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Guidance to make federally funded research freely available without delay

whitehouse.gov

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Re: Guidance to make federally funded research freely available without delay

#131

Post by pksebben »

logisticseh wrote: post #123
adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between the government paying to use software and paying for it to be developed.

Most of what the big contractors like Booz do is custom software. Every single cloud provider has an entire GovCloud division. Even Office has special Government licensing that behaves differently on the backend.

I think part of the point here, is that the value from that investment should go to the investors, who are (if you buy the 'by the people, for the people' hype) the taxpayers.

Say I'm vulture capitalist Tom, and I pay a few gajillion dollars to developer Gupta to create a product for me. I would be understandably pissed if Gupta turned around and sold that same product to competitor vc Janet. She didn't pay for that dev work, I did.

Re: Guidance to make federally funded research freely available without delay

#132

Post by hyperbovine »

Test0129 wrote: post #39

Having done a short stint dealing with this stuff I am glad something is being done. NIST/NSF funded several studies that I was close to that were suddenly owned by a journal who did nothing but provide a place to put it. Public money should always mean public access. Not just for journals, but for anything. If one red cent of taxpayer money goes to it, the taxpayer should get it for free. Hopefully the trend continu…

When was this? The NSF has had a 12-month open access policy in place for almost a decade now: https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2016/nsf16009/nsf16009.jsp#q1

Re: Guidance to make federally funded research freely available without delay

#133

Post by hyperbovine »

heavyset_go wrote: post #102
Test0129 wrote: post #39

Having done a short stint dealing with this stuff I am glad something is being done. NIST/NSF funded several studies that I was close to that were suddenly owned by a journal who did nothing but provide a place to put it. Public money should always mean public access. Not just for journals, but for anything. If one red cent of taxpayer money goes to it, the taxpayer should get it for free. Hopefully the trend continu…

I feel the same about NIH funded research and development in the medical space.

NIH-funded research goes up on PubMed Central within 12 months of publication:

https://www.nih.gov/health-information/nih-clinical-research...

Re: Guidance to make federally funded research freely available without delay

#134

Post by fabian2k »

jhallenworld wrote: post #37

Great! How about we reduce the cost of college by eliminating the equally parasitical textbook industry?

That's pretty much entirely in the hands of the universities and professors. To a large degree this is really a US-specific problem, US textbooks are easily 2-3 times as expensive as elsewhere. And the cause is likely that US universities require specific textbooks for courses, which is not how it works e.g. in Germany where I studied. I had a single course that required a specific textbook, which cost like ~50 EUR at regular price. Every other textbook I bought I selected myself, and they almost all were really worth their price.

Requiring specific textbooks in specific editions removes all market forces and direct competition. It also kills the second-hand market and makes it much more difficult for libraries. When students are free to choose which textbooks to buy or rent from a library you get a much healthier market.

Re: Guidance to make federally funded research freely available without delay

#135

Post by pksebben »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #117
aaaaaaaaata wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub

Sci-Hub is still illegal. If they made a completely separate legal entity that respected copyright, sure, something like that could work. Until that happens, the choice will be "do everything manually" or "break the law", and I don't think a whole lot of universities or corporations will be condoning the latter.

perhaps the law needs to change.

There's also more interests in the world than corporations and universities. an organizational Monopoly on ideas is dangerous - it stifles innovation and destroys competition.

Re: Guidance to make federally funded research freely available without delay

#136

Post by pksebben »

dimator wrote: post #64
commandlinefan wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely agree it's a good thing - my libertarian core can't help but wonder if the white house has (or ought to have) the power to unilaterally declare this, though. Would much prefer this had been voted on by congress.

i wonder why this is not a law already? at first i assumed lobbying, but i can't imagine the journal racket to be that lucrative to influence the required number of legislators to block the law, unlike oil or insurance. this seems like such a no-brainer issue, but i would love to hear the spin.

I'm sure there's a ton of special interests who wouldn't want all the research made public. the oil industry immediately comes to mind. so does tobacco, gambling, pharma, and farming.

Re: Guidance to make federally funded research freely available without delay

#137

Post by heavyset_go »

hyperbovine wrote: post #133
heavyset_go wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same about NIH funded research and development in the medical space.

NIH-funded research goes up on PubMed Central within 12 months of publication: https://www.nih.gov/health-information/nih-clinical-research...

I meant with regard to the ability for anyone to use it without, say, violating patents. Plenty of drugs discovered and developed with NIH money go on to be patented by private companies.

Re: Guidance to make federally funded research freely available without delay

#138

Post by logisticseh »

pksebben wrote: post #131
logisticseh wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of what the big contractors like Booz do is custom software. Every single cloud provider has an entire GovCloud division. Even Office has special Government licensing that behaves differently on the backend.

I think part of the point here, is that the value from that investment should go to the investors, who are (if you buy the 'by the people, for the people' hype) the taxpayers. Say I'm vulture capitalist Tom, and I pay a few gajillion dollars to developer Gupta to create a product for me. I would be understandably pissed if Gupta turned around and sold that same product to competitor vc Janet. She didn't pay for that…

1. There isn't as much of a difference here as you think. Contractors do turn around and use components developed in public contracts for other consulting projects. Most commonly with other sovereigns, especially when the original contract was with a city or state, but sometimes at the national level as well.

2. With respect to R&D, one big difference is that the government doesn't provide seed funding. They provide grants. If the government wanted equity in research labs, they'd have to pay a lot more. You'll see this in practice if you ever have the extreme displeasure of doing non-useless research in academia. Companies that insist on IP ownership/sharing end up paying much higher premiums for university research contracts. Repealing Bayh-Dole would have no effect on the accessibility of actually useful research; universities and companies would privately fund the useful stuff and leave the government to fund the labs of politically-connected/twitter-famous but otherwise totally useless academics.

(To be clear: we're on the same side here with respect to open access publications.)

Re: Guidance to make federally funded research freely available without delay

#140

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #118
Test0129 wrote: post #39

Having done a short stint dealing with this stuff I am glad something is being done. NIST/NSF funded several studies that I was close to that were suddenly owned by a journal who did nothing but provide a place to put it. Public money should always mean public access. Not just for journals, but for anything. If one red cent of taxpayer money goes to it, the taxpayer should get it for free. Hopefully the trend continu…

> If one red cent of taxpayer money goes to it, the taxpayer should get it for free. This logic only works for easily-replicable goods, like information. It falls apart when you consider various goods and service that are not easily replicable, or where increased demand can mean increased funding is necessary. E.g.: * So public housing can't be at least partially paid for by the tenant, it must be completely free? *…

I don't see how any of this applies.

The infrastructure isn't paid for when it's built (including the public house). It's financed on debt. Pay-by-use is just a form of tax payment.

It's just that the "use" for information is nearly free, so it doesn't make sense to charge for usage.

If the road was already completely paid for by tax-payers (no debt), and then a toll company wanted to operate the road for a 99% margin - you'd see a lot more people complaining about that.

Street parking is an interesting example in that the demand charge is probably unrelated to the underlying cost. However, it's just one of the many examples of taking tax dollars from Pot A to pay for things in Pot B.

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