All European scientific publicly funded articles to be freely accessible by 2020 • Hacker News Board

Re: All European scientific publicly funded articles to be freely accessible by 2020

#121

Post by witty_username » Sat, May 28, 2016, 5:17 PM UTC

tmalsburg2 wrote: post #118

witty_username wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> GitHub is a terrible platform for open science because what happens if they shut down or change their pricing or ...? Well, as long as you aren't using any GitHub-specific features, it should be easy to migrate your repository.

Many people leave academia after a post-doc or two, most actually. These people will not have any incentive to manage their research data for the rest of their lives and the data will eventually be lost, unless GitHub continues to exist in its current form for the next half century, with is rather unlikely. For this reason we need dedicated research repositories that are managed by publicly funded non-profits. Zenodo…

The whole idea of git is that it is decentralized. So, even if GitHub instantaneously shut downs and erases all data (unlikely, they'd probably give a few months for people to move their repos), people's copies of the repo can be uploaded to servers.

Re: All European scientific publicly funded articles to be freely accessible by 2020

#122

Post by hackuser » Sat, May 28, 2016, 7:23 PM UTC

Kliment wrote: post #99

hackuser wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is, whether or not you pay a fair amount doesn't depend on how many times you pay. Let's say your fair share is $10; $3 goes via taxes and $7 via the other mechanism. Here's a couple of scenarios where it's a good choice: 1) The new road is 60% in the public interest and 40% in the interest of its users, so 60% is paid with taxes and 40% via tolls. 2) Society feels it's reasonable that all children, regardle…

Both of these are reasonable, as long as the payment is actually covering costs - but in this case the first payment covers some of the costs, and the second payment increases the cost. That is, as a taxpayer I'm paying 1) for the research and also 2) for the extortionate access fees for universities, and as an independent researcher I'm ALSO paying 3) for my own private access to the results. The problem is that the…

> The problem is that the funds from 2 and 3 do not fund the research, they fund the parasites that make 1 more expensive

Speaking generally, paying for someone else's profit is essential to the free market. Without profit, much less would get done.

Speaking about this case in particular, knowledge, at least much of scientific knowledge, should not be sold at whatever prices the market will bear, which is what these publications seem to be moving toward. Imagine the prices you could demand for knowledge of immunizations, relativity, DNA, law, history, etc. (if they weren't already publicly available). Imagine the disruption to science, to the advance of knowledge, and the incredible cost to humanity if only a few with enough money could access these ideas.

Re: All European scientific publicly funded articles to be freely accessible by 2020

#123

Post by semi-extrinsic » Sat, May 28, 2016, 8:01 PM UTC

tmalsburg2 wrote: post #119

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main problem is that the open access fees are so insane. Publishers currently have ridiculous profit margins, and of course they're going to try and maintain them. Unless some US/EU regulations kick in and set a reasonable max limit to open access fees, the situation is just as bad (perhaps even worse) than the status quo: Now, researchers from "poor" universities, small research institutuons, third world countri…

> The main problem is that the open access fees are so insane. I'm confident that the market will take care of this. If there are people who can't or don't want to pay $3000 for an article and the profit margins are huge, there is room for journals who offer a better deal.

I don't think so. The problem is that the market is completely dominated by a few big publishers, and that it's a really hard market to disrupt because everything is about prestige.

Re: All European scientific publicly funded articles to be freely accessible by 2020

#124

Post by zo1 » Sat, May 28, 2016, 9:02 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #97

heimatau wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know many may disagree but I'm curious about this movement of 'publicly funded should be publicly available' wouldn't this infringe on national competitiveness? Like India nor the USA didn't funded these studies but...those people will have access to these research papers? Talk about a free lunch. And potentially demotivating to other countries, as they could be like 'well, EU did it...let's lower our investments i…

wouldn't this infringe on national competitiveness? A rising tide lifts all boats...

This makes no sense. A "tide" just happens, it doesn't get "created" or "caused" by anyone, which is the case for public scientific research. A crucial difference.

What's really going on here is that some individuals aren't exactly happy/eager/willing about giving away, for free, things that they have funded personally funded (through taxes). This is a perfectly reasonable opinion to hold.

It's the same reason we have things such as patents. So as to reward individuals and groups that create something new. They then get exclusive rights to the profits/benefits that such an invention creates. Yet somehow if it applies to nation states, that no longer holds?

