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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

#221

Post by trevcanhuman »

jjk166 wrote: post #168
anigbrowl wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The find one or more well-credentialed and cited experts in the field to anonymously review the paper and point out shortcomings in the research or drafting - this is the 'peer' part of peer review. Then they either accept for publication, suggest revisions, or reject it outright.

Note that the peer reviewers doing the work are unpaid volunteers, the people receiving the money are just middlemen.

I've heard this definitely more than I like, but is there evidence that this is true ?

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

#222

Post by ncmncm »

nulbyte wrote: post #215
ncmncm wrote: post #212

Gives them until 2025. Why not retroactive?

Current policy is public after 12 months. This is just changing that to 0 for future grants.

But there is still no reason to enforce it only after 2025. Enforce it immediately, retroactive to everything published last year, besides.

Researchers dumb enough to have assigned copyright to a journal (which was and is never necessary) would be powerless to claw it back without an act of Congress, but there is no reason for any ever to do it anymore.

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

#223

Post by apaprocki »

quantified wrote: post #203
tus666 wrote: post #188

This doesn't seem right. Instead, the author should be forced to send a copy to the whitehouse when they send it to the journal, and the whithouse should make it available for free as a government output.

This is being downvoted for some reason, but there's no reason that some govt branch couldn't require a copy that they would publish as part of the grant.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/08-202...

> Federal agencies should update or develop new public access plans for ensuring, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, that all peer-reviewed scholarly publications4 authored or co- authored by individuals or institutions resulting from federally funded research are made freely available and publicly accessible by default in agency-designated repositories without any embargo or delay after publication.

"publicly accessible by default in agency-designated repositories" -- so figuratively "sending a copy to the White House", but also literally "govt branch requiring a copy that they would publish".

In addition, by publishing an "agency-designated repository", presumably it would be vacuumed up by NARA as the government equivalent of the "wayback" machine, so that the published record could not be altered without an audit trail.

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

#224

Post by apaprocki »

jlarocco wrote: post #187
golem14 wrote: post #184

Note: goes into effect in 2026. Much can happen until then. A new administration might be able to undo this relatively easily. I imagine there are lots of lobbyist dollars available. That said, looks great!

I wonder why something like this takes 4 years to roll out? Is there a legitimate reason? Or is it lobbyist dollars at work already, buying time?

Read the memorandum and you'll see -- every agency has a lot of work to do. It's layered upon the work already done since the changes in 2013.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/08-202...

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

#225

Post by bruce511 »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #77
elil17 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say the real reason is that it's pretty impractical to limit it to just Americans given that we don't have any sort of national e-identity.

we do through the international patent system. We should get money back for our tax dollars, simple as that. We could work it into international patents. I know some countries ignore those, but we can make them pay in other ways like tariffs and treaties.

Not to be that guy, but other countries don't pay tarrifs, Americans do. The tarrif is levied on the importer, who then passes that cost on to the consumer.

The tarrif is not paid by the exporter.

The goal of a tariff is to _increase_ the customer price for some good locally, and thus make a local (more expensive) good more compeditive.

A foreign country may experience lower demand for their product, but its not like they "pay any money".

Yes, lower demand may lead to a lower price, or it may mean they export to other countries instead.

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

#226

Post by anigbrowl »

trevcanhuman wrote: post #221
jjk166 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that the peer reviewers doing the work are unpaid volunteers, the people receiving the money are just middlemen.

I've heard this definitely more than I like, but is there evidence that this is true ?

Just go on academic twitter and ask, you will get a torrent of sob stories. Everyone hates the journal industry but nobody knows how to overturn it. Every so often a group in some field bands together and gets a new open-access journal going (good) but then that has to run for several years and feature heavyweight papers before it can compete with the incumbent, and it's a lot of work while making much less money.

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

#227

Post by Vinnl »

ml_basics wrote: post #62

As someone in the ML community where arxiv rules supreme, I really do not understand why other communities do not also have something similar. I get that there are some perverse incentives around, but there is a relatively straightforward solution to all of the problems with journals - just publish your work on the internet first so that it's out in the open, then send it to some journal who can make money from your…

The journal —which you'll want to publish in if you want to make career progress— will then say they won't publish your work because it's not "novel".

So yes, perverse incentives all around.

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

#228

Post by Vinnl »

guerby wrote: post #7

In France since 2018: https://www.enseignementsup-recherche.gouv.fr/fr/le-plan-nat... Approximate translation: The national plan for open science announced by Frédérique Vidal on July 4th 2018 makes open access mandatory for articles and data from state funded projects.

In most of the EU and several other countries: https://www.coalition-s.org/

(Edit: actually, I think the Horizon 2020 program already mandated Open Access for most research, although enforcement back then was lacking (and still isn't perfect). Coalition S's plan also attempts to ensure that they don't indirectly fund journals that aren't fully Open Access.)

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

#229

Post by Vinnl »

krull10 wrote: post #120
dwheeler wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right it doesn't fully address the issue, but it does provide some pressure. If an article is available for free immediately, there's no need to spend $6K to make it available at all . Researchers want to be in specific locations because of their prestige. However, when all US-funded research is also available outside that location, the walled garden of prestige becomes rather porous. Especially since the revi…

I don’t think the promotion and prestige incentives can be fixed easily by academics. Their promotion, earnings, ability to change universities, and recognition depend on publishing in the most prestigious journals they can. In contrast, the government could easily fix this by simply not providing the money currently required by such journals, which would force them to come up with models that can work with lower fee…

> I don’t think the promotion and prestige incentives can be fixed easily by academics.

Well, not by most of them, but promotion boards usually contain academics. Part of the solution would be the slow one-funeral-at-the-time one of waiting.

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

#230

Post by blitzar »

mlindner wrote: post #101
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. Hopefully the trend continues. I wouldn't go this far. Part of the current revolution in the private space industry is precisely allowing companies to own products that were partially funded by taxpayer dollars. As it encourages companies to fund their own money into it, rather than simply relying 100% on government funding. Further…

> If one red cent of taxpayer money goes to it, the taxpayer should get it for free

And non taxpayers should not get it at all.

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