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
The cost of publication should be a line item in the grant, then the journals can’t (but will anyway) complain about getting ripped off. Last I saw they weren’t really hurting, though they cry crocodile tears every time they renegotiate (ie hold a gun to our heads) a price rise for the university’s subscriptions!
jimmi_the_dalek;
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??
>>>>>>>>
Which part of publishing on the internet is dirt cheap did you miss? The average research institute is incapable of putting up a web site where research papers are published?
When paper was the only means to publish and circulate information, then journals made sense. They make as much sense now as people carrying flint around with them to start fires.
All journals have become is a means for universities to shirk their responsibilities in terms of ensuring that research dollars are put to good use. If you invent something, you can patent it to protect your intellectual property, but you do so at the expense of making exactly what you have done public. No documentation, no patent, and the documentation is public.
That we require for profit research to be public via the patent process, but theoretical research has to be in “journals” that we have to “pay to read” and we worry about the “expense” of publishing, and oh my goodness, how will researchers in other universities get access to papers if they aren’t there on the local university library shelves because with all that brain power at a university they can’t figure out how to put a pdf up on a website?
Seriously?
So costly that they need advertizing dollars to support it?
Seriously?
Since the climategate communication chill set in, many authors don’t reply to article requests. In some very important ways, climategate has been counterproductive.
I don’t support demands for computer-code spoonfeeding, but I fully support requests for easy, free access to research articles & pristine data.
The current models are
a. Paywall, with libraries paying subscription fees for access. This model has two branches
1. Elsevier and friends which use high visibility flagships to push the cost up and force the Universities, government labs and industrial sites to take massive packages (some unbundling is possible).
2. Learned societies such as AGU, ACS, etc which have more reasonable prices and to some extent affordable personal subscriptions, 100-300 dollars per journal for a high visibility journal
b. Open access, where costs are covered by author payment, aka the vanity press.
In both cases a and b the issue is who can be trusted to maintain the database, essentially forever. Paper has the advantage that you cannot take the server away.
So, as someone above said, the real issue is who pays for the editorial services, printing, and to maintain the servers. It is worth pointing out that the government pays one way or another as it is. First of all, many journals have page charges which amount to 500-1000 dollars per article for editorial costs and which comes out of grants for the most part (the suggestion that the universities cover this is risible, just go ask your Dean), second library costs form a large part of the indirect cost base that Universities and research organizations bill in grants, so, willy nilly, the government pays one way or another.
Eli likes the iTunes model, where every access costs maybe 1 or 2 dollars, not 30-50. The publishers would make it up in volume.
NOTE: Eli Rabett is actually Joshua Halpern of Howard University
“Which part of publishing on the internet is dirt cheap did you miss?”
I did not miss that part. What part of “internet journals are low quality” did you miss, because the latter is true.
jimmi_the_dalek says:
June 14, 2012 at 9:15 pm
“Which part of publishing on the internet is dirt cheap did you miss?”
I did not miss that part. What part of “internet journals are low quality” did you miss, because the latter is true.
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1. I did not suggest internet journals. I suggested that research institutes publish papers on the internet, which is a completely different thing.
2. I saw a movie a couple of days ago. It was a total piece of garbage. Does that mean all movies are garbage? Does that mean that it isn’t possible to make a good movie?
27,067
My vote was no. 27066. So they accepted Finland also!
Do not count on the current administration to do jack squat about this initiative. You can expect many in the inner circle–starting with the President’s Science advisor Holdren– to strangle this baby in the crib. Press Mitt Romney to weigh in and make it a priority once elected.
The thing is, none of those federal funds go to the journal involved.
I fully agree with the petition.
It seems to me that public access to research need not be an all or nothing thing. Some papers are of largely academic interest (and I use that term in its original sense), use jargon which most people can’t understand (try reading the McKitrick paper on the Dismal Theorem if you’re not an economist) and which have little impact on public policy. Such papers could be left to specialist journals.
However once research drives, or even influences public policy, then everything, including the data on which the research is based should be in the public domain.
How much resistance to institutions doing their own on-line publishing has to do with the ‘points’ thing whereby some journals have more prestige than others? Might make evaluating the quality of various researchers more difficult if they actually had to read his/her work rather than counting the number of published articles in prestige journals.
