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All European Scientific Articles To Be Freely Accessible By 2020 (eu2016.nl)
An anonymous reader shares a report on EU2016: All scientific articles in Europe must be freely accessible as of 2020. EU member states want to achieve optimal reuse of research data. They are also looking into a European visa for foreign start-up founders. And, according to the new Innovation Principle, new European legislation must take account of its impact on innovation. These are the main outcomes of the meeting of the Competitiveness Council in Brussels on 27 May. Under the presidency of Netherlands State Secretary for Education, Culture and Science Sander Dekker, the EU ministers responsible for research and innovation decided unanimously to take these significant steps.Many questions remain unanswered. For instance, it is not clear whether the publishers would be forced to make their papers available for free or whether EU will only allow scientists who are happy to abide by the rules to publish papers. We should have more details on this soon.
The EU has no right to force me to make my papers publicly available. The EU neither respects people's rights nor freedom. Fuck Europe.
The source links to the PDF wit the full text.:
Open access
Open access means that scientific publications on
the results of research supported by public and
public-private funds must be freely accessible to
everyone.
Nothing unclear about that.
http://english.eu2016.nl/binar...
OK! Nothing like working for free!
... everyone can work for free!
Equal access to poverty for all!
All ethnicities, all cultures, short people, old people
They're blinding me with science!
How did actual politicians come up with something this wise and uncorrupted? It boggles the mind.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
In Spain, new public funded research makes mandatory to publish research with Open Access, but only if your research project pays for its publication. In practise, we pay to publish it in journals with no Open Access option, and then publish an edited version of the same paper with the same content but different format in some University repository with Open Access. Many pay journals allow to do this as long as you don't publish their edited version of the paper.
Who is gonna host all that data and for how long ?
Do these reasons only count for the data. Or can they be abused to enforce the old way of doing things.
I support the intention behind this directive. There are, however, some gray areas and some unintended consequences.
>> publications on the results of research supported by public and public-private funds
> Nothing unclear about that.
It's not that bad, but there are significant gray areas. Here are a few:
A) Most importantly, most "publications on the results of research" that they intend to cover are financed by universities. Most universities get at least some government funding, if only 5% of their budget. So figure a school is privately funded 95%, and gets 5% of of it's budget from government grants for providing certain types of education. Is the institution barred from recouping some of the costs of the research? Maybe so, maybe not.
B) This one is complicated, but I have direct experience with it and the new rule seems to ban a system which has worked extremely well. The last place I worked was an "extension" office. Funding was very interesting. We had world-class experts and facilities in the fields we covered, and we did two different but related things with our experts and facilities. Companies like Boeing or Ford would pay us to do testing and research for them. In a year, we might get $80 million dollars in contracts and have $30 million in direct costs for those contracts. We'd spend $20 million on training programs, mostly having our experts train first responders. That leaves $30 million "profit" which we'd give to the state, since it was a state agency. The state would turn around and appropriate back $10 million for our facilities expenses. So in the end, our agency received NEGATIVE $20 million from the taxpayers. We paid the tax payers, from fund received for contracts and also provided free training for first responders). We were giving money TO taxpayers, not getting money from tax payers, right? (Which is awesome, IMHO.) Well, after we gave the taxpayers $30 million, they gave us back $10 million for our facilities costs, so on paper we received taxpayer funds. Does that mean that the testing we did for the private companies would have to be open to the public for free? it would seem so. Which would suck, because Boeing and Ford aren't wouldn't keep paying us $80 million to test their new ideas if the results are immediately available to their competitors. Those contracts had been paying for our public services, such as first responder training, as well as paying a "profit" to taxpayers, but seemingly that would no longer be allowed.
C) A more common scenario, given the exact wording used, might be the following. It says "publications on ..." have to be open (not the research itself, but any publications discussing the results). So my boss asks me to write up an analysis of some new government data on cell phone use amongst college students and correlate it with our in in-house data, in order to make suggestions for our business strategy over the next 24 months. My analysis would be "on the results of" government research. Therefore we can't keep our analysis private?
the results of research which was funded
Again, it's not necessarily a bad idea, but there are some issues, some gray areas and some areas that would be affected which might not be the intent of the supporters.