Re: All European scientific publicly funded articles to be freely accessible by 2020

#125

Post by heimatau » Sat, May 28, 2016, 9:14 PM UTC

IanCal wrote: post #105

heimatau wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know many may disagree but I'm curious about this movement of 'publicly funded should be publicly available' wouldn't this infringe on national competitiveness? Like India nor the USA didn't funded these studies but...those people will have access to these research papers? Talk about a free lunch. And potentially demotivating to other countries, as they could be like 'well, EU did it...let's lower our investments i…

What would be the reasoning behind dropping funding? That you can read the output of another country instead of duplicating work? I doubt heavily that would happen but even if it did that'd be a good thing. > It's my opinion that there should be a gateway and one must us their state ID or something. A full, international login system for every person in the EU just in case someone else in the world might want to read…

Sure, it may be expensive but it would be good to ensure those that paid for it receive it.

Re: All European scientific publicly funded articles to be freely accessible by 2020

#126

Post by acaloiar » Sat, May 28, 2016, 11:08 PM UTC

nazgul17 wrote: post #113

acaloiar wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for the EU, but since my work last year was NIH-funded, we made it freely available via arXiv ( http://arxiv.org/ ). This seems to be common practice.

I am curious: doesn't this negatively affect your evaluation score with your university? How do you deal with this?

The work was done in a professional capacity, so I can't answer your question. Both academia and industry are fraught with pretense, so I wouldn't be surprised if what you ask is true. I can only recommend that you do your best work; if it stands on its own, no amount of pretense will overshadow its value.

Re: All European scientific publicly funded articles to be freely accessible by 2020

#127

Post by Fomite » Sat, May 28, 2016, 11:14 PM UTC

kurlberg wrote: post #100

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your position is at a public university, you probably work at a publicly-funded building, using publicly-funded electricity and heating, and publicly-funded office material. So I'd say it should be covered.

One would hope that 35+ percent overhead would cover rent/heating etc.

53% at my institution

Re: All European scientific publicly funded articles to be freely accessible by 2020

#128

Post by mindcrime » Sat, May 28, 2016, 11:56 PM UTC

zo1 wrote: post #124

mindcrime wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wouldn't this infringe on national competitiveness? A rising tide lifts all boats...

This makes no sense. A "tide" just happens, it doesn't get "created" or "caused" by anyone, which is the case for public scientific research. A crucial difference. What's really going on here is that some individuals aren't exactly happy/eager/willing about giving away, for free, things that they have funded personally funded (through taxes). This is a perfectly reasonable opinion to hold. It's the same reason we hav…

This makes no sense. A "tide" just happens, it doesn't get "created" or "caused" by anyone, which is the case for public scientific research.

It's an analogy, and all analogies are somewhat flawed. The point is, increasing the overall pool of scientific knowledge throughout the world makes life better for everybody in the long run. I mean, if somebody in Botswana invents the first viable fusion reactor, and publishes a paper for free, maybe Botswana as a country won't get "oil country rich" off of it. But as cheap, plentiful electricity spreads around the world, everybody, everywhere, will have a better life as a result. That's what I mean by "a rising tide lifts all boats".

It's the same reason we have things such as patents. So as to reward individuals and groups that create something new. They then get exclusive rights to the profits/benefits that such an invention creates. Yet somehow if it applies to nation states, that no longer holds?

You're asking the wrong person, because I am opposed to patents in general. shrug

Re: All European scientific publicly funded articles to be freely accessible by 2020

#129

Post by mSparks » Sun, May 29, 2016, 7:45 AM UTC

conceit wrote: post #115

adrianN wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but currently people outside of universities have a really hard time getting research papers (legally, anyway). So even if the costs stay about the same, a lot more people will have access to the results.

Which doesn't help much if pay-per-view journals are still cited.

IMHO.

Scientific output (and credibility of the paper) comes from the number of authors citing the work..

Re: All European scientific publicly funded articles to be freely accessible by 2020

#130

Post by IanCal » Sun, May 29, 2016, 8:26 AM UTC

heimatau wrote: post #125

IanCal wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would be the reasoning behind dropping funding? That you can read the output of another country instead of duplicating work? I doubt heavily that would happen but even if it did that'd be a good thing. > It's my opinion that there should be a gateway and one must us their state ID or something. A full, international login system for every person in the EU just in case someone else in the world might want to read…

Sure, it may be expensive but it would be good to ensure those that paid for it receive it.

You don't need to do that to ensure those that paid for it receive it, just to stop others.

As a taxpayer I really don't want to spend even more of my money for worse access.