As I’ve pointed out before, there are lots of holes in new initiatives to force academics to make their research (particularly that funded by taxpaying citizens) accessible to the public. Some “open access” journals don’t release the data for a year (an enternity in the fast-moving world of, say, molecular biology), while some universities allow faculty an “out” so they can publish in “closed access” journals like Science and Nature. Well, there’s a new pending bill (and a citizens’ petition) to reduce the waiting time to 6 months maximum and improve access in other ways. The bill is the Federal Research Public Access Act.
You can see and sign the petition, which apparently will be going to President Obama, here. You have to create an account, but that involves giving only your name, email address, and zip code, and a brief wait until you get an email verifying the account. This site says that as of today they need only 2300 signatures to reach the goal of 25,000. I’ve signed, and urge you to consider signing, too, particularly if you use or want to look at scientific articles.
Now I can’t guarantee that this will actually accomplish the needed changes, but what do you have to lose? Read the petition and the provisions of the Federal Research Public Access Act, and sign if you feel so moved.
This is what the petition requests:
Require free access over the Internet to scientific journal articles arising from taxpayer-funded research. We believe in the power of the Internet to foster innovation, research, and education. Requiring the published results of taxpayer-funded research to be posted on the Internet in human and machine readable form would provide access to patients and caregivers, students and their teachers, researchers, entrepreneurs, and other taxpayers who paid for the research. Expanding access would speed the research process and increase the return on our investment in scientific research. The highly successful Public Access Policy of the National Institutes of Health proves that this can be done without disrupting the research process, and we urge President Obama to act now to implement open access policies for all federal agencies that fund scientific research.
h/t: Peter
Reblogged this on Tafacory Ideas and commented:
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/#!/petition/require-free-access-over-internet-scientific-journal-articles-arising-taxpayer-funded-research/wDX82FLQ – Create an account and sign the petition please!
Signed the petition after making an account as well as put it on Fb and tweeted.
This is OK as far as it goes but doesn’t go far enough. See my comments here: http://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2012/05/31/free-access-to-taxpayer-funded-research-act-now/
Thanks. The thread with you and Mike was worth reading.
The odious, festering vampire ticks on knowledge that call themselves journal publishers have put forward an odious piece of bilge purporting to prove that this will bankrupt them.
My first thought: wow, you mean it’s that easy to just get rid of you? GO FOR IT.
Just today I found a paper I wanted to read. $25 for 1 day of access to that single paper. Wouldn’t even let me see a list of cites without paying. I agree, GO FOR IT.
Done and did!
BTW, just over 1700 remaining sigs needed when I signed minutes ago. I’m guessing the petition will have around 60,000 by June 19th. At least.
IZ DIS PETISHUN ONLY 4 HUMANZ?
This message has been sent from my Blackberry!
The petition is pretty weak, but still a step in the right direction and worth supporting, as long as it isn’t used as an excuse to oppose further measures. (E.g., “We’ve already reached a compromise!”)
I think we should have not only “open access” but freedom to noncommercially redistribute exact copies of all scientific papers, especially in the case of taxpayer-funded research, but additionally in all other cases as well.
Copyright exists to benefit society by promoting the creation of new works. It is important for artists, who profit directly from the distribution of copies of their work, but scientists do not write papers in order to make money from their redistribution. More to the point, scientists would continue writing scientific papers even if they were not copyrightable, so copyright does not serve a compelling public interest in the case of scientific papers. In fact, as used by the big journals, it harms the public interest.
If it was the only method of funding peer review (which I know isn’t free), then it may be a necessary evil, but I’m pretty sure we could come up with superior funding schemes if there was a need to do so.
The strange thing though… everyone I know that engages in peer review (me included) does it gratis. Perhaps some salaried people I know do it during business hours, but none of my colleagues get paid to review papers, to my knowledge. It’s just considered the kind of thing one does to make the system go.
I guess you need support to coordinate the process — to review the quality of the reviews… but maybe my experience is more typical of a “softer sciences” thing (or a smaller field)?
The reviewers are unpaid, but doesn’t the process as a whole cost some money? I assumed journals provided some service besides mere distribution, but if really all they do is distribute then I would say they’re even less important than I thought, given the ease of distribution online. 🙂
And if peer review is really free, that would eliminate the case for copyright of scientific papers entirely, in my mind. Copyright of science seems to be employed only in ways that hurt society, and scientists don’t even seem to benefit from (or care about) it.
Only the publishers win, and while they deserve credit and profit for the good work they’ve done in the past, their model seems obsolete now that we have the internet and their current greed (judging by their profit margins) is reason enough for them to be forced to reform. 😛
I’m not sure paying reviewers is a good idea unless it’s a flat rate or otherwise heavily regulated. Of course, a lot of reviewers are graduate students who could actually use the money. Besides, reviewing work in your field benefits you as a scientist.
