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Government Makes NIH Research Open Access
TaeKwonDood writes "Let's give some credit to the government when they do something right; in this case freeing $29 billion of taxpayer money in NIH research to actual taxpayers. Within one year after peer review, NIH-funded research has to be made freely available on PubMed.
A Democratic Congress passed it and a Republican president signed it. This is a tremendous asset to researchers who don't want to have to duplicate research or pay fees for every journal out there. Those media companies getting rich selling journals, like the ACS, don't like it, but everyone else will."
Yeah, now if we can just fix the NIH funding problem. We've gone years now completely ignoring biomedical research in this country. Back in 1998, scientists seeking funding had a 21% chance of getting funded on their first try and because of funding shortfalls among other reasons that chance fell to 8% in 2006.
Young scientists are absolutely struggling to launch their careers while senior scientists are worried about losing their funding and all of us are spending more time trying to look for money and apply for grants than we are spending time actually doing the science. All of this talk about open sourcing the science is great, but unless there is funding to actually do the science, it will all be for naught. The really scary thing is that I don't see any real fix in the near future. There has been so much damage done to the federal budget over the last six years or so that even if we started to fix the NIH budget tomorrow, it will likely take 5-10 years to rectify some of the problems and with the spending going on in Iraq and Afghanistan, the sub-prime problem, potential economic recession and more leaves very little room to move.
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In this age of open communication and online access to articles, there is no reason to artificially restrict access to research results. With a movie or a song, I can understand the argument for temporarily restricting free access to fictitous "intellectual property" as part of a broader scheme to encourage art. But when we are talking about paying to view the results of a labratory experiment, what the fuck? What many people don't know is that researchers have to pay journals to be published, usually on the order of $1000-2000.
All of this research is paid for by OUR dollars. It should be in the open from the gitgo (unless it is something that requires classification; I am not wild about China obtaining all of our laser tech).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I'm all for open access, but I find the law problematic. Instead of requiring the journals to make their content available, it requires the researcher to deposit the article in a database. The result is yet another piece of paperwork we have to keep track of instead of doing research, and if we forget to deposit one of our articles, we are now breaking the law.
The only alternative is to publish in open access journals, which is fine in principle. However, for a cash-strapped lab, it can be hard to pay open access fees for several articles a year, even with NIH funding.
No, speaking as a librarian, this is not bad news at all. In fact, it is a boon. Instead of paying thousands of dollars a year for subscriptions, this legislation allows librarians to freely collect, preserve, organize, and re-dissemination this research in a way that will benefit all (except the publishers).
You already know why that is the case. The feds are shifting the priorities around. During early 80's, reagan came in, and shifted a great deal of research away from civilian dollars to DOD dollars. At the time, I was working at CDC, and our funding was cut. So, I went back to the university to do work (in 83). Initially, that group was picking up funding from NIH, nfs, and musclear dystrophy association. That was all cut and DARPA picked us up with some interesting twists to the research.
Now the problem is that DARPA is no longer doing long term research and instead is focused on only things that will pay today. Sadly, like ALL of the W. choices, this will costs America in a big way. Combine with W's tax cut for oil companies and yeah, it will be a while before research gets built back up. I feel sorry for you and the young researchers, but I feel sorrier for America. Our medium-term path, let alone long-term, is looking real bad.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Quantity != Quality
You act like funding is a god-given right to scientists.
Don't get me wrong, I would like to see our scientists get ample funding so we can become a more efficient world with flying cars, fiberporn-to-the-desktop, and monkey butlers (one at first).
Please keep in mind, that the United States of America constituted it's government as a social contract amongst men to secure life, liberty, and property. Obviously, the US Govt doesn't always stick to this and I decry those problems as well. How did our government get so big that it could imprison you indefinitely? How did it get so big that it could make all the rules (and break them)?
Every time someone says, "the government should regulate/make a law/fund everything/give me healthcare" that person advocates for a larger government. Skateboarding isn't a crime until a gov't bean counter realizes that skateboarders take a larger share of socialized healthcare resources....etc.
This is of course, all off-topic. One bureaucracy must attach open-source rules to research done on it's dime. This is great news. Public dime, public property. I love it.
But please don't think that scientists are someone "entitled" to tax-payer money. If a majority or even plurality of tax-payers would like science to get money, only THEN should it be the case. Wars too. (:
THL phish sticks
A non-profit can:
1) Pay employees well, even extravagantly, in order to keep the 'best' management.
2) Use income to grow, adding mission creep and bloat.
3) Spend the money on nearly anything, calling it an investment.
Non-profits love profit, and will never have any shortage of ideas on how to spend it.
You act like funding is a god-given right to scientists.
Hardly. However, if we are to maintain our position as a world leader, then we need to invest in research, education and development. The US got to where it is by investing big time in education (G.I. Bill and others) and science and research (NSF, NIH and others). Oh and by the way, you are sounding like one of those ignorant asses that tells a cop, "Hey, I pay your salary". Mind you that the cop and I pay our taxes as well and you are likely benefitting from tax dollars as well. Public education? Arts? Internet? etc...etc...etc...
Don't get me wrong, I would like to see our scientists get ample funding so we can become a more efficient world with flying cars, fiberporn-to-the-desktop, and monkey butlers (one at first).
Ah...... you are losing credibility here...
But please don't think that scientists are someone "entitled" to tax-payer money. If a majority or even plurality of tax-payers would like science to get money, only THEN should it be the case. Wars too. (:
Society only benefits from education and research and have voted year after year to support science as the vast majority of Americans realize its benefits.
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NIH still produces more value per taxpayer dollar than many other things (read: the military, many forms of welfare, the military, farm subsidies, and -- right -- the military)
If it were not for the money we spent on our military, our military AND NIH budget would just end up getting spent on the German/Russian/Chinese military (depending on when you had decided to stop funding the military).
Now, if you s/military/pointless wars/g you might have something.
paintball
Yeah. ACS is supposed to be representing the interests of American Chemists (I am an ACS member), but seems to be more adept at representing the interests of the American Chemical Industry. In this case, ACS' big problem is that they publish a whole bunch of journals, and their crown jewel, Chemical Abstracts, is threatened by this. I don't know if all this publishing activity is a net plus or a net minus for the ACS, and I doubt that the salaried execs like Madeline Jacobs are willing to go on record with the facts and data to back their position up.
The whole issue of open access has been subject to a running debate in the Letters to the Editor (and the Editorial) section of C&EN, the ACS weekly news magazine. Many members feel as I do, that publicly funded research should be publicly available, without further cost to the tax payer. Some don't.