on the NIH public-access policy
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/nihfaq.htm

Timeline of the open access movement
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/timeline.htm

What you can do to help the cause of open access
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/lists.htm#do

Peter Suber

no more...

[adeydas]

no more of paying $$$ to journals for reading the latest in science. with scientists publishing their work on their sites, it would be easiest to access the latest without burning a hole in my pocket...

Too Late, already done: xxx.lanl.gov

[goombah99]

The lanl base X-archive has been central repository for scientist to publish their work for years.

http://xxx.lanl.gov/

sorry, its not porn. don't know why they chose xxx

Re:Too Late, already done: xxx.lanl.gov

[floateyedumpi]

That's why they changed it to:

http://arxiv.org

Next Question

[reptilicus]

--- But how will all those poor Scientific journals continue to make money off of publically funded research?---

And then how will every scientific society that is funded by journal profits continue to exist and do positive things for their community?

Re:Next Question

[Anonymous Coward]

JUST THINK of the CANDLESTICK MAKERS!
oh noes!oh noes!

Re:Next Question

[Buran]

PLoS (Public Library of Science) does it by a system of "author pays" in which most or all of the cost is borne by the submitter. Normally, this is rolled into the grant under which the work is done, but I believe special arrangements can be made for authors whose grants and/or institutions won't cover page charges.

Re:Next Question

[reptilicus]

Your response does not answer my question. There are many, many scientific societies that do very important work for their respective communities (putting on meetings, funding scholarships, etc). Many of these societies fund their activities through the publication of a journal. If you put together a system whereby profits can not be made from scientific journals, these societies will cease to exist. A big publishing conglomerate like Elsevier will weather the storm, but scientific societies will disappear.

---PLoS (Public Library of Science) does it by a system of "author pays" in which most or all of the cost is borne by the submitter---

Note that the PLOS is using a system where they actually lose money on the publication of their journals. Right now, they are supported by huge grants that lets them get away with this. When the grant money runs out in a few years, expect them to either cease publication, or massively increase the charges authors have to pay.

Re:Next Question

[Buran]

It does answer the question -- for now -- but as you say, it will be interesting to see what happens to PLoS and other similar ventures. Will people willingly donate via Paypal or other systems? Will such donations be restricted to just scientists or will the general public take an interest?

There may not be a completely satisfying answer to the question because the answer changes all the time, and what works today may not work next week. But I hope the open-access ventures can be sustained somehow over the long run.

Your view of publishing is naive at best

[reptilicus]

---Roughly speaking, there are no expenses.---

Your statements show a very naive, if not completely incorrect understanding of what goes into publishing a scientific journal. There are lots of costs involved, and nearly every journal that exists has a score of paid employees.

---The editor is usually a volunteer---

Not true in most cases. Most journals have a paid full time editor (at least this is certainly the case for biology journals). There is usually an editorial board made up of scientists. These people are sometimes volunteers, but are often paid a stipend for their contributions.

---The editor sends your manuscript to two or three referees, who mark it up and write him a report. He then takes their names off the reports, and forwards them to you, with his decision (usually either ``forget it'' or ``revise and resubmit''). All this is done electronically, so costs are nil.---

First, a decision has to be made as to whether the article is worth reviewing. This is done by the editor who reads the paper and assesses its initial value. If favorable, the paper is then forwarded to reviewers. Due to the large volume of submissions seen by most journals, an administrative assistant usually oversees and tracks this process. Some journals have indeed switched to electronic submission and review systems, while many haven't. Such systems are very expensive to set up, and expensive to maintain. One such system is run by Stanford University's Highwire Press (who also help journals publish online). Care to see how many people they employ?