Does this include secret military research? Because if not, all research will be illegitimately reclassified as military secrets to avoid revealing it.
Freely accessible is not the same as free.
If it costs a million Euros then it's still freely accessible compared to not being for sale at all.
I can't say I've been closely following the events of the Brexit, the situation in Greece, or any of the other threats to the EU breaking up. But what is the likelihood of there even being an EU governing body to enforce this by 2020?
There is more information on this local source:
https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/a....
- There will be an "Innovations deal". They will attempt to scrub current rules for "innovation impeding" laws.
- Evaluation of the last EU research program, claims that on average every Euro invested in Research created 11 Euro of wealth.
- The new EU research project (Horizons 2020) is the biggest ever with 70 billion euro.
Yes, but don't forget that your institute is sitting at the summit of an academic pyramid funded by... taxpayer money. You are just giving back.
Makes more sense, then.
If you're in the US you don't have to worry about any of this; all the money is going to building and maintaining that wall.
(I assume that you're in the US since you consider the case where the government might only contribute 5% of a university's budget.)
Second order effects like the school's general fund getting a pinch government money are irrelevant. The question is whether the research is being directly payed for, in full or in part, by a government grant (e.g. NSF, NIH, DOE, DARPA). US researchers already have to state government funding sources in publications, so there's not much ambiguity about whether research is being funded by a government grant. Look at the acknowledgement section of a research article and you'll see something like
Work at UCSB was supported by the US Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences (BES) under Award No. DE-SC0010689. Computational resources were provided by the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, which is supported by the DOE Office of Science under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231.
(Taken from a random physics article.)
It's not that complicated.
Beacause it has the word public in it, which is a euphonium for COMMUNIST.
--
roman_mir
> The question is whether the research is being directly payed for, in full or in part, by a government grant
I have a hard time thinking of ANY organization that doesn't make "adjustments" to what expense is paid for by what money, since that's an entirely imaginary concept. The government gives the school some money, which goes into the school's checking account. Students give the school the some money, which goes into the school's checking account. The school writes a check for some new furniture. Did the government pay for the furniture or did the students? The answer is entirely in the book-keeper's imagination.
An example from this week:
Right now I'm buying a house. I'm a bit short on the down payment I'd like to have. My take-home pay is about $8K, and my bills+groceries etc is about $8K. Clearly there's money from my salary that I can add to the down payment.
I'm getting a big check from another source, but I'm not allowed to use that big check for the down payment. Darn.
So I'll use the big check to pay all of my bills, groceries etc., and put 100% of my salary to pay the down payment.
You'll notice that has PRECISELY the same effect as using the big check for the down payment. All the money goes into my checking account and it all comes out of my checking account, so "which money pays for what" is entirely, 100% in my imagination, it's what I choose to "label" it.
If you're in the US you don't have to worry about any of this; all the money is going to building and maintaining that wall.
And I hate to say it, but the block layers will be Mexicans.
give all the reasearch to private companies and let them chage the tax payer for the privilige of access to it !
Case B seems straightfoward: if you are not publishing then you are not required to do so. If you are publishing then it must be open access.
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
This has indeed been a trend in recent H2020 programme calls, and it is often mentioned in project proposals. It is also worth mentioning that there are several models of "Open Access"
That said, tesearchers and research projects are often evaluated in terms of scientific dissemination and publications (as well as other aspects such as social and economic impact, IPR, etc.) but not all "publications" are equal. Writing down a manuscript and uploading it into some repository (to comply) is not considering that papers need to be peer reviewed, edited, etc. and published in some e.g. journal, magazine or conferences (IEEE,...) which has often an "impact factor" (IF). The impact factor, publisher and journal reputation (and quantile, and other metrics) is what often defines the "quality" of the paper.
