Like many of you, I get tired of paywalls, especially when there’s “science by press release” yet the paper remains hidden from the public while the paper gets wide MSM coverage.
So I’ve reposted from Lucia’s The Blackboard (be sure to bookmark the site) to get wide distribution. She writes:
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A reader who is sick and tired of having to pay for publicly funded research being hidden behind pay-walls passed this request along.
One month after it was created (on May 13) and a week before it will be closed to signatures (on June 19), the White House Open Access petition (which I pointed Language Log readers to on May 23) now has 26,768 signatures — 1,768 more than the 25,000 threshold! By my calculation, the average rate was over 1,190 signatures a day from the first to the 25,000th signature (by “David L” of Holmdel, NJ, who signed on June 3 — three weeks after the petition was created); after that, the rate dropped to just shy of 177 a day. No reason to slow down the pace now! If you agree with the petition, please sign it and/or pass it on to your agreeable friends — send a strong message to Washington that “[e]xpanding access would speed the research process and increase the return on our [public] investment in scientific research.”
It appears the petition has met the threshold to pass– but some must wish for us to show that we really, really, really want the Obama to issue a directive to require the results of publicly funded research to be freely available. (That is– not behind paywalls.) You can learn more at:
To sign the petition visit the petition page.
If required, create an account like I did; if you have an account, sign in. Find the grey (or green) “sign the petition” button. Adding your name will help show that many people really would like the president to sign this directive.
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Thanks to Lucia.
PLEASE REPOST THIS WHEREVER YOU CAN
If the paper is not sent with access to base data it should be rejected by all professional peers. No data no peer review = no “PROOF” = no new grant money. Science is to be tested by the scientific method = WITHOUT THIS THERE IS NO SCIENCE ALL WILL BE “OPINION.”
davidmhoffer says:
June 14, 2012 at 1:24 pm
Tax funder paid research should be published by the tax payer funded institution. There is no need anymore for a “journal”. This is the information age, and hanging onto concepts like “journals” that require a “business model” to function is total nonsense.
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davidmhoffer,
I tend to agree with you. The scientific journal as it typically exists today is mostly a holdover from the late 19th century. The pace of the modern developed world and communication technology has moved beyond the old concept of journals.
John
Good idea. The current pay-wall journals have a quasi monopoly. University libraries have to have the main journals in their field, basically irrespective of the subscription price. Researchers only want to publish in those journals that are in every library.
The consequence is monopoly profits for the scientific publishers of 30 to 40%. And scientists do most of the work, they write the articles and they review the articles. As most of these scientists are government funded, you can see this as a luxury subsidy of the state to the publishers.
Open Access journals can be read by everyone. Thus you can publish in any one (if the article is interesting, people will find it) and the monopoly power is much less. Consequently the total costs to society will be much lower.
Added benefits are that also scientists from poor countries, can read all journals. Furthermore, journalists can link to open-access articles and are thus forced to stay closer to the truth, as the reader can check the statements in the article. And the irrational fear of conspiracies may also decrease when every citizen can read scientific articles.
Scottish Skeptic –
Uh, looking at the profile I created for an account, after “Edit Profile”, under the tab for “Personal Information”, it appears that anyone in the WORLD can subscribe to an account at this web site. They even helpfully show a list for every country on the globe, including North Korea. Sorry, no Scotland. Guess you are stuck with the United Kingdom entry. Pity.
Scottish Sceptic said:
June 14, 2012 at 12:22 pm
Can I sign it if I’m Scottish? No, I’m not asking whether I’m literate, or haven’t mistakenly cut off my thumbs attempting to kill the haggis after the hunt on the Moss.
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REPLY: Probably not, this is a US taxpayer issue – Anthony
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Give it a try SS; eric holder and obama want to let illegal aliens and dead people vote in national elections ( http://tinyurl.com/7avyxxt ), so a Scot signing a US petition should be okay.
Oh wait – that would not redound to obama’s benefit. Never mind…
Just keep in mind the other side of that coin. Someone has to pay to have the research published. If readers don’t, the scientists do. Even now it can cost upwards of $1000 for the authors to have an article published in a paywalled journal. It costs money to have an editor take care of getting reviews etc. The cost will go up if access is free. That’s not necessarily bad, but people need to be aware of that.
Although I agree these papers should not be pay walled and should be public domain papers on the university or other agency web site, I bet they would make a lot more money if they charged a token handling fee rather than a high pay wall fee.
