This is a breath of fresh air for me, because as we’ve seen time and again, often we get the press release on a paper, but not the paper itself, as it is often hidden behind journal membership rules or a paywall.
From an AIP and AAU press release:
Expert panel calls on US research agencies to develop policies for providing free public access to federally sponsored research results
WASHINGTON, D.C., January 12, 2010 — An expert panel of librarians, library scientists, publishers, and university academic leaders today called on federal agencies that fund research to develop and implement policies that ensure free public access to the results of the research they fund “as soon as possible after those results have been published in a peer-reviewed journal.”
The Scholarly Publishing Roundtable was convened last summer by the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology, in collaboration with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Policymakers asked the group to examine the current state of scholarly publishing and seek consensus recommendations for expanding public access to scholarly journal articles.
The various communities represented in the Roundtable have been working to develop recommendations that would improve public access without curtailing the ability of the scientific publishing industry to publish peer-reviewed scientific articles.
The Roundtable’s recommendations, endorsed in full by the overwhelming majority of the panel (12 out of 14 members), “seek to balance the need for and potential of increased access to scholarly articles with the need to preserve the essential functions of the scholarly publishing enterprise,” according to the report.
“I want to commend the members of the Roundtable for reaching broad agreement on some very difficult issues,” said John Vaughn, executive vice president of the Association of American Universities, who chaired the group. “Our system of scientific publishing is an indispensible part of the scientific enterprise here and internationally. These recommendations ensure that we can maintain that system as it evolves and also ensure full and free public access to the results of research paid for by the American taxpayer.”
The Roundtable identified a set of principles viewed as essential to a robust scholarly publishing system, including the need to preserve peer review, the necessity of adaptable publishing business models, the benefits of broader public access, the importance of archiving, and the interoperability of online content.
In addition, the group affirmed the high value of the “version of record” for published articles and of all stakeholders’ contributions to sustaining the best possible system of scholarly publishing during a time of tremendous change and innovation.
To implement its core recommendation for public access, the Roundtable recommended the following:
- Agencies should work in full and open consultation with all stakeholders, as well as with OSTP, to develop their public access policies.
- Agencies should establish specific embargo periods between publication and public access.
- Policies should be guided by the need to foster interoperability.
- Every effort should be made to have the Version of Record as the version to which free access is provided.
- Government agencies should extend the reach of their public access policies through voluntary collaborations with non-governmental stakeholders.
- Policies should foster innovation in the research and educational use of scholarly publications.
- Government public access policies should address the need to resolve the challenges of long-term digital preservation.
- OSTP should establish a public access advisory committee to facilitate communication among government and nongovernment stakeholders.
In issuing its report, the Roundtable urged all interested parties to move forward, beyond “the too-often acrimonious” past debate over access issues towards a collaborative framework wherein federal funding agencies can build “an interdependent system of scholarly publishing that expands public access and enhances the broad, intelligent use of the results of federally-funded research.”
The report, as well as a list of Roundtable members, member biographies, and the House Science and Technology Committee’s charge to the group, can be found at:
http://www.aau.edu/policy/scholarly_publishing_roundtable.aspx?id=6894
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Expert panel calls on US research agencies to develop policies for providing free public access to federally sponsored research results.
Why does this not appear to be extraordinary? Access to what we pay for?? Hallelujah!
The Public Library of Science (PLoS) did not endorse the AIP round table recommendations. They seem to prefer their own existing system with an expanded role and their non-profit organization being able to charge each author a fee…
01/12/2010
Statement from Mark Patterson: Why PLoS has not signed the Report of the Scholarly Publishing Roundtable
http://www.aau.edu/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=10050
While I’m more familiar with commercial magazines than peer reviewed journals, I do have an understanding of both. Given a paper, the magazine or journal has an investment to make before it can be published. The submitted paper must be edited, reviewed for edited foobars, typeset, etc. Additionally, a peer reviewed article must be reviewed, adding more cost – even if reviewers are not paid. I fully concur that the final product to be published by a magazine should be the property of that magazine, subject to the contractual agreement between publisher and original author – which is usually right of first publication. After all, by this time, it’s a joint effort by both parties.
After that, the final published product is still partly the property of the publisher but it is based substantially upon the original work by the author. Hence, republishing is not acceptable without a new contract between both parties. However, the original submitted material is the exclusive property of the author(s) and after the first publishing, unless there are additional portions to the contract, that should be free and clear of obligation.
