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The Dangerous "Research Works Act"

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Re: The Dangerous "Research Works Act"

#21

Post by etal »

zupreme wrote: post #2

I think the author is not looking deep enough. Universities form and fund consortiums all the time for one reason or another. The US Government funds even more and has more resources. If either the universities, or the US government, wanted academic research to be public by default, they could bypass the publishers entirely and do so with comparatively little effort. In this case the "publishers" are merely the fall…

The major non-governmental funding agencies recently banded together to solve the problem roughly the way you suggest, by creating their own open-access journal which they will enourage their grantees to submit their work to. It will be called eLife:

http://www.hhmi.org/news/elife20111107.html

It would probably be considered dubious/anti-competitive if NIH and NSF launched their own journals, but because of the Open Access Initiative (which RWA attempts to reverse), NIH is able to host articles that have already been released to the public via PubMed Central.

Re: The Dangerous "Research Works Act"

#22

Post by etal »

RichardPrice wrote: post #17
imaginaryunit wrote: post #16

Though the gov't might want research to be distributed, the underlying problem here has more to do with the scientists themselves than anything else. We've had ArXiV around for a long time and yet I ask who's adopted it other than mathematicians and (many, but not all) physicists? Why hasn't it been adopted by NIH-funded life scientists? The fact that years ago, life scientists easily could have adopted an ArXiV-like…

You're absolutely right that academics are torn between two things that they want: 1. open access for their research (both for altruistic reasons, because they want to spread knowledge as widely as possible, and for selfish reasons, because greater access to their research means more citations of their research, which helps them with career advancement) 2. publishing in the most prestigious journals they can, because…

If pre-publication peer review goes out of fashion, then another possibility if that the brand of major journals becomes more important. We still need a quick gauge of the quality of an article, other than its Google rank or number of page views. Nature can retract popular articles that are later proven flawed; I don't think Google would attempt to wield that kind of authority.

Relevant example: You published these two posts in TechCrunch to get a wide audience. (And I'm glad you did!) I read them partly because they appeared in TechCrunch.

Re: The Dangerous "Research Works Act"

#23

Post by pg_bot »

"The way the research process works is like this:

1.) An academic does some research, often funded by a government grant. 2.) The academic writes up a paper and submits it to an academic journal. 3.) The journal publisher adds some value to the paper, mainly formatting and secretarial services, and then publishes the paper.

The journal publishers believe that the public funding of research stops at step 2, where the academic submits the paper to a journal. At that stage, the journal publishers argue, the academic is free to share their paper with the world."

Why don't the researchers just format the papers themselves and publish their work independently online? It seems like a trivial amount of work compared to the actual research that they are doing. I understand that many people believe that they shouldn't have to do this, but after reading the article I see nothing stopping them from distributing their work to the public.

Re: The Dangerous "Research Works Act"

#24

Post by mbreese »

pg_bot wrote: post #23

"The way the research process works is like this: 1.) An academic does some research, often funded by a government grant. 2.) The academic writes up a paper and submits it to an academic journal. 3.) The journal publisher adds some value to the paper, mainly formatting and secretarial services, and then publishes the paper. The journal publishers believe that the public funding of research stops at step 2, where the…

They forgot that part of #3 is peer review, which is managed by the journal, but actually performed by academics for free. Oh, and the researcher usually has to pay a fee to get the paper published once the journal accepts their paper. So, most of the hard work in #3 is free, and the academic still has to pay the journal (usually from a government grant).

Re: The Dangerous "Research Works Act"

#25

Post by RichardPrice »

pg_bot wrote: post #23

"The way the research process works is like this: 1.) An academic does some research, often funded by a government grant. 2.) The academic writes up a paper and submits it to an academic journal. 3.) The journal publisher adds some value to the paper, mainly formatting and secretarial services, and then publishes the paper. The journal publishers believe that the public funding of research stops at step 2, where the…

The reason is that academics need the validation of being published in a prestigious journal. See the comment below http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3597125

Re: The Dangerous "Research Works Act"

#26

Post by DannoHung »

Does anyone have a good form letter for telling your representative that you're prepared to start walking around the voting district stopping people on the street and explaining that Carolyn Maloney is trying to restrict access to publicly funded research?