In Scotland where I live, the local University has signed an agreement with the academic journal publishers which forbids online access to any digital journal by readers at the Uni. library who are not current students or current members of staff. In spite of my offering to pay an extra subscription, as a retired member of staff and life member of the library I am now effectively cut off from the latest developments in my field and unable to do any further meaningful research. I am very annoyed about it.- what ever made them sign such an agreement in the first place?
I think I’ve found the Law Dome ice core data source that Tas van Ommen says is publicly available. It is not at the ITASE IceReader data links page which would seem the de factor place for ice core data.
It seems to be here, Springerlink, paywalled. Looks like it’s been paywalled since 1985. Outrageous IMHO if that’s the case.
Messenger, that is true for all universities. Sometimes tho, (really often), if you just walk in you can get access because they have not put a log in on the library computers. Another “trick” is to enroll in a one credit course, which, depending on the university, can be not so expensive.
NOTE: Eli Rabett is actually Joshua Halpern of Howard University
Balazs says:
June 14, 2012 at 1:00 pm
This is not a taxpayer issue as long as you don’t want governments to step in to fund scientific journals. You will need to find a business model for the journals that allows them to print or publish scientific papers online without compensation. Some journals are very costly to publish (e.g. the EGU journals), but in return they publish papers freely on their website. Others (e.g. Elsevier) are more gentle on the researcher in publication fee, but are paywalled.
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AND WHO PAYS those publication fees? The darn GRANT MONEY that is the US tax payer.
Messenger says:
June 15, 2012 at 12:23 am
In Scotland where I live, the local University has signed an agreement with the academic journal publishers which forbids online access to any digital journal by readers at the Uni. library … as a retired member of staff and life member of the library I am now effectively cut off …
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Messenger, If you paid for a life membership in the library then you in effect signed a contract that predates this new contract. If you did pay then I would talk to a lawyer since your contract with the library has been modified without your input and agreement.
Actually, If any change comes from this petition, I’ll eat my hat.
Says #26,963.
The libertarian in me isn’t a big fan of this petition.
I can’t find the clause in the Constitution that authorizes the federal government to regulate what private journals charge readers for access to their publications.
That said, neither can I find the clause that authorizes Congress to apportion money from the Treasury to fund research grants.
These petitions are nice, but usually don’t amount to anything.
Write your Congressman and Senator — individually, not as a petition. Start a letter writing campaign. Don’t forget faxes, either. Depending upon whom you’re working with, an email may suffice, but a physical paper trail is probably better. (Don’t forget, you’re dealing with the government here.)
Write letters to the editor to your local newspapers. Offer to write a guest editorial.
The key is volume. Using social media will help get the message out as well.
I am a scientist who has publshed in about 15 journals and I have reviewed or edited over 1,000 manuscripts for over 40 journals. Scientist will try to publish their research in the most prestigious journals that are likely to accept the study. We all have some studies with really convincing, innovative results to put in the best journals and others that merit publication in less prestigious more specialized journals.
One journal that I often use (Limnology and Oceanography) allow authors to “unlock” their papers for a modest fee. Most journals depend on subscriptions for libraries and readers for their income. No easy way to get around that. Faculty and students at universities can get relatively quick (a few days) to journal articles that are not in the library through “interlibrary loan.” This costs the universities some money.
I occasionally get emails asking me to publish in new, online journals. However, none of these in my field have strong credibility and peer review of more estabilished traditional journals.
BillD says:
June 15, 2012 at 8:00 am
I am a scientist who has publshed in about 15 journals and I have reviewed or edited over 1,000 manuscripts for over 40 journals….
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If you were funded by research grants from the government, then the tax payer NOT YOU and NOT the journal OWNS that research just as any research I did for XYZ company owns my research and patent.
If I paid for it through my taxes then I want access. Why the heck should I have to pay $30 – $50 more for information I already paid for?
On the other hand perhaps the best solution is to completely cut off the public tax dollar fire hose and start taking a chunk out of that Federal Debt we are conned into thinking we owe.
How are you at flipping burgers BTW?
Some paywalls might be worth paying for to get behind certain climatologists-
http://www.slattsnews.observationdeck.org/?p=6292
In title – “paywalless”
Paywalls?
That’s kind of interesting. The US Constitution has a clause
“The Congress shall have power…To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;”
so, certainly congress can allow authors to charge for their work, or if they wish to allow others to do so.
NOTE: Eli Rabett is actually Joshua Halpern of Howard University