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 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.”
The Congress has assigned it’s rights to the grantees, see Bayh Dole Act. They can do that.
NOTE: Eli Rabett is actually Joshua Halpern of Howard University
The issue of the pay wall obstruction to free access to government funded research is not determined by the government. The research granting agencies such as NSF and DOE expect the researcher to publish their work and acknowledge them as the funding source for the research. The researchers know that they must publish their work in the best appropriate scientific journal to get future grants and to get promoted.
The publication of the research is governed by copyright laws which prevent the free distribution of the printed material. Many times the research work is documented in published governmental reports that can be purchased from the government at the cost of reproducing the reports. For example NASA publishes much of their funded research in such reports. It is possible to request reprint copies from an authors of papers in scientific journals although they under no obligation to provide them. Libraries at major research institutions purchase the rights to on-line and hard copy scientific journals but if they do not subscribe to a particular journal they still may be able to obtain a copy via interlibrary loans.
The problem of free access to data and research in climate research is that the truth is being held a hostage to political control in order to throttle competitive ideas from emerging. The two sides are so polarized that each side does not respect the others work enough to enter in to a scientific dialog. Instead of being willing to share information about each others progress towards understanding of the science, to gain access to the others work now requires the use to the FOI laws. Thus true scientific criticism and debate is not possible. For example the Heartland Institute’s conference on climatology was boycotted by scientists that see them selves being attacked by scientists on other side of the climate change issue.
In this climate of mistrust and disrespect for each other, the blogosphere has become a camping ground for ad hoc reviews of published work presenting critique from one perspective or another. Much of the well thought out work is subject to derision and ad hominem attacks in an effort to decry the author’s credibility, all of which detract from the need to discuss the science like mature adults.
I have concluded that this petition is a waste of time and could be dangerous to the integrity of climate science. The wrong people to ask to correct the pay wall hurdle for free access to the results of government funded research is the federal government. If they take seriously this request, they will have to take control of the publishing houses that produce the journals and can therefore control who publishes. Of course they are never neutral, especially with respect to climate. It is bad enough now because there is ample evidence that certain professional journals have established their own bias towards the climate, mainly to secure leverage to be selected to publish by authors who have a similar bias. Climate gate and editorials from prominent scientific professional organizations have revealed that there are overt efforts to suppress competing ideas. However there are alternative places to publish maybe not quite a prestigious which are available. If the government became a clearinghouse for publishing they could control the whole framework for science publication in journals, who gets to publish, where, and who does the peer review of the papers. It might be free but it would be worth what you paid for it
Journals run by government-employed editors, with bureaucrat-selected reviewers? Hm. I’m not sure we want to go there. On top of everything else, their year-to-year funding would be a bouncing political football — and the only football whose bounces you can predict is a heavily spinning one.
Danger, Will Robinson!
So, Mr. Egg, how will that chicken ever hatch if everyone is like you? “Strong credibility”, attracting strong reviewers, and becoming “established” can’t then happen without already having “strong credibility”, etc.
Gail Combs:
I’ll be happy to send you PDFs of any of my papers that you request. Even if you ask for several papers, although not if you ask for 50. Except for the Limnology and Oceanography papers with unlocked access, most of my papers are in journals and books that are not free. However, you can find them in university libraries and if that is not fast enough for you, I am happy to provide PDFs. The purpose of the research was to advance scientific understanding and that seems to have worked out well. If you have access to jstor.org, you can get copies of most papers that are older than about three years old.
Brian:
Sometimes I have published less important papers in new or less prestigious journals. However, when you have spend hard efforts over a few years, you want your publications to have as much impact as they deserve–which means not publishing them in a poorly established or obsure journal. I am happy to have a few articles with 100+ citations in journals where the average article is only cited 2 or 3 times but this is the exception.
The argument for prestige is a straw man. If all publicly-funded research is published in freely available publications they will gain the necessary prestige.
Hmmm. Sounds like a nice idea, but I am wondering if all of the practical difficulties have been uncovered. I’m betting that there are hidden costs that will still need to be covered and I know you guys don’t like to pay more for stuff.
Let’s see, who is going to pay for web servers, archiving software, organizing the publication process?
It can’t be all pure profit, so exactly what u
Is the money being spent on.
Sorry to rain on your idealistic socialist notions, but these practical questions do have to be answered.
Support for open access to taxpayer funded research is enjoying
similar sentiments in Great Britain:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18497083