This is an important step to the impending and necessary privatization of space exploration. This and the Xprize contest are important steps to the entry of privately funded efforts in space exploration. When that happens, the pace of development will, well, skyrocket! Our government has been at this for over 30 years and they're just now building their second space station and they need other countries' assistance to do it. They've been in an insufferable rut of short run shuttle missons for almost 20 of those years. If humanity's ambitions for space travel are left to the whims of Congressional budgetary discretion, we will be in for a long wait.
Actually, I found out that the copyright issue is VERY ambiguous. Timing seems to play into which version of an MS is copyrighted. It's all very confusing. Also, an author is allowed to post an article on their own site only until it is published on ours.
A national journal? Gah! What a hideous idea!
Just what we need. A megolithic bureacracy to 'filter' research findings. We have government departments that cannot account for millions of dollars in their budgets, abuse taxpayers, cause embarrasing accidents resulting in the loss of life and property among its many, many faults and you want them to arbitrate what science is worthy of publication and actually try to publish it??
EEEK!
This is true, to some extent. Technically, the journal owns the copyright to the published version. This is almost invariably a revised version of the original as a result of the peer review. Authors in our journal are free to put their version online. I'm not so sure if they are free to publish the article with other journals. The way we deal with it is that we will not publish an article that has already been published elsewhere and I imagine that this sort of 'gentleman's agreement' is honored elsewhere.
You may disagree, but the reason for this is to, again, protect revenues, which for a small association like the one for which I work, is VERY important. We have 3 revenue streams, membership dues, meetings and the Journal. Each one is vital to our continued survival.
Keep in mind, that with many of these journals, there are non-profit organizations benefiting. Certainly, for-profit publishers print and distribute them, but the associations are the ones doing the real work.
I work for a small physics association that publishes it's own journal. Though I don't work directly with the journal, we are small enough that I hear about most of the issues.
I can agree with the argument that information needs to be free (speech). However, to accuse associations that produce journals of being greedy is oversimplifying the situation. Scientists that don't agree with their association charging money for their journal to subsidize other programs need to take that up with their association. For us, the journal does provide a significant income to the association in the form of advertising revenue. It's actually amazing considering the puny market our members represent. The benefit is that our members pay less in annual dues and get more benefits. Incidentally, we don't charge separately for our journal, it's considered a benefit of membership, both online and in print. It's mainly seen as a forum for the exchange of information. Also, our situation is fairly unique in that a vast majority of physicists in this field are members and therefore the information is already getting to most of the people that need it.
That a group wants to separate and form their own journal is ultimately counterproductive. How do they think their own journal started? Do they really want to fracture the body of research that much more and make it that much more difficult to access current information? The centralized library of which they crow will hardly be timely. Increasing the number of journals will make current research harder to track down.
On the subject of NIH running a central library. Normally, I'm against government programs, but I suppose this may be one activity that the governmnent might actually do to promote some public good. I just don't think that it should be compulsory. Most of this material comes from private sources and for the government to mandate the 'freeing' of that material is a form of force and is unacceptable.
Inevitably, someone has already said what I am about to say, and I have neither the time nor the inclination to weed through over 200 comments to find them. Few people will read this so late in the day, but whatever. I feel I must vent.
First of all: To call Libertarianism selfish, as so many have already pointed out, is to totally miss the point. There is nothing that I have seen that says 'be a selfish bastard.' To the contrary, Libertarianism promotes private philanthropy. What better way to reward worthy causes and better yet, effective organizations, than through an open market economy.
Let's take welfare as an example. Until its inception, the poor had been taken care of by churches and other private groups. Has the government done a better job? I don't know the numbers, but I'll bet that there are more poor people and that they are relatively poorer than before. By poor, I don't merely mean financially, but spiritually as well. Why is that my wife and I make a combined income of over US$70k and we cannot justify the purchase of a 30+ inch TV and I see news reports of some welfare queen in her cinderblock apartment with a monster sony flickering in the background. Hello!? But I digress. Why is that poor people seemed to have a greater sense of pride and well..sense?
Why aren't Libertarian Techies more generous with there new found riches? First of all, we don't get to keep that much of them! Second, why should I give to the United Way if I'm already forced to give 30% of my income to the government to do the same things. That's duplication of effort. Given the choice, my money would go to the private charities, but I'm not given a choice.
Libertarianism is founded on the concept that every person has great potential to be a good, generous, selfless individual if given the opportunity. We aren't given that opportunity. We have a government that tells us what to do, where to do it, wipes our nose and takes a huge chunk of our earnings for the privilege. No thanks.
Self interest doesn't have to mean raping the land. How is it in a company's self interest to destroy a resource? That's bad business! Plus, government intervention isn't all that effective at stopping it. A private organization, staffed by interested individuals and funded by private citizens without a conflict of interest (Like Greenpeace or Sierra CLub) would be far more effective at ferreting out such issues. The government should merely be a vehicle for conflict resolution, not a crusader.
