Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

english.eu2016.nl

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 137 posts

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

#71

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

Fomite wrote: post #21
kriro wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a matter of perspective. I'd argue most European research falls under this. If you work at a public university and are paid for it and do research during that time and publish it that should be covered. It would be pretty lame if only stuff that was explicitly funded in a research project would be covered.

Research done on unfunded projects as part of a hard money position is super-tricky , which is why for a lot of things the restriction is funded research projects. For example, if your position is at a public university, but funded by an endowment from a private foundation, is it covered?

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.

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

#72

Post by Fomite »

hackuser wrote: post #62
Fomite wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never, in my entire life, avoided funding that would also make my work more accessible to a broader audience. I don't know any other academics who would do so either.

Responses like yours aren't an unrepresentative sample of academics - the ones who read HN and might have more interest in openness of information? A serious question.

Honestly, I'm not a particularly passionate advocate of open access publications, and am actively skeptical of open data requirements.

But if said open access occurs by mandate, and doesn't cost my lab money...why not?

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

#73

Post by Fomite »

jessriedel wrote: post #56
Fomite wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How this happens right now with NIH funding is yes, the government basically forces publishers to make things freely accessible - the paper is going in a public repository. Journals that publish lots of NIH funded stuff handle this for the author, while journals that don't tend to make it the author's problem. And yes, if an author doesn't comply, it can be a problem for future funding.

>> Will the EU force the publishers to make them freely accessible? Will the EU only allow scientists to publish in open journals? > How this happens right now with NIH funding is yes, the government basically forces publishers to make things freely accessible - the paper is going in a public repository. I think you're either mistaken, or you didn't understand the difference between the two original questions. The NI…

And closed access journals have subsequently made accommodations to avoid death.

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

#74

Post by Fomite »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #71
Fomite wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Research done on unfunded projects as part of a hard money position is super-tricky , which is why for a lot of things the restriction is funded research projects. For example, if your position is at a public university, but funded by an endowment from a private foundation, is it covered?

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.

The building I work in was built using money from two foundations. The electricity and heating, as well as office material, theoretically comes from grant indirects - which at the moment for me come entirely from private industry.

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

#75

Post by hackuser »

Fomite wrote: post #72
hackuser wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Responses like yours aren't an unrepresentative sample of academics - the ones who read HN and might have more interest in openness of information? A serious question.

Honestly, I'm not a particularly passionate advocate of open access publications, and am actively skeptical of open data requirements. But if said open access occurs by mandate, and doesn't cost my lab money...why not?

Thanks for responding. Why be "actively skeptical of open data requirements"? From the outside, they seem to have very little downside and occasionally valuable benefits. As always, I suspect the outsider is blind to some important issues.

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

#76

Post by gherkin0 »

igravious wrote: post #70
merijnv wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahahahahaha. First of all: Researchers won't avoid public funds, because there's never enough money. Second of all: Most researchers HATE academic publishers and being forced to sign over their copyright to a paywall in exchange for nothing. But institutional evaluation criteria force you to do so. EU banning non-open publications will force publishers to allow open access OR force universities to revise their criter…

> Elsevier can blow a goat I'm into the history of logic at the moment. As in not the filtered oh-so-neat version that is presented at third-level but the nitty-gritty twists and turns from Ancient Greece (go team Aristotle!), Indian, Arabic, Scholastic, Medieval, Pre-modern, the rise of symbolic/algebraic logic, Kant/Hegel/Trendelenburg, on to Frege and then the multiplication of logics (modal/tense/deontic, …) in t…

> Recently Elsevier contracted top logicians to produce a Handbook in the History of Logic. It runs to 11 volumes, each volume north of $300. So folks, if you want to get acquainted with the complete history of what is supposed to be a formalisation of rational thought it can be yours for $3,300 or thereabouts.

Unless you're leaving out important details, that strikes me as a completely reasonable and uncontroversial thing for Elsevier to do. If they're going privately fund the creation of an original specialist work, I think they can charge whatever they want for it. That's worlds away from how they they've subverted the primary scientific publishing process for private profit.

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

#77

Post by d3sandoval »

igravious wrote: post #70
merijnv wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahahahahaha. First of all: Researchers won't avoid public funds, because there's never enough money. Second of all: Most researchers HATE academic publishers and being forced to sign over their copyright to a paywall in exchange for nothing. But institutional evaluation criteria force you to do so. EU banning non-open publications will force publishers to allow open access OR force universities to revise their criter…

> Elsevier can blow a goat I'm into the history of logic at the moment. As in not the filtered oh-so-neat version that is presented at third-level but the nitty-gritty twists and turns from Ancient Greece (go team Aristotle!), Indian, Arabic, Scholastic, Medieval, Pre-modern, the rise of symbolic/algebraic logic, Kant/Hegel/Trendelenburg, on to Frege and then the multiplication of logics (modal/tense/deontic, …) in t…

Definitely interested.

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

#78

Post by lrem »

ikeboy wrote: post #50
lrem wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they are already cashing in for publishing anything, with additional small charges like few hundred bucks for going over the page limit and big charges like a couple thousand for making the article openly accessible.

" big charges like a couple thousand for making the article openly accessible." Yes, if you don't want them let them make money off your work, they won't subsidize publication and you'll need to pay. No law can change basic economics.

Yet somehow there are so many platforms that will happily subsidise open publication without even taking the initial thousand bucks for letting me in, like Medium, Wordpress, Blogger...

Seriously, the only reason why academic publishers can charge anything is their established position, where they are a proxy for gauging researcher's output by administration. Peer reviews are done by volunteers, discovery is provided by Google Scholar and everybody uses PDF anyways (usually printing it out, still orders of magnitude faster than fetching from a library).

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

#79

Post by lrem »

hackuser wrote: post #75
Fomite wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I'm not a particularly passionate advocate of open access publications, and am actively skeptical of open data requirements. But if said open access occurs by mandate, and doesn't cost my lab money...why not?

Thanks for responding. Why be "actively skeptical of open data requirements"? From the outside, they seem to have very little downside and occasionally valuable benefits. As always, I suspect the outsider is blind to some important issues.

Sometimes you are using data that shouldn't be released e.g. for privacy reasons. See the recent controversy about research including data from a dating site.

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

#80

Post by ikeboy »

lrem wrote: post #78
ikeboy wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" big charges like a couple thousand for making the article openly accessible." Yes, if you don't want them let them make money off your work, they won't subsidize publication and you'll need to pay. No law can change basic economics.

Yet somehow there are so many platforms that will happily subsidise open publication without even taking the initial thousand bucks for letting me in, like Medium, Wordpress, Blogger... Seriously, the only reason why academic publishers can charge anything is their established position, where they are a proxy for gauging researcher's output by administration. Peer reviews are done by volunteers, discovery is provided…

Those have nowhere near the costs of academic publishers, which are usually in the thousands per paper. There's a reason papers aren't published on medium.
Post reply on HN