White House Plans Open Access For Research

Hugh Pickens writes "Currently, the National Institutes of Health require that research funded by its grants be made available to the public online at no charge within 12 months of publication. Now the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President is launching a 'Public Access Policy Forum' to determine whether this policy should be extended to other science agencies and, if so, how it should be implemented. 'The NIH model has a variety of features that can be evaluated, and there are other ways to offer the public enhanced access to peer-reviewed scholarly publications,' OSTP says in the request for information. 'The best models may [be] influenced by agency mission, the culture and rate of scientific development of the discipline, funding to develop archival capabilities, and research funding mechanisms.' The OSTP will conduct an interactive, online discussion that will focus on three major questions: Should this policy be extended to other science agencies and, if so, how it should be implemented? In what format should the data be submitted in order to make it easy to search and retrieve information? What are the best mechanisms to ensure compliance? 'It's very encouraging to see the Obama Administration focus on ensuring public access to the results of taxpayer-funded research [reg. required] as a key way to maximize our collective investment in science,' says Heather Joseph, executive director of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition."

Comments

This may sound simplistic

[dikdik]

My opinion was always if the taxpayers pay for it, the taxpayers own it. Research, patents and discoveries and even software. At a minimum the government should be able to transfer licenses from one branch to another. If your research is that valuable, don't take federal money. A lot of universities are taking federal money for research and then selling those discoveries to companies that sell them back to the taxpayers. It's not always that clean but it just doesn't seem right. If you don't like the restrictions, don't sell to the government. I love the way so many institutions, lately including banks, are acting like they're doing us a favor taking federal money. And there's always someone who will yap about government wouldn't be able to get access the best software tools. I doubt that. I'm not talking about making anything the government buys open source, just that government can move software licenses around based on need.

Unintended consequences: in astrophysics ...

[StupendousMan]

Here's the way things work right now in my field, astrophysics: a scientist has an idea. He writes a grant proposal to the NSF and receives money. He uses the money to (hire a grad student, travel to telescope, build an instrument, etc.). He writes a paper on the results. In order to have the paper published in one of the big journals -- which is necessary to gain credit for tenure, promotion, reputation among peers -- he PAYS THE JOURNAL ~$110 PER PAGE. The journal makes the information available only to subscribers, who pay around $50-$100 for individuals or $1500-$3000 for institutions.

If you don't publish in the big peer-reviewed journals, you don't get recognition.

So, suppose that the government changes things: now the journals must make government-funded research available to the public without charge. The journals will lose money from their subscriber base; after all, who would bother to pay for the articles when they are free? Where do the journals make up the money? My guess: they increase the page charges. Now it might cost $200 or $250 per page to publish an article in a journal. Whence comes that extra money? From the government grant.

Result: the scientific papers are now available freely to the public, but scientists must ask for more money from the NSF in order to pay the higher page charges.

Re:Unintended consequences: in astrophysics ...

[Anonymous Coward]

And what would be the consequences if the government just got out of the way?

Might be nice if we were allowed to actually keep some of our money to use in the free market -- like stimulating the economy by purchasing stuff we could use.

The majority of basic research isn't done by private enterprise because there is often no immediate financial gain from it. Basic research exists to expand the body of knowledge. It often takes decades for scientists to understand the results of basic research enough to begin to figure out ways it can be used in industry or in our every day lives. Only then do the results of it become financially beneficial. Without government funding, the US would continue to fall further behind in the sciences.

Re:Unintended consequences: in all of academics...

[onionman]

As a professor myself, I hope that the unintended consequence will be that we move away from the restrictive, expensive, academic journal publishers like Elsevier and toward an open model of academic publication where your recognition and peer review come from broad, open, dissemination.

I, for one, would like to see a peer review system where articles are posted on-line and evaluations (i.e. referee reports) are also posted in an open, strongly authenticated, way. I don't know about you, but one thing that really annoys me is to receive a referee report on a paper where it is obvious that the referee hasn't even read past the introduction. I believe that forcing the evaluations to be open, and strongly-authenticated (so that everyone knows exactly who is writing it) would improve the quality and credibility of research.

I suspect that some people would claim that if referee reports aren't anonymous, then they won't be honest. But, a referee report should not be about opinions, it should be a straight forward analysis of the results reported in the paper. If it's really science, then it should be completely objective, thus opinion and personality should have nothing to do with it. Hence, there should be no need for anonymity. When I grade my students' papers, it certainly isn't anonymous, but it doesn't need to be because I am giving them objective feedback (e.g. "this is wrong because you said cos(x+h) = cos(x) + cos(h) which is not true.").

Using an open system would allow articles to receive recognition and ranking based upon the open discussion of their merits. Individuals doing the ranking could also receive recognition for the quality of their work, which is important because it can sometimes take weeks of work to thoroughly understand a new result. That work should receive more acknowledgment in the academic system than it currently does. (I suspect it's the current lack of acknowledgment for refereeing which makes many people into lazy referees. After all, why bother putting much effort into that referee report when it won't count toward promotion. You are better off spending that time writing your own papers.)

Finally, using an open system gives the public greater credibility in the system. When people want to know why paper A is considered correct and paper B isn't, the analysis and discussion will be available, too.