Well, just to be clear, I’m certainly not campaigning to change that. 🙂 I was responding to the claim that journals are needed to act as gateways to ensure papers are reviewed and of high quality, and that this quality control is costly, so their high prices are justified. I think that even if it was costly, we could find other ways to fund it. And maybe it isn’t even costly at all, as you guys may have been alluding to…
Agreed. I don’t see where journals are doing a lot of the heavy lifting in regards to standards. After the initial vetting by the journal’s editorial staff (and likely no experts in the field among them) to have a manuscript peer-reviewed, that’s about it. Sure, the final decision to publish is theirs but they take their cues from the reviewers.
No sign of scientific thinking here, just jumping on a bandwagon out of self-interest. I am one of those odious festering vampire ticks – a journals publisher – and I have spent the better part of my only life doing it and believing in the value of what I do. For very little money, I might add. Less, in any case, than a successful scientist will demand to be paid.
So you want gold road open access, and you want it now. You don’t mind that you (or your funder) will have to pay for every word you publish henceforth. You don’t see any reason why that bill should be shared between authors, the societies that nourish their development, the universities that educate them, the researchers that need to read them (if they pass muster). You are unconcerned whether societies dependent on their journals to operate gradually lose all funding. You are happy to let peer reviewers continue to work for free, or maybe even willing to eliminate peer review. Do you care about predator OA journals and have a proposal for protecting scientists from them? Do you care about the distinction between curated quality and folksonomy? Do you think about the universities’ right to claim a monetary stake in what the researchers they employ produce, or the researcher’s right to own his or her own work? If not, why not?
This is no easy issue; it’s more of a cultural sea change, and actually one I do not oppose. I just want to see it created by a useful, considered, and documented dialog (like everything else we scientists do), and neither in haste nor in greed. Science is costly; if you think it should be free, explain why and HOW.
“You are happy to let peer reviewers continue to work for free”
Well, you certainly are. Or if not, when did you start paying them?
I think journals performed useful functions, but they seem to have started gouging people, which has generated a lot of resentment towards them. Also, the internet is making several functions of journals obsolete, and journals are acting like the RIAA/MPAA in trying to prop up their business model with increasing restrictions.
Science is costly, but I think most of the cost is of the research itself. After the papers are written and peer reviewed, they could go on a website. No need for journals at all, really, or so it seems to me. (Nobody thought Wikipedia could work without a traditional business model, but it has been a stunning success. I think a website to hold the world’s best scientific knowledge would be wonderful and a lot of people would jump at the opportunity to help create such a thing.)
Anyway, the post was specifically about taxpayer-funded research, which shouldn’t be owned by private universities or individuals, or locked up by journal publishers. If the public funded it, the public should own the result. It would be fair to reimburse publishers for their costs and provide them with a modest profit, but the public shouldn’t be charged $25 per article per day, which is crazy.
Funders of all kinds certainly have a right to benefit from their investment, but it’s a rare case when a funder pays for all the research in a study. Also, there’s no consensus on what the “result” is; funders pay for data but do they pay for the analysis and meta-analysis furnished by the researcher, and should the researcher then own the article as her own work? If the NEA funds an artist to create the sculpture, do I as taxpayer have the right to put it in my living room?
I don’t want to appear to be arguing against OA because that’s not what I believe, but I do see unintended consequences coming our way. As it stands now, when libraries and readers come out of the pay pool, funders will be paying for both the research _and_ its publication, which means less money for research or more tax payer dollars.
Ownerships is about property, and copyright is about controlling distribution (as I’m sure you know). Journals are in the business of controlling distribution, so the concern here is copyright and not ownership.
The scientist (or his employer) “owns” the initial paper by virtue of it being in his physical possession. It’s his property, and he can choose not to distribute it to anyone. But if he does distribute copies, he does not own those copies; the recipients do. The scientist (or his employer) only retains the copyright.
I do not believe scientists should be granted copyright on their papers at all. Copyright was intended to benefit society by creating a financial incentive to create artistic works that would enrich the public domain. Science is not art, and scientists do not do science because they expect to profit from a monopoly on the redistribution of their papers, so copyright does not seem to serve the public interest as far as science goes. (Scientists should be allowed to apply for patents, though, if their work was not publicly funded, as that may be a real motivator for some types of research.)
Regarding your example of an artist funded by the government to create a sculpture, you would almost certainly not be allowed to put it in your living room, because you would not own the sculpture. Again, it’s about copyright and not ownership. What you would (or should) have is the right to create and distribute copies of the sculpture, as that is the natural right of an individual in the absence of copyright. (You could put a copy in your living room.) A publicly funded artist should not retain the copyright to his work. The up-front funding was the motivation to do the work; copyright would only impoverish society in that case.