If they only hit you $2.00 to down load the paper most folks would probably do that with no more consideration than they do to spending similar fees for downloading music or movies. The profit equation involves both markup and volume. If cheap enough, average technically curious citizens would down load the papers rather than a few dozen professionals in the field.
The effect seems to be that taxpayer funded science will appear in taxpayer-funded journals. OK by me.
26,984
This will have absolutely ZERO effect until at least January 21, 2013.
Leif Svalgaard says: June 14, 2012 at 1:20 pm
It would be of interest to know how much the publisher actually collects from pay walled papers.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
About $8 billion if Reuters is to be believed:
“The genteel but lucrative world of academic publishing is being stirred up by a dispute over who pays for and who profits from scientific research funded largely by taxpayers. Scientists’ careers are made, and broken, by the quality and volume of articles describing new discoveries that they publish in top journals like Nature, Science and Cell. And it’s big business, with the market in academic journals worth about $8 billion a year globally, according to analyst estimates.”
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/06/13/us-science-publishing-open-access-idUKBRE85B0SH20120613
Ironically ‘Science’ has an article about open access which is behind a paywall.
“Over the past decade, “open access” has gained momentum as a model for scientific publishing, intended to makes results freely accessible to the scientific community and to the public on the Internet.”
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/335/6074/1279.summary
There is a Directory of Open Access Journals.
http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=home&uiLanguage=en
There is some interesting research going on into reproducibility but only in the psychological field as part of the Open Science Framework:
“Do normative practices and incentive structures in science produce a biased body of research evidence? We hypothesize that they do, and we aim to test the possibility empirically.
” If there is a problem in research and publication practices, then it is our problem. We want to understand the extent of the problem so that we can develop and implement the appropriate correctives. Those correctives would address the standard processes and incentive systems that push scientific practices out of alignment with scientific values.”
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FcWLfASVXPkLuTVQmbZKvpkPsgrW8XKPGfWJqnSnmeM/edit?pli=1
http://openscienceframework.org/project/EZcUj/wiki/home
Google already have an advantage as this research has found:
“Google, Google Scholar, OAIster and OpenDOAR were used to try to locate OA versions of peer reviewed journal articles drawn from three subjects (ecology, economics, and sociology).
Findings – Of the 2519 articles 967 were found to have OA versions on the WWW. Google and Google Scholar found 76.84% of them.”
https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/dspace-jspui/handle/2134/4084?mode=full&submit_simple=Show+full+item+record
Of course climate science in particular needs open access:
Dr Boehmer-Christiansen gave the following evidence to the Muir Russell Enquiry:
“As editor of a journal which remained open to scientists who challenged the
orthodoxy, I became the target of a number of CRU manoeuvres. The hacked
emails revealed attempts to manipulate peer review to E&E’s disadvantage, and showed that libel threats were considered against its editorial team. Dr Jones even tried to put pressure on my university department. The emailers expressed anger over my publication of several papers that questioned the “hockey stick” graph and the reliability of CRU temperature data. The desire to control the peer review process in their favour is expressed several times”.
From the Russell Enquiry:
“Horton notes that ‘the scientific literature is littered with retractions of papers that once passed the test of peer review‘. The biomedical database Medline (which includes over 19 million citations) currently contains nearly 1500 retractions. There have also been well-documented cases of journals failing to recognise important work. There is even a website devoted to accounts of journals that have rejected work that later led to their authors winning the Nobel prize.”
http://www.cce-review.org/pdf/FINAL%20REPORT.pdf
From ‘Nature’ in 2003:
“Juan Miguel Campanario, a physicist at the University of Alcalá in Madrid, Spain, has compiled
a list of more than 20 Nobel laureates’ rejections by many journals, and recollections by many more of resistance by their peers (see www2.uah.es/jmc).
“Nevertheless — a final moral — rejected authors who are convinced
of the ground-breaking value of their controversial conclusions
should persist. A final rejection on the grounds of questionable
significance may mean that one journal has closed its door on you,but
that is no reason to be cowed into silence. Remember, as you seek a
different home for your work, that you are in wonderful company.”
http://www2.uah.es/jmc/peer%20rejection.pdf
As a UK bod I’m obviously not eligible for a petition aimed at US administration, but I entirely agree with the sentiment: maybe the ‘taxpayer-funded’ material should be freely available on a government site with a short time lapse – say a fortnight, after the magazine has ensured its readership/ regular income.