Currently, there is ArXiv (archive) web based publication of papers. It is a good source for many papers submitted to peer reviewed journals although it is not peer reviewed and it appears possible to submit a copy of just about anything there for onlline publishing. Also, various government groups and university groups tend to maintain a list of publications with their own full copies or preliminary version copies available for free download, regardless of whether the actual publication charges for web downloads. Evidently, ArXiv publication is not permitted by all journals but there does seem to be a distinct difference in the number of times a paper is referenced by others between those papers posted on ArXiv and those papers that are not posted there. And, having one’s paper referenced by others does matter.
From practical matters, there is a good reason for that. There’s a tremendous number of peer review journals that are dependent only upon the sale of their journals and access online to those journals. They have no advertising. Even having a University library subscribe to all of them is impractical except for megaschools. An individual cannot afford all the subscriptions. In many fields, rather than one or two journals, there are now many that may publish a particular paper from a particular discipline. In climate science, it’s far worse as it is multidiscipline. Just reading abstracts cannot guarantee the suitability of any particular paper for one’s own research. It’s important to be able to quickly read the entire paper to ascertain suitability and one could spend their entire research grant obtaining large numbers of unsuitable papers based upon merely reading the abstracts.
Consequently, having the requirement that research papers paid for by public funding be available for free download is a good idea. What’s more, all research published for use by others in peer reviewed papers should be required to publish all of their raw data, processed data, methodology and programs to facilitate replication of the experiment by others. At least this should be required of any that are involved with public policy in any way. Anything less tends to thwart the application of the scientific method.
It’s about time the AIP actually did something constructive instead of involving themselves in using my membership dues to promote political agendas that I disapprove of.
‘Mr. GoreBullTrade, tear down that paywall.’
“….seek to balance the need for and potential of increased access to scholarly articles with the need to preserve the essential functions of the scholarly publishing enterprise,”
There were two who did not vote for this.
Be interesting to know their views.
Maybe peer reviewed journals should required to pay royalties for the publication of papers based on research financed with public funds?
Tony Hansen (22:21:08) :
“There were two who did not vote for this.
Be interesting to know their views”
If you follow the link Anthony provided above
http://www.aau.edu/policy/scholarly_publishing_roundtable.aspx?id=6894
There are links to statements from the “dissenters”
This is a step in the right direction, but falls far short of what’s required.
I can’t understand why it has taken so long for free access to be available, as it is hard to defend the notion that the public must pay to view research which was already funded by them. Providing other countries are willing to sign up to reciprocal agreements the books will be roughly balanced.
The biggest problem with the agreement is that it fails to mandate full disclosure of the underlying information required to make the results reproducible and it does nothing to change the ‘mainstream scientific consensus’ approach to the peer review process, which makes it hard for alternative ideas to be published.
The Internet makes the administrative burden of providing this information streamlined and cheap and full disclosure will go a long way to restoring public confidence in science.
Scientific publishing is a multi-billion dollar indutry, so expect some opposition and lobbying from the main players. In addition the impact factor is determined by private companies wih strong links to major publishers (e.g. Thomson-Elsevier). Most scientist will be scared to death to start even the minimum confrontation with those giants, that is why goverment requests and guidelines are necessary and welcome.
There are however some exceptions: All the EGU (European Geosciences Union) journals are open access and open to dicussion: http://www.egu.eu/publications/list-of-publications.html
The pretty clear solution to this is an online ‘National Science Library’ that pays a subscription to all journals deemed ‘in the public interest’.
Any taxpayer can gain access to online membership and can read the papers there.
Easy, if the political will is there……..
Agencies should establish specific embargo periods between publication and public access.
That part sounds troubling. I can understand journals wanting to remain the paid providers of their “product” for awhile, and having online access with internet ads for their revenue may seem too… plebeian, for some. But how much work is done based on stuff that is just published? Will the embargoes be so long, that stuff will be published based on chains of subsequent citations to original materials that still haven’t been released?
Will the original data and related be part of these embargoes? How long will the work be out there before others have the chance to challenge it based on the data and methods?