Copyright and ownership are not separable, and whatever the origin of copyright (I don’t claim to know), it does not now function as monetary incentive to create stuff. It does, however, protect the fruits of your labor from exploitation by those with no rights to it. Are you arguing here and below that everyone has a right to everything science produces?
As for that sculptor, if the government decided that every taxpayer was entitled to a free copy, the “original” would lose all monetary value and the artist’s ability to make a living from his art would be co-opted. As you point out there’s no direct analogy between a sculpture and an article except perhaps that demand for neither is universal and the benefits of both reach the wider public in indirect ways. Will giving up ownership improve that process in the long term? Don’t know. Do know that economics are wickedly complicated and a little tinkering with economic checks and balances can go a long irreversible way so we might want to analyze before acting.
it does not now function as monetary incentive to create stuff.
indeed.
I sure would like to have that 25-50.00 per article download they charge in some journals for my published articles.
strangely, I don’t get any of that money as a scientist.
I wonder who does…
Happy to talk about the economics of publishing journals with anyone at any point. It’s widely misunderstood and overly complex, but probably needs airing.
Given that this isn’t the right forum for that conversation, let me know if you’re seriously interested.
Marjorie, my points, and probably those of most of the people here, are about taxpayer funded science. Paying for it gives (or should give) the public the rights to it.
If a private enterprise, that receives no public funding, does research and makes discoveries that are or could be profitable, well, that’s business and they should have the right to make money from it or do whatever else they want with it. But, if the public pays for the research, or any part of it, then as far as I’m concerned the public should benefit from it, whether it’s monetarily or having free and immediate access to it.
Something that underlies all this is that if science wants to be popular with the public, and wants to make headway against the onslaught of religious mumbo jumbo, it (science) must be freely available to everyone. I or anyone else can easily get a bible and a lot of other religious crap for free anytime I want, but I’d have to pay out the ass to get a lot of scientific papers, even though my taxes and the taxes of other people already paid for the research and information in those papers.
“Are you arguing here and below that everyone has a right to everything science produces?”
No, but if a scientist chooses to publicly distribute his work (i.e. it isn’t being kept as a trade secret), I don’t see a reason to restrict further noncommercial redistribution by members of the public. Presumably the scientist has already been paid, and if he hasn’t, he’s not going to make money selling copies of his paper because scientists don’t work that way. (Sure, I know journals make money selling copies of scientists’ papers, but that model seems obsolete, or at least exploitative given the prices journals charge, thanks to the ease of electronic copying and distribution.)
“As for that sculptor, if the government decided that every taxpayer was entitled to a free copy, the ‘original’ would lose all monetary value and the artist’s ability to make a living from his art would be co-opted.”
People wouldn’t be entitled to free copies; but they should have the right to make or commission their own copies of publicly funded art. (They can’t claim the result as their own, of course, since creators always retain authorship.)
I don’t think that sculptors really make money by selling copies of publicly funded sculptures. Those are one-off pieces, funded and paid for in advance. If an artist creates a sculpture or painting and then tries to sell it (and/or copies of it) to prospective buyers, and the government (i.e. public) decides to buy a copy, the artist should of course retain his copyright, as the public is just another customer in that case. But if the public commissioned and funded the work up-front, that’s a different scenario, and there’s no need for copyright.
Similarly, if an author writes a book in hopes of selling copies, it is surely right to protect him from somebody creating their own copies and giving them away for free, because the author hasn’t been paid yet and depends on selling copies to make his money. But if the author has been paid up-front to write a book, you have a much harder time arguing that he also needs copyright. Of course the copyright should be part of the negotiation between the writer and commissioner. (The writer might accept a lower up-front payment in order to retain copyright, say.) But when the people are the funder, there should be no copyright (which is the same as saying that “the people should own the copyright”).
In response to your more general question, the way I see it is like this. There are three cases: either the work (by which I mean data and analysis both) is kept secret or it is published, and if it is published, then it might or might not be patented.
In all cases, the funder or employer, if any, receives what has been spelled out in his agreement with the scientist, be that the work itself, the patent rights, or something else. When the funder is the public, it should demand ownership of the work, copyright, and patent rights in exchange for the money.
If the work has been published, recipients of copies should have the right to further copy and redistribute them, as copyright on scientific work is counterproductive.
Scientists that receive funding or a salary wouldn’t need further motivation to do the research (i.e. copyright is not needed to motivate them).
Scientists without funding may research on their own if they expect to make money from commercialization. That implies that they’ll either keep their work a secret or they’ll publish and patent. Copyright is irrelevant to the scientist in both cases.