While regular papers are often "free" (as in beer) with the exception of overlength pages and similar, new policies for Open Access can mean that the researcher has to pay e.g. 1000-3000 € to publish the paper in open access (to account for the loss of revenue for the publisher). In a 2-3 year h2020 project, a given partner can aim at publishing, say, 3-4 journal papers so that means "extra cost" of 3000-12000 €. That extra cost needs to be considered in the eligible budget (until now only direct costs -usually manpower-, equipment, subcontracting, travel, overheads, etc.).
TL;DR the cost of publishing in Open Access while still having publishers behind (with peer-review and IF) needs to be reflected in the budget. Since budgets have often upper bounds, this implies less effort or equipment or travelling or other expenses associated to the project
It's not unreasonable to pay for editing/publishing in a high-profile journal that also has to assume bandwidth and other costs. For most research, having to pay for that service (instead of submitting as "closed access") is a non-issue. Simply put, if someone has a major project and wants to publish in a prestigious journal (say, Nature) they can usually find 2-3000 for publication (even 2-3 times that would not be a problem for a career-changing publication). This money is peanuts for a big science project of the kind that get published there anyway and it can also be added in the budget. You can ask your funding to cover publication costs, obviously.
As a taxpayer, I don't see anything gray about that: your research is funded by the public, you deliver your results to the public. If you don't want that, slash your budget to what you can pay by yourself.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
The facility performing the test communicates it to the client. The research on their new products idea IS published, as the word is used in law. To "publish" something is to communicate it to another.
A better rule might be if it were "offered to the public", the price must be minimal.
What are you talking about? Given the topic, I'm guessing that you mean energy companies might get subsidies for their solar-electric programs, where they spend considerably less on solar than the subsidy amount, and the same company might also be involved in oil, meaning the solar subsidy would in effect offset costs on the oil side?
Typically, when people mention "oil company subsidies" they mean to confuse the reader by effectively claiming that recognizing expenses, as all companies are required to do under General Accepted Accounting Principles, is somehow unique to the energy industry and of some special advantage to the company. In fact the opposite is true - scams like Enron work by NOT recognizing expenses, thereby falsely inflating profits (and the executives go to jail when caught).
Those are the second order effects that I talked about, and they're irrelevant for this question. If you win a grant, then yes the school does take a cut, but there is money earmarked for an individual researcher. If you don't win a grant, then no money is earmarked for you. The question is: do you win a grant or not. That's it.
You're making this more complicated than it really is. Let's take your logic a step further. You argue that because all the money is sitting in the school's bank account, then all the school's money has a bit of government grant mixed in since the source of the money is indistinguishable. But the money sitting in a bank is indistinguishable too. The money from the university just sits in a big pool inside the bank -- along with the money from all other bank accounts, so by your logic all checking accounts in the bank also have government grant money in them too! In fact, if you and your neighbor use the same bank, then your money is your neighbor's money and vice versa because it's all sitting in the same pool inside the bank! If your neighbor writes a check to someone at another bank, then some of your money is now in everyone's account at the other bank too! Declaring that money is distinguishable is a useful and self-consistent construct, just like money as a whole is a useful and self-consistent construct. Just go with it.
My neighbor and I don't mix our bank accounts together, and I doubt you mix yours with yours with your neighbor.
At my last job, I did devops for the entire organization.
The organization had many different programs, including one funded by a DHS grant (cybersecurity classes). My work benefitted ALL programs, including the one program funded by the DHS grant. Were the things I did work under a federal grant, and therefore subject to 50,000 pages of federal regulation ? That was an actual, real problem.
> definition "To circulate, distribute, or print information for the public at large."
Let's try it and see. This directive says that if it's published, it must be made available to the public. Let's try substituting in that definition of "publish":
Any report circulated, distributed, or printed for the public at large must be made available to the public.
I'm not sure that makes sense, seems redundant. If that's what they mean, they should say that. It's certainly not clearly obvious that they mean "anything made available to public at large must be made available to the public at large". If so, I suggest they add "anything printed on paper must be printed on paper".
It's a... brass instrument for communist? I must admit, that's a new euphemism for me!