“”
Matt Beck (21:37:50) :
Be very, very careful what you wish for here. A move like this would completely change the regulatory regime obtaining over American businesses and industries, and not always in invariably beneficial ways. I don’t see how one could possibly limit the provisions of the measure to groups doing only publicly funded “climate science,” or some other such innocuous thing, especially after the tort lawyers get a hold of it. What will happen to corporations doing proprietary research (such as pharmaceutical companies, aviation companies, and defense contractors) who also happen to take public monies? Will they be forced to disclose their research as well? In that case, it is quite likely that all research capital will go private, with the result being that research will proceed basically unregulated. This would be a libertarian’s dream, but it is simply not workable in reality. If you think you’ve seen unethical business behavior before, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
“”
It’s not quite that bad. Checkout the patent office. It’s purpose is to provide the inventor/company with legal standing in a court of law to enforce a government sanctioned monopoly on an idea for a product. That monopoly is quite limited in time duration and it is a quid pro quo ? (tit for tat) exchange of monopoly protection for revealing details of the inner workings of the product that eventually permits others to copy and produce – thus benefiting society by helping the release of something new in the short term and ensuring the technology is not ultimately lost as could easily happen with the trade secret protection method. What happens if coca cola loses their formula? Or better yet, look at the antikythera clockwork mechanism from ancient Greece that has been recreated from the artifact found last century encrusted in millenia of sea life. The technology there was a mechanical clockwork full of technology that wasn’t duplicated again until after Columbus found the new world. With mechanical advancements of that nature existing BCE, who knows how far we would have advanced by now had they not been lost for most of that time.
As such, the gov. doesn’t need something new like disclosure to attack businesses and people. All they need is the desire to do it. Unfortunately, they already seem to have that and it has been fueled in the extreme by these whacko CAGW types and the consequences are starting to look like they could exceed the worst expectations of all of the authors of the futurist SciFi genre’s worst nightmares. Anyone remember Logan’s Run (novel, movie, short lived tv series)? Imagine that combined with 1984, animal farm, brave new world, and for good measure, road warroir?
For the public to pay for access to the results of publicly funded research is absurd on its face. I think the approach advocated by the Roundtable, while a step in the right direction, is far too ad-hock, piecemeal, and subject to differing rules for different funding agencies. What is needed is a federal law that says something like:
PUBLICLY FUNDED RESEARCH DISCLOSURE ACT OF 2010
As a condition of acceptance of funding for research from The United States or from any national or international agency which is in whole or in part funded by The United States:
1. Researchers shall set aside a sufficient portion of the funding to pay for free public Internet access to any and all publications supported by said funding, in electronic form. Free public access shall be made available not more than 30 days following any initial publication.
2. Researchers shall make all supporting data and computer program source code used to generate the results reported in any and all publications freely available on the internet in electronic form, not more than 30 days following any initial publication.
3. The Secretary of Defense or the Secretary of Homeland Security may exempt certain publications from the required public disclosure of supporting data and source code if they determine public disclosure would compromise national security. The departments of Defense and Homeland Security shall maintain complete documentation supporting each exemption from public disclosure of data and computer source code.
4. Any researcher who accepts funding from The United States and subsequently fails to comply with the requirements of this act shall a) have any ongoing research funding immediately revoked, b) be prohibited from receipt of any funding from the United States for 15 years, and c) be subject to prosecution, at the Attorney Generals discretion, under existing criminal statutes covering theft by deception.
Simple, quick, and solves the problem. The journals get paid for their services, and the taxpayer gets free access to what ought to be public property.
Tenuc- “I can’t understand why it has taken so long for free access”
Benefits move toward concentrated interests- and away from the more diffuse public interest.
Anything that is publicly funded belongs to the public, barring any national security concerns.
Climate science aside, there has been dissatisfaction with the peer-reviewed journal system for some time, which is probably what prompted this. Access has been one sore point.
There are also problems with the peer review process itself, outside of the systematic corruption by the AGW clique. cf NY TIMESFor Science’s Gatekeepers, a Credibility Gap; PLoS Medicine Why Most Published Research Findings Are False; BLM Research Policy: Problems with peer review and alternatives
The issues of “copyright” and “publisher rights” are a ruse. The government establishes copyright law. Government supported research, where the people are literally the investors, has become an issue because people are fed up paying for research and again paying for information on that research. It’s very similar to the cable TV laws on the books now. Congress and the President pass and sign a law to get cable off the ground and with that industry’s input design a system where the people have to pay for crap they don’t even watch: pay for everything we say or you get nothing. The time for change in both government supported research copyright laws and laws regarding cable TV packages is now.
The journals may not need to exist, but their function does. Somebody has to pay for the editing and review processes.
You could flip the pay structure around. If the editing and reviewing party can’t extract cash from publishing, then the party submitting the paper has to pay to publish, or a third party has to pay for the whole process.
I’d be happiest with the last option: a government body would be established to edit and review scientific papers then publish them free to the public. This is the best option because it is the least likely to have perverse incentives and would be the most easily inspected type of organization if people expected foul play.