---Aside from a secretary for the editor (not all publications have this), the only paid employees are the guys who run the printing press and the fat cats who take your checks to the bank.---

Um, no. Most journals have a publication staff. These people are responsible for layout and formatting of accepted articles, reviewing and correcting artwork, copyediting, cover designs, dealing with legal permissions, sending out reprints, and inumerable other tasks. As far as the fatcats go, many journals are run by scientific societies who rely on journal profits to fund community activities like scholarships and meetings (Protein Science is an example). Other journals are published by universities and research institutes, and all profits go into funding further research and support for the scientists working there (MIT Press for example). Yes, there are plenty of Elseviers and other greedy publishing empires out there, but don't tarnish all journals with the same broad brush.

---and in return, the publisher takes the copyright---

Many journals, such as those published by the Nature Publishing Group, give the authors full copyright in return for an exclusive license for the article.

Huh?

[reptilicus]

How does a money losing strategy by the PLOS to fund their journals result in money being raised to fund unrelated scientific societies?

Re:Huh?

[Buran]

If enough people support the idea of PLoS, they might donate. I never said it was unrelated. It could happen -- people donate to all sorts of things to make them work.

Re: yer sig

[Oligonicella]

Bzzzt! Incorrect. The meaning of milita when the Constitution was framed was not the same as today. Amend II is not self-contradictory. That is why every gun-hating nut rants in the manner they do.

Re:Taxpayer funded reseach is not for profit -GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

If you favor the GPL then you favor full public access to government funded research including free access to data, source code, etc.

Good Luck

[reptilicus]

I don't know if your doing scientific research at the moment, but money is extremely tight in this age, and with the current administration. Hoping for donations of 10's if not 100's of thousands of dollars from cash strapped scientists is wishful thinking at best.

Re:Good Luck

[Buran]

Perhaps. But, and I think this may be the source of the misunderstanding here, my hope is that sites like PLoS can get the public to be aware of their existence and place Paypal donation buttons on their home pages and get help from the public at large, not just the scientific community.

Re:Taxpayer funded reseach is not for profit -GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

That's fine, but you need to realize that in order to get to that state you are going to need to get Congress to repeal a law that many are convinced is working quite well.

Astronomy's model

[ghostlibrary]

In astronomy, anyone can just go to ADS.harvard.edu and have access to the major journals. It's searchable, has journals online, etc.

It's so handy, I tend to use it instead of hunting up the paper copies in my 'box of printouts'. Yes, it's actually faster/easier to find something I've already read by getting it online, than to hunt in a file cabinet.

And they have excellent search, reference chasing (you can find all papers that cite a given paper, or simply see all references a paper uses), and even persistent searches (email me everytime a new paper comes up on 'target X').

Some astro journals are still, alas, subscriber-only (usually with university block subscriptions), but the bulk are open to anyone.

But astronomy has always been a field where amateurs and professionals can both participate.

Can the public read high level journals?

[reptilicus]

It's a nice thought, but I have a hard time believing that the general public is going to spend a lot of time reading high level journal articles that are often difficult to comprehend for those actively working in the field. There's a reason why the average person doesn't subscribe to the Journal of Neuroscience, other than a lack of interest, it's that scientific papers are really hard to read for non-scientists. You also have to remember that many of these societies serve smaller scientific communities and their work is probably not going to catch the eye of the public. How many people do you think would send a PayPal donation to the RNA society after reading their exciting papers about RNA structure?

Re:Can the public read high level journals?

[Buran]

That's the inherent problem: how do you convince the public that these things are actually benefiting them and that they should donate? I don't know the answer, and I can tell you don't either. But I do think that at least some people would -- mostly geeks, at least at first, and science types. The problem is that a lot of people don't understand the benefits of this stuff, largely because they don't "get it".

Journals are not the place for this

[reptilicus]

I agree with what you're saying, but science journals are not the right place for public outreach. Journals are for communication between scientists, for the review and publication of results, not for helping the public to understand.

Re:Journals are not the place for this

[Buran]

That's why I'd suggested the front page of organizations' websites. I agree -- it shouldn't go in the journal itself.