White House Plans Open Access For Research 74
Hugh Pickens writes "Currently, the National Institutes of Health require that research funded by its grants be made available to the public online at no charge within 12 months of publication. Now the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President is launching a 'Public Access Policy Forum' to determine whether this policy should be extended to other science agencies and, if so, how it should be implemented. 'The NIH model has a variety of features that can be evaluated, and there are other ways to offer the public enhanced access to peer-reviewed scholarly publications,' OSTP says in the request for information. 'The best models may [be] influenced by agency mission, the culture and rate of scientific development of the discipline, funding to develop archival capabilities, and research funding mechanisms.' The OSTP will conduct an interactive, online discussion that will focus on three major questions: Should this policy be extended to other science agencies and, if so, how it should be implemented? In what format should the data be submitted in order to make it easy to search and retrieve information? What are the best mechanisms to ensure compliance? 'It's very encouraging to see the Obama Administration focus on ensuring public access to the results of taxpayer-funded research [reg. required] as a key way to maximize our collective investment in science,' says Heather Joseph, executive director of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition."
Unintended consequences: in astrophysics ... (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the way things work right now in my field, astrophysics: a scientist has an idea. He writes a grant proposal to the NSF and receives money. He uses the money to (hire a grad student, travel to telescope, build an instrument, etc.). He writes a paper on the results. In order to have the paper published in one of the big journals -- which is necessary to gain credit for tenure, promotion, reputation among peers -- he PAYS THE JOURNAL ~$110 PER PAGE. The journal makes the information available only to subscribers, who pay around $50-$100 for individuals or $1500-$3000 for institutions.
If you don't publish in the big peer-reviewed journals, you don't get recognition.
So, suppose that the government changes things: now the journals must make government-funded research available to the public without charge. The journals will lose money from their subscriber base; after all, who would bother to pay for the articles when they are free? Where do the journals make up the money? My guess: they increase the page charges. Now it might cost $200 or $250 per page to publish an article in a journal. Whence comes that extra money? From the government grant.
Result: the scientific papers are now available freely to the public, but scientists must ask for more money from the NSF in order to pay the higher page charges.
Re:Arxiv.org (Score:1, Informative)
As a astronomy and CS student I can see the differences.
Astronomy: everything is openly available & searchable in absabs or arxiv
CS: 3-5 important journals, you have to be in a paying university to get access.
Actually, when I do CS literature research, I skip papers I can't get easily access to.
I wish it was as natural for CS papers to be available openly, as it is for physics. I think it is way worse in biology/chemistry/medicine.
Different Ways to Open It and the Players (Score:4, Informative)
It's my understanding that people in congress have considered before the question of expanding open access requirements to other disciplines. Obviously publishers will oppose such a move because it cuts into their bottom line. How far it eats into the bottom line depends on the reasons people subscribe and just how the opening of access works: You can make new papers closed and older papers open, or you can do the reverse. Additionally, you can make papers totally open or you can institute some half-way measure, like something similar to Google Books or Amazon book previews, which are designed with the aim that you can read the content but not easily save a copy of it.
In Physics, the APS (the professional organization for physicists) publishes the Physical Review journals, which are some of the most influential in the field besides Nature and Science. Apparently the APS relies on subscription fees from the journals in part to subsidize many of their other (worthwhile) activities, e.g. scientific conferences. As a result, it's my understanding that they opposed open access requirements (though they might have been willing to accept them in some form). This is especially interesting because the Physical Review journals have relatively friendly policies that allow one to post a pre-print to the ArXiv [arxiv.org] (which physicists generally do) and host a copy of the paper on your own website, so most of the papers they publish (at least more recently) are already available for free one way or another.
I generally have a very favorable opinion of the APS, but I would very much like to see more openness in scientific journals, at the least for taxpayer funded research. If this means that the APS will have to raise dues and conference fees to more accurately reflect the cost of their activities, I think that's something we'll just have to accept.
Re:This may sound simplistic (Score:3, Informative)
Re:This may sound simplistic (Score:3, Informative)
A whopping $.50 a gallon, which more or less covers what we spend on roads.
While the fuel tax may not work as cars advance, today it's a logical way to fund these projects, it's effectively a user fee.