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California Bill Would Mandate Open Access To Publicly Funded Research
ectoman writes "This week, advocates of open access to publicly funded research are keeping an eye on California's Taxpayer Access to Publicly Funded Research Act (AB 609), which could soon find its way to the California State Senate. The bill requires the final copy of any peer-reviewed research funded by California tax dollars to be made publicly accessible within 12 months of publication. If passed, the legislation would become the first state-level law mandating this kind of access. Opensource.com is featuring a collection of articles on open access publishing, which you can read while you await the verdict on AB 609."
We pay for it, why should some private party reap the rewards?
I love the idea of research being available when funded by public resources. I always hear about research that is being performed, but I never know where to go to read the final report. If I do find a report it usually costs money.
Free and unlimited access to publicly funded research should already, without a law to enforce it, be a fact. So it is here in Europe, at least.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
If this passes, I would like to apply for a $1 grant even though I am not in California. Some publishers allow open access only when required by law and this would give me leverage. (As an academic it is in my interests to have my articles as easily accessible as possible. I never see a dime from the paywalls on my published articles.)
I would like to see the next step be that products, medicines, and continued research utilizing public research as a starting point should all be prohibited from utilizing patents.
Scientists always talk about how hard it is to get grant money. If there's money to be had in California, there will be people doing research there, regardless of publishing restrictions.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
Explain to me, how it is an (R) problem when the (D) party controls just about everything state wide, and has controlled the legislature for more than a decade. (R)s have held the governor's office here and there, but were mostly RINO neocons like Wilson and Arnold . The last relatively "conservative" governor was Dukemejian.
I love it when liberals blame others for the mess they have created for themselves. California gets what it deserves, and the (D)s can blame nobody but themselves.
Oh, BTW, I'm Libertarian so don't toss me into the (R) lot. If the (R)s had been in office as long as the (D)s it would be just as screwed up as it is now, just from different things. Out system best performs when it is socially liberal, fiscally conservative, basically Libertarian.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.
--Robert A. Heinlein, Life-Line (1939)
Academic publishers have had a very long and profitable run, and are now fighting back against the free flow of information that they once thrived upon. They are fighting a losing game.
Publication has now become essentially cost free, the only costs being those to maintain the online information resources, and the time invested to review. Since reviewers were never paid in the past, and because data storage and access are incredibly inexpensive, and becoming even less expensive, and because finding and researching subjects is far faster and more convenient in digital form, the old paper journal format will eventually pass away.
As a result, the only option for the old publishing industry is to try and legislate protections for its business model. Ultimately this too will fail, as economic and other considerations make the old model unsustainable.
I work at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), a large (4000-person) Department of Energy research lab that is, unfortunately but understandably, often confused with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. We get lots of funding from DoE, of course, but also from other federal and state agencies.
Almost all of the work we do is published in the form of "LBNL reports", most of which are freely available, although hard to find. Much of the work is later published in scientific journals, and it is sometimes problematic that an LBNL report of the work already exists: some of my colleagues have had papers rejected on the grounds that the work was already 'published' as an LBNL report. (That's bad because LBNL reports are not usually peer reviewed, except for an internal review process). Perhaps because of that, LBNL does not make the LBNL report database searchable by outsiders. However, most (maybe all?) of the reports are supposedly available through the Science.gov portal. But the search facilities there are so primitive that I've never been able to find what I'm looking for there (for instance, even searching on my own name plus a few words from one of my report titles doesn't work reliably, turning up hundreds of hits that may or may not include my report).
Fortunately, the search engine of your choice is probably adequate. If you're looking for work that was done here at LBNL, simply putting "LBNL report" at the start of your search request will probably work. For instance, Google [LBNL report building electric load] and you will find a bunch of reports on analyzing electricity data from buildings, usually from the relevant LBNL department website. A lot of this work was also published in journals that are behind paywalls, but the same content is here for free. Often there is additional material that had to be cut in order to make it into the journal, so sometimes the reports are better than the papers. On the other hand, the papers do benefit from modifications due to reviewer comments, and are often prepared with more care, so sometimes the papers are better. I think several other federal agencies have similar policies.
So if you find a journal paper that you're interested in but can't read because it's behind a paywall, and the authors work for the government, then try searching on the author names and a few of the words from the title and add "report" to your search (or "LBNL report" or "NASA report" or whatever). You have a pretty good chance of finding what you want.
Reviews are unpaid and (in my field) usually anonymous. I think *some* journal editorships are paid, but I know not all of them are.
There are two ways for research professors to benefit financially _as_ professors: getting grants, and moving up the university hierarchy. Both of these are likelier if one's papers are (1) in high-status journals and (2) much cited. The not-open high-status journals are leaning on (1) really hard to prevent everyone posting all their papers to make (2) easier.
There's a slower longer feedback in that we need work to be well reviewed and available for the field to progress; and of course some people in some fields can work for private industry, which *might* not want work published, but usually that keeps it out of journals too.
A similar bill exists at the federal level, Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act of 2013 (H.R. 708 and S. 350). It actually requires any research papers are in the public domain within 6 months of publication, which I think is great and long overdue. If public money paid for it, it belongs to the public! I contacted my congressmen's office to voice my support, and made the suggestion that research papers also be required to be available in an open format (such as plain ASCII text or OpenDocument where appropriate) to make sure research can be archived properly, but other than that, it is a short and simple bill with a good objective. Highly recommend everyone start hammering their representatives to get it done.