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White House Tells Agencies To Increase Access to Fed-Funded Research
Z80xxc! writes "The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy announced a "policy memorandum" today requiring any federal agency with over $100 million in R&D expenditures each year to develop plans for making all research funded by that agency freely available to the public within one year of publication in any peer-reviewed scholarly journal. The full memorandum is available on the White House website. It appears that this policy would not only apply to federal agencies conducting research, but also to any university, private corporation, or other entity conducting research that arises from federal funding. For those in academia and the public at large, this is a huge step towards free open access to publicly funded research." Edward Tufte calls the move timid and unimaginative, linking to a Verge article that explains that it's not quite as sweeping as the summary above sounds.
Or will the DOJ indict President Obama, too?
I have to disagree with this.I would think that it would depend on the type of research taking place.So far whenever outsied buisnesses etc get involved in fed funded reseach it ends up costing2-4 times more than it shoud and the research is usually something that is totaly non important
Now we just need to cut the journal publishers out of the system entirely, since they provide no useful or necessary service. Academic publishers are parasites that exploit the volunteer labor of scientists; we no longer require their services to spread articles around the world. We have the Internet, let's just use it and stop clinging to obsolete ideas like copyright.
Palm trees and 8
Its time for the Fed to build its own Voting software, and have inspections done voting day by the same people who do the Vegas casinos machine inspections.
Edward Tufte calls the move timid and unimaginative
Quoting other rabid AC: even more communism
</sarcasm>
What a joke. Any research receiving tax dollars should have any and all research associated with it available to the public. Don't want to make your research public, then don't take tax money.
The second article notes that agencies can withhold papers that for protection of economic or national security. While this limitation might be reasonable if the order covers all Government-sponsored research, it only covers that research which has been published. If by "published" the order means "published in a public-domain journal" and the aim is to simply bring Government-sponsored research out from behind journal paywalls, then the research had already been screened by the funding agency to make sure nothing that needed such protection was released. So, any "bad guys" would already have access to the information simply by having a subscription to the journals in question. Thus, this is, or should be, a non-issue. If "published" includes reports submitted to the Government as part of contract requirements (status and final reports), that could be more problematic as these are not all generally releaseable. However, I think what's being addressed here is the issue of bringing research out from behind paywalls, something that should not have any problems meeting "protection of security" issues and has been a long time coming.
Like, in 5 years, finish your plan which calls for a 20 year rollout of the information.
This doesn't DO anything.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
It's not perfect, but it's a big step forward. The first year of a paper's "life" is important, to be sure, but it doesn't mean the time after that is unimportant--I just submitted a paper with citations going back to 1970! So far the NIH open access policy has worked out pretty well. And the simple fact is that without some embargo period, the journal lobby would have gone insane ... and unfortunately, they've got enough of a voice in Congress to ensure that any requirement for instant open access would be shot down hard. This move, OTOH, will create some grumbling, but any attempt to reverse it by law will meet the same political fate that previous attempts to reverse the NIH policy have done, probably dying in committee without ever even making it to a floor vote. Which is, you know, a good thing. This may be a mediocre result for science, but Obama's a politician, not a scientist, and it's very good politics indeed. To quote another cliche, "half a loaf is better than none."
If there's anything I'm worried about, it's the usual list of "security" exemptions. There's some research which, for security reasons, never gets published in any journals, of course. (I've heard rumors that NSA has its own list of "journals" that are only ever seen by NSA mathematicians--they run exactly like journals in the outside world, just with a very limited audience. I have no idea if this is true, but it's believable given the sheer amount of brainpower NSA employs.) That's understandable, if annoying. But if an article is published in a journal that's available to the world as a whole, then claiming that keeping it paywalled contributes to "national, homeland, and economic security" in any way is absurd.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Why within a year and not immediately? (just don't dare give me the "national security" BS! If it would be of "classified nature", then it wouldn't be published in a journal that provides the paper for anyone willing to pay 30 bucks or so).
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Seriously, why do people care about this? Suppose this is successful and all publicly funded research is published. Will outside of the research community read the publications?
Rather than concentrating on getting publicly funded research published, why not try to ensure that the federal government collects a share of any profits made off of said research. I wonder what portion of the NSF's budget could be recuperated.
Exactly what the President promised us in his memorandum titled "Transparency and Open Government ".
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
National Security =/ Paywall. More dumb loopholes.
And open all comments. I'm tired of my anonymous comments going into a blackhole.
We've the right to stay anonymous.
What's next, requiring a Facebook account with teal name?
Nah, I'm sure it will work this time.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Researchers should post their data in sqlite files as well as flat text files. XML should be banned.
They'll just classify everything top secret and even less information will be released.
Who modded this up? Was it because it was denouncing copyright? Otherwise the comment seems to be a load of crap modded up by people who either don't actually deal with publishers or who only go through the motions of publishing papers without thinking about what they actually do. I do think there is a lot of problems with copyright and paywalls, and that journal publishers siphon too much money out of research projects, but saying they do so while not providing any service isn't going to help you find actual solutions to the problems.
The Constitution is out the door, the American taxpayer is under assault from the CONgressMEN, the budget will never balance except by raising taxes, there will be no accountability from our "elected" officials, corporate immunity with impunity dictating government policy to the detriment of the governed. All of it reigns supreme, but hey, how about them Ravens?
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
Who is responsible for disseminating information?
Generally speaking, the government program managers and researchers both want to see more public access to research results. I've seen contract (grant) negotiations falter over who gets to be responsible for publishing information. Some universities are adamant that the government not take on that role. Those universities also built the modern publishing industry and rely on controlling access to equipment and training. If professors expect to assume ownership of government financed equipment (generally against the law, but waived in most cases), they'll probably not object to charging a small fee to cover the costs of curating their publications. From a cynical insider perspective, the open publishing movement looks a lot like universities trying to simply acquire the profits of the publishing industry.
Good now there going to change an outrageous amount for a copy of said Data. I files a police report and they want to charge me 15 bucks for a copy i didn't know paper cost so much lol
Jack of all trades,master of none
spend your tax dollars developing it, and if its something useful its sold to suck the most profit out of your wallet by the now private company who developed it.
I like paying for stuff twice
This needs to be looked at carefully for any security issues.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The most Machiavellian government on Earth !
This will never happen.
Does the Department of Defense count under this? I guess with sequestration, their R&D budget is under $100 million now, right?
of saying "no brainer".
Calling something the obvious thing to do and practically risk-free hardly counts as criticism in my book.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I voted for Obama twice and would probably do so again, but "timid and unimaginative" seems to be a defining feature of his presidency.
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
While, as a researcher myself, I can understand some of the statements these free-every-result advocates make, even though some of them seem very extreme even to me, I don't think this issue is that easy as they might suggest. A lot of research gets some sort of federal funding, and while I'd agree that published papers during these research works should be made freely available, I wouldn't agree with making all research results freely accessible. A lot of spinoff companies would die, a lot of companies started based on university research would die, and a lot of opportunities could be lost. Of course, third parties might have their christmases extended when they could get every research result for free. I mean come on, most if not all of defence research is at least partially federally funded. Large parts of medical and bio-chemical research has federal funding. It's not that easy. That's why I generally say, that while I'd agree that published results (i.e. appeared in scientific journals and at conferences) of federally funded research should be made freely available, I would never say that all research results should be made freely accessible. Extremism never works out OK, not here, not ever.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.