“I’d be happiest with the last option: a government body would be established to edit and review scientific papers then publish them free to the public.”
Would you really? Suppose your government body had existed in the last 10 years, how many of Andrews list of 450 peer reviewed skeptic papers would it have allowed publication? ‘State-sponsored Publishing House’ was a familiar phrase in the cold war years. And one of their particular qualities was that they published only what the state wanted to sponsor, not necessarily what anyone might actually want to read. The system we presently have is far from perfect, but its worked, sort of, for a couple of hundred years. The best advice is to leave it as it is, while making it rather harder for people like Man and Jones to corrupt it for their own ends.
Smokey (20:20:28) :
That is why the CRU and Mann are so desperately stonewalling requests for their data and methods, aided and abetted by the professional journals they also control….
A referee is a powerful position, so it is no surprise that Mann and his clique have insinuated themselves into so many publications as referees. In the peer review system of science journals, the anonymous referee is the gatekeeper, and has the power to reject papers that are deemed, in the sole and arbitrary opinion of the referee, to not meet “scientific standards.” Thus, papers skeptical of AGW are routinely rejected by anonymous referees.
From Wikipedia:
On that last point about editors and journals thriving on discovery and competing on breakthroughs, to loosely quote Dr. Suess, “Except when they don’t, because sometimes they won’t”.
What do you do when the editors are the ones gaming the system by picking hostile referees, as the climategate e-mails show, with a wink and a nod? When does such behavior rise to the level of scientific misconduct?
Where are the checks and balances that prevent a single referee from vetoing a paper simply because it disaccords with their theories?
The system fosters the clubhouse attitude that the climategate emails reflect. IMHO, more reform is needed.
Mike Ramsey
p.g.sharrow “PG” (20:42:09) :
For real world wide immediate peer review publish to WUWT
Good idea!. It would be WUWT-JOSB, WUWT Journal of Open Science Blog, where only the fearless would publish, only those not seeking for “consensus” (translation: “mutual grooming/caressing”).
“surely they must create a government Journal for the publication of all Government research.”
PLoS immediately comes to mind. Founded by Harold Varmus, former NIH head.
Agree with Genedoc and others: if the public paid for it then the public should have access to it after publication. This should be part of the process of accepting government funding. But then that brings up another question: where would we be without government funding?
Peer-review is used not only to sift for publication, but also for funding.
General problems with peer-review (from BMJ Research Policy: Problems with peer review and alternatives)
1. Inconsistency
2. Bias against certain individual, subjects, institutions, subjects, and conclusions (reviewer goes easy on papers which agree with reviewer’s own positions, hard on those which are critical)
3. Bias against innovation
4. Setting the wrong priorities, no definition of a peer, fraud
5. Cost and delay (in some fields, the time and effort spent in preparing and reviewing papers exceeds that spent in research)
Why does anyone need to edit a scientific paper other than those involved in the work? It should be released in the form intended by the author(s). If it is released in an open forum – it will live or die on its merits.
On line open release could actually make the work “adaptive” as it could include threads of comments on the validity of the work, questions, related applications etc.
The most basic question is what is the system being designed to achieve. If the answer is to speed the progress of science in the public interest then it would seem open access to publicly funded science is the answer- if the system intent is for other purposes then it would seem this would not be a preferred route.
There is NO EXCUSE now. It’s time to move into the 21st century.
Time to stop hiding behind the LIMITATIONS OF THE PAST.
What was the chief limitation? Access to information.
NOW there is no LIMIT on that. Therefore complete compute programs used to achieve results, NEED TO BE PUBLISHED. Data used to achieve final results, NEED TO BE PUBLISHED (When I say PUBLISHED, I’m using an old term. I mean available for download on the Internet.).
If a specialty analysis tool is used, access should be granted to outside reviewers.
Peer review in some cases should be turned over to “on line commentary”, so that there is not just a “select” group doing the peer review.
And one last thing: When I engineer an airplane, a nuclear plant, a semiconductor, that is “science at its best for mankind”. Its success is obvious an failure is (many cases) catastrophic. If I analyze things in the natural world, it is useful…and in many cases will lead to “science at its best for mankind (after the ENGINEERS get done with it). But I should not delude myself that it is something of “prophetic power or value”. Thus the humblest attitude should be among the “natural science” workers. The “Workman will be honored before Kings” (Proverbs) can be reserved for the builders and practitioners of applied science.