I have to say I found it amusing, if not ironic, that Lucia’s site features on this issue; as often as not in the last 12 months when I try to visit there I’m greeted with a Red and Black refusal notice.
Goodness knows what I’ve done to deserve this, having never so far as I can recall done more than READ the posts/comments, but her site is gradually slipping down my preferred list!
“This would just open the flood gates.”
Done, signed, open the gates.
@Leif Svalgaard says:
It would be of interest to know how much the publisher actually collects from pay walled papers. As most people will not pay $30-50 to see a pay-walled paper, I suspect the revenue from such be so small that it does not make a significant impact on the business model. But, does anybody actually know?
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I know nothing about the financial aspects of running a journal but often a business will charge a high up casual fee for the real purpose of encouraging subscriptions.
Is it behind paywalls because these rent seekers are in it for the lavish funding? Of course not.
Imagine going to your local supermarket and paying for a packet of butter and not being allowed to take it away!
Free our data and put it on the net for non peer reviewed pressure. Pressure that yields results. 😉
mfo, Leif is asking about how much the journals make from one-off paywalled article purchases. The regular subscription fees are huge and would make up, I suspect, the great majority of the $8B you cited. The question is whether selling paywalled articles contributes significantly to their bottom line.
This is typical special interest BS. Does the National Research Council or Science and dozens of other receive tax funding. Then it has already been paid for. If the researcher from his grant must pay journal costs and that grant is tax dollars, it has already been paid for. If the data collection and researcher costs are tax funded it has been paid for. If needed just take the US contribution to the IPCC away and take down the pay walls with that.
Scottish Sceptic says:
June 14, 2012 at 12:22 pm
You reminded me of a time I was in Scotland with a Southerner,
I said, too loudly for his liking that “Scorts a jus’ Geordies wi’ tha heeds kicked in”. By this time he was bricking it. I politely informed him. “Tha sa’ the same in reverse.” Didn’t calm his nerves until the barman said I was right, LOL.
DaveE.
PS that was in Edinburgh.
I actually prefaced “Tha sa’ the same in reverse.” with “Divna worry man”.
climatereflections says:
June 14, 2012 at 4:21 pm
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I see his point. Apologies for misunderstanding.
Scottish Sceptic says:
June 14, 2012 at 12:22 pm
Can I sign it if I’m Scottish? No, I’m not asking whether I’m literate, or haven’t mistakenly cut off my thumbs attempting to kill the haggis after the hunt on the Moss.
REPLY: Probably not, this is a US taxpayer issue – Anthony
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Since American tax dollars are funding overseas research, everyone should be able to sign.
As an Australian citizen, I fully support the concept of publically (Taxpayer funded research and papers) being freely available to the citizens who provided the opportunity and cash, but I do not consider I should add my signature on what should be a citizen’s appeal to their government.
I would sign a worldwide internet petition to remove paywalls even if only for the taxpayers of the country that provided the funds.
In developed and democratic countries this should not be needed if Freedom of Information Laws were working correctly as such citizens would be able to get access to publically funded information. That they cannot, indicates that Freedom of Information Laws are not working as they should.
Thank’s for bringing this to notice once again.
I am signatory number 27,031.
BTW, last year and this are the worst I can remember for algae in the pool. No matter what I do it’s back in 3 or 4 weeks. Is this perhaps due to climate change?
( /sarc — but the pool algae really is bad … )
Scottish Sceptic says:
June 14, 2012 at 12:22 pm
Can I sign it if I’m Scottish? No, I’m not asking whether I’m literate, or haven’t mistakenly cut off my thumbs attempting to kill the haggis after the hunt on the Moss.
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Or burn or fingers lighting the candle to warm your house guests. LOL I have plenty of scottish blood me.
The paywalls are not put up by scientists, who generally would be perfectly happy for all papers to be read free of charge by anyone. It is the publishers who charge. They charge large sums for university libraries to buy journals, and they are unlikely to give that up. If they did who would pay for the publishing? Advertising on every paper??
As for getting round paywalls at the moment, find someone who is a student or staff member at your local university and ask them to look.
Or, try using Google Scholar, as many scientists put their own copies of papers where they are visible
Open source internet journals may in the future be the route to go, but at the moment they suffer from a problem – the standard of published papers is much lower than is desirable (so, yes, they would be a good place to put climate ‘research’…..)