Carolyn Maloney is my Congresswoman and I don't give a shit that the alternative is a conservative, this is ridiculous.

Re: The Dangerous "Research Works Act"

#27

Post by pg_bot »

mbreese wrote: post #24
pg_bot wrote: post #23

"The way the research process works is like this: 1.) An academic does some research, often funded by a government grant. 2.) The academic writes up a paper and submits it to an academic journal. 3.) The journal publisher adds some value to the paper, mainly formatting and secretarial services, and then publishes the paper. The journal publishers believe that the public funding of research stops at step 2, where the…

They forgot that part of #3 is peer review, which is managed by the journal, but actually performed by academics for free. Oh, and the researcher usually has to pay a fee to get the paper published once the journal accepts their paper. So, most of the hard work in #3 is free, and the academic still has to pay the journal (usually from a government grant).

Obviously for your work to be validated it must go through the process of peer review. However, I am suggesting that even after they become published in a scientific journal that the researchers should go about publishing their articles online themselves or through a third party site. I just don't see how the data can be easily locked away behind a pay wall if researchers can do whatever they please with their work. If they want to make their work available to the public there are many ways to do so.

Re: The Dangerous "Research Works Act"

#28

Post by duncanj »

DannoHung wrote: post #26

Does anyone have a good form letter for telling your representative that you're prepared to start walking around the voting district stopping people on the street and explaining that Carolyn Maloney is trying to restrict access to publicly funded research? Carolyn Maloney is my Congresswoman and I don't give a shit that the alternative is a conservative, this is ridiculous.

An important first step is to call her office and tell them how this personally affects you as her constituent. Then, organize professors from the universities in the district to call her and tell her how this personally affects them.

If you want to organize people on the street, I would recommend asking people on the street whether they support their tax dollars going to pay overpriced publishers whose tax base is in Europe when the articles could be published at low cost, on the web, in the US, while universities get to save more of their money for education.

Re: The Dangerous "Research Works Act"

#29

Post by ufo »

pg_bot wrote: post #27
mbreese wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They forgot that part of #3 is peer review, which is managed by the journal, but actually performed by academics for free. Oh, and the researcher usually has to pay a fee to get the paper published once the journal accepts their paper. So, most of the hard work in #3 is free, and the academic still has to pay the journal (usually from a government grant).

Obviously for your work to be validated it must go through the process of peer review. However, I am suggesting that even after they become published in a scientific journal that the researchers should go about publishing their articles online themselves or through a third party site. I just don't see how the data can be easily locked away behind a pay wall if researchers can do whatever they please with their work.…

When publishing at one of the paid journals the researchers must give away their copyright to the journal too. This means they cannot republish the paper on a different place (sometimes there is an exception for the personal website though).

You might not believe this at first but yes, its really that stupid.

Re: The Dangerous "Research Works Act"

#30

Post by zupreme »

RichardPrice wrote: post #3
zupreme wrote: post #2

I think the author is not looking deep enough. Universities form and fund consortiums all the time for one reason or another. The US Government funds even more and has more resources. If either the universities, or the US government, wanted academic research to be public by default, they could bypass the publishers entirely and do so with comparatively little effort. In this case the "publishers" are merely the fall…

It isn't true that the US government could easily bypass the publishers. They want the research to be distributed, and peer reviewed, and have historically relied on the publishers to do that. The NIH (the federal agency that dispenses the bulk of academic funding in the US) took the view that they could get better distribution terms on behalf of the US public, with their open access mandate in 2008. It's this policy…

I understand where you are coming from and I see your point. However, I'm not saying it would be "easy" just "relatively easy", as compared to the work and cost involved in legislation, investigation, and enforcement of the act which has been proposed.

Setting up a new system would not be without hurdles, of course, however if the initiative is properly funded and is pushed from the cabinet-level (i.e. US DOE) down and the use of the new system is tied to federal funding for universities, then it will gain traction and prestige.

It might take a generation for the old guard to fall away but eventually we'd have a better, more transparent, fairer system.

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