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."
This may sound simplistic (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Arxiv.org (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, but the arxiv is filled with all sorts of gibberish submissions as well. It is a wonderful and very useful repository, but just assuring that a paper is placed there doesn't mean that those wanting to access those papers will be able to dig through the mess to find it.
Re:Unintended consequences: in astrophysics ... (Score:1, Insightful)
Or... everyone realises that perhaps journals are not the best way of gaining recognition in the field? We've had the internet for a while now, I'd hope we can think up a better way of peer-reviewing and distributing scientific findings than paper publication.
Re:Unintended consequences: in astrophysics ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Might be nice if we were allowed to actually keep some of our money to use in the free market -- like stimulating the economy by purchasing stuff we could use.
The majority of basic research isn't done by private enterprise because there is often no immediate financial gain from it. Basic research exists to expand the body of knowledge. It often takes decades for scientists to understand the results of basic research enough to begin to figure out ways it can be used in industry or in our every day lives. Only then do the results of it become financially beneficial. Without government funding, the US would continue to fall further behind in the sciences.
Re:Unintended consequences: in astrophysics ... (Score:5, Insightful)
We'd see a lot more "custom" research funded by tobacco companies showing that cigarettes are safe.
As a society, we often decide that certain things are too important to send into the meat grinder of what you mislabel "the free market". For example, public safety. Some people don't want to remember a time when people commonly died of typhus or were poisoned by "patent" medicines or died in the workplace. Don't forget: Money doesn't care about the public good. The "mechanisms" of the "free market" are the same ones that would cull the weak from the herd. And believe me, if we start culling the weak from the herd, a large portion of "libertarian" Slashdot readers are going to have some very bad days, despite their high self-opinions.
There's definitely a place for publicly funded research, even amidst the fantasy of the laissez-faire.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This may sound simplistic (Score:2, Insightful)
But most of the time the simple view is exactly that...too simple...and unbelievably shortsighted. The fact is that the government is not paying for all the research. It's being subsidized by the institutions, oftentimes more than half of the expense of the research.
I do NIH-funded research, and much of the funding comes from internal sources. If you, the taxpayer, give me $100,000 and I spend $100,000 of my own money and develop a new method or device, does that mean you own it? At most, in my mind I would just pay you back the $100,000. You didn't spend the 5 years working 70-80 hours per week developing it. Maybe I'll give your relative a job in the new factory I build. Maybe the tax revenue from that new device will more than pay for that $100,000.
And say I do give it to you after I develop it. What are you going to do with it? You design the clinical trials to get it FDA approved, you monitor for problems or side effects, and figure out the process for mass-producing it cheaply. Oh what, you don't know how to do any of that? You don't have the expertise to do that? Well, find someone who does. Well, there is a guy in China working on something similar. We'll just let them finish it off and sell it instead.
Sounds like a great plan.
Re:This may sound simplistic (Score:1, Insightful)
Zero Interest Loan for some; none for others? (Score:3, Insightful)
So you get a $100,000 government loan on something too risky to get enough private funding and then want to pay it back X years later so you retain all rights?
In other words, you want a risky zero interest loan for R & D for X years? The X being variable and the payback possibly never happening? Or additional money will be sunk in until something fruitful comes out of it.
I'm just using your example and fairly phrasing it; I'm not saying government shouldn't ever give out risky zero interest loans or grants to private projects for an indirect greater good. Stadiums these days are all doing it; except that the loans don't seem to ever get paid back - on rare occasion they'll even call it a grant or claim ownership for a while until they sell it off cheaply when the "right" politicians come to power.
China doesn't do jack for quality control other than execute a few people when things get really really bad. China still has to get past our FDA.
Our FDA costs money to maintain a minimum level of quality control; despite corruption and the fact it is hopelessly underfunded. Sure you pay some fees for FDA services but I doubt they reflect costs involved in running the FDA. The EU has MORE people and the BIGGEST economy in the world with strong standards and many times the barriers for businesses; they are proof that our half measures are nowhere near as damaging as the misleading business peoples' claims.