(I suppose it’s possible that a scientist could try to make a living by selling copies of his papers to other scientists, but I’ve never heard of such a thing and wouldn’t trust such a scientist. I doubt he could be successful.)
Scientists without funding may also research stuff just because that’s what they love doing. I don’t think those particular scientists feel a need to regulate the redistribution of their papers, though.
unders will be paying for both the research _and_ its publication, which means less money for research or more tax payer dollars.
Ok, let’s say that’s true.
do yo know how much it costs me to put up a copy of one of my papers online these days?
let me put it this way, it’s not as scary a prospect as you are painting it to be.
“Science is costly, but I think most of the cost is of the research itself. After the papers are written and peer reviewed, they could go on a website. No need for journals at all, really, or so it seems to me. (Nobody thought Wikipedia could work without a traditional business model, but it has been a stunning success. I think a website to hold the world’s best scientific knowledge would be wonderful and a lot of people would jump at the opportunity to help create such a thing.)”
I think it’s way past time for such a website. It could be called Science-pedia (or whatever) and could be THE place to go for scientific information. There could be categories for everything related to science, including but not limited to biographies of scientists (alive or dead), the history of science, the exposition of bogus science/fraud/myths, simple and in-depth explanations of theories/hypotheses, dictionaries of scientific terms, book reviews, categories that would appeal to children, and pretty much every scientific paper ever written.
Of course it would be a lot of work but like you said, a lot of people would jump at the opportunity to help create such a thing.
For very little money, I might add. Less, in any case, than a successful scientist will demand to be paid.
I don’t see how you feeling under-appreciated in your chosen career path and on top of that resentful of research scientists and their giant paychecks is relevant to the discussion.
You don’t mind that you (or your funder) will have to pay for every word you publish henceforth.
Which is not unlike paying huge sums for every color image which is an actual and not mere hypothetically prohibitive cost.
You are unconcerned whether societies dependent on their journals to operate gradually lose all funding.
Not sure what you’re claiming but it could use a citation.
You are happy to let peer reviewers continue to work for free, or maybe even willing to eliminate peer review.
Yes to the first (for reasons mentioned above) and the second scenario is a non sequitur.
Do you care about predator OA journals and have a proposal for protecting scientists from them?
There’s no monopoly on OA journals doing this. Elsevier fits both descriptions of a predator journal in that they price gouge and sell fraudulent science. This isn’t something new and it has been dealt with.
Do you care about the distinction between curated quality and folksonomy?
You say the sky is falling but first lets see your evidence that journals will go bankrupt if this bill passes followed by “folksonomy” replacing all good science.
“Do you think about the universities’ right to claim a monetary stake in what the researchers they employ produce, or the researcher’s right to own his or her own work? If not, why not?”
Marjorie, apparently you missed the part about “taxpayer-funded”. When the research is taxpayer funded it means that it’s the people of the country who paid for it, and that should mean that the people of the country own it, not the scientists or the university or the lab they work at or a publisher.
If I take a picture of something or write something or research something or discover something on my own dime, then I own it, but if the taxpayers of this country were to pay any money to enable me to do any of that then neither I nor a publisher should be able to claim ownership of it.
If any public money is used to fund a lab, a university, a research individual or team, or anything else, absolutely everything that money paid for should be openly, freely, and immediately available to the public.
Is thre any evidence that this “Marjorie” is actually in journal publishing and isn’t just trolling us? So far she’s making an excellent case for killing the parasitic publishers as soon as possible. The tipoff was starting with the implcation that reviewers are paid.
Maybe some reviewers are paid.
Maybe some are even bribed. Who knows?
For now at least I’m willing to take Marjorie’s word for it that she’s involved in publishing.
For very little money, I might add. Less, in any case, than a successful scientist will demand to be paid.
let’s visit your journal then.
which is it?
how much do you charge for per-article access?
do you have a time limit to allow for open access?
stop with the whinging and present some actual facts?
For all above who were kind enough to reply to some of my points, let me clarify that I write under my real name, that I did not claim that reviewers are paid (a very few are, but too few to count), and I am no more distressed that publishing is a less than lucrative way to use a Ph.D. than evolutionary biologists are distressed not to be paid like oncologists. I mention the money because of allegations about publishers feasting on the blood of scientists. A great many of those publishers are scientific societies, by the way. Of the journals I manage, 90% are owned by societies.
Again, I have no personal stake in preserving the subscription model or even the publishing industry. I am asking for in-depth analysis of what happens if we throw it all out the window via federal fiat. Granted I am not a big fan of federal fiats.
I appreciate Marjorie writing under her real name, and especially defending the viewpoint of the journals. Please engage her civilly and on point; I know her and she’s a lovely person.
–Jerry