Ok... I could go on... But I won't...
hylander
Slashdot Mirror
This is an important step to the impending and necessary privatization of space exploration. This and the Xprize contest are important steps to the entry of privately funded efforts in space exploration. When that happens, the pace of development will, well, skyrocket! Our government has been at this for over 30 years and they're just now building their second space station and they need other countries' assistance to do it. They've been in an insufferable rut of short run shuttle missons for almost 20 of those years. If humanity's ambitions for space travel are left to the whims of Congressional budgetary discretion, we will be in for a long wait.
Actually, I found out that the copyright issue is VERY ambiguous. Timing seems to play into which version of an MS is copyrighted. It's all very confusing. Also, an author is allowed to post an article on their own site only until it is published on ours.
A national journal? Gah! What a hideous idea! Just what we need. A megolithic bureacracy to 'filter' research findings. We have government departments that cannot account for millions of dollars in their budgets, abuse taxpayers, cause embarrasing accidents resulting in the loss of life and property among its many, many faults and you want them to arbitrate what science is worthy of publication and actually try to publish it?? EEEK!
This is true, to some extent. Technically, the journal owns the copyright to the published version. This is almost invariably a revised version of the original as a result of the peer review. Authors in our journal are free to put their version online. I'm not so sure if they are free to publish the article with other journals. The way we deal with it is that we will not publish an article that has already been published elsewhere and I imagine that this sort of 'gentleman's agreement' is honored elsewhere. You may disagree, but the reason for this is to, again, protect revenues, which for a small association like the one for which I work, is VERY important. We have 3 revenue streams, membership dues, meetings and the Journal. Each one is vital to our continued survival. Keep in mind, that with many of these journals, there are non-profit organizations benefiting. Certainly, for-profit publishers print and distribute them, but the associations are the ones doing the real work.
I work for a small physics association that publishes it's own journal. Though I don't work directly with the journal, we are small enough that I hear about most of the issues.
I can agree with the argument that information needs to be free (speech). However, to accuse associations that produce journals of being greedy is oversimplifying the situation. Scientists that don't agree with their association charging money for their journal to subsidize other programs need to take that up with their association. For us, the journal does provide a significant income to the association in the form of advertising revenue. It's actually amazing considering the puny market our members represent. The benefit is that our members pay less in annual dues and get more benefits. Incidentally, we don't charge separately for our journal, it's considered a benefit of membership, both online and in print. It's mainly seen as a forum for the exchange of information. Also, our situation is fairly unique in that a vast majority of physicists in this field are members and therefore the information is already getting to most of the people that need it.
That a group wants to separate and form their own journal is ultimately counterproductive. How do they think their own journal started? Do they really want to fracture the body of research that much more and make it that much more difficult to access current information? The centralized library of which they crow will hardly be timely. Increasing the number of journals will make current research harder to track down.
On the subject of NIH running a central library. Normally, I'm against government programs, but I suppose this may be one activity that the governmnent might actually do to promote some public good. I just don't think that it should be compulsory. Most of this material comes from private sources and for the government to mandate the 'freeing' of that material is a form of force and is unacceptable.
Inevitably, someone has already said what I am about to say, and I have neither the time nor the inclination to weed through over 200 comments to find them. Few people will read this so late in the day, but whatever. I feel I must vent.
First of all: To call Libertarianism selfish, as so many have already pointed out, is to totally miss the point. There is nothing that I have seen that says 'be a selfish bastard.' To the contrary, Libertarianism promotes private philanthropy. What better way to reward worthy causes and better yet, effective organizations, than through an open market economy.
Let's take welfare as an example. Until its inception, the poor had been taken care of by churches and other private groups. Has the government done a better job? I don't know the numbers, but I'll bet that there are more poor people and that they are relatively poorer than before. By poor, I don't merely mean financially, but spiritually as well. Why is that my wife and I make a combined income of over US$70k and we cannot justify the purchase of a 30+ inch TV and I see news reports of some welfare queen in her cinderblock apartment with a monster sony flickering in the background. Hello!? But I digress. Why is that poor people seemed to have a greater sense of pride and well..sense?
Why aren't Libertarian Techies more generous with there new found riches? First of all, we don't get to keep that much of them! Second, why should I give to the United Way if I'm already forced to give 30% of my income to the government to do the same things. That's duplication of effort. Given the choice, my money would go to the private charities, but I'm not given a choice.
Libertarianism is founded on the concept that every person has great potential to be a good, generous, selfless individual if given the opportunity. We aren't given that opportunity. We have a government that tells us what to do, where to do it, wipes our nose and takes a huge chunk of our earnings for the privilege. No thanks.
Self interest doesn't have to mean raping the land. How is it in a company's self interest to destroy a resource? That's bad business! Plus, government intervention isn't all that effective at stopping it. A private organization, staffed by interested individuals and funded by private citizens without a conflict of interest (Like Greenpeace or Sierra CLub) would be far more effective at ferreting out such issues. The government should merely be a vehicle for conflict resolution, not a crusader.
Ok... I could go on... But I won't... hylander