Petition: require free access to publicly-funded research • Hacker News Board

Re: Petition: require free access to publicly-funded research

#71

Post by streptomycin » Mon, Jan 14, 2013, 8:06 PM UTC

TheAmazingIdiot wrote: post #70

streptomycin wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So by your judgement, all these folks could be sacked and nothing of value would be lost? http://www.plos.org/about/people/staff/

"So by your judgement, all these folks could be sacked and nothing of value would be lost?" I would argue that value would be gained by sacking these people (and organizations). Most of the money they (and other journals) uses is dependent on excessive licensing fees charged to universities. The universities turn around and add that to each person's tuition. And all the work the journal publishes WAS owned by the stu…

We're talking about open access stuff like PLoS, though. They don't charge licensing fees to universities, they don't typically demand copyright transfer, etc. Try to stay on topic.

Basically.. the question is, is it possible for an open access journal to be run for orders of magnitude less money than every existing open access journal currently in existence? You seem to think the answer is "definitely yes", but you haven't explained why. What is your insight that has been missed by so many others?

Furthermore, thinking of finances of open access publishers, even PLoS has its issues at its current prices http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080702/full/454011a.html

Re: Petition: require free access to publicly-funded research

#72

Post by btilly » Mon, Jan 14, 2013, 8:15 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #59

riprock wrote: post #20

This needs to also happen for case law (free as in beer). How absurd is this: "Pursuant to common law tradition, the courts of California have developed a large body of case law through the decisions of the Supreme Court of California and the California Courts of Appeal. The state supreme court's decisions are published in official reporters known as California Reports. The decisions of the Courts of Appeal are publi…

Case law is free as in beer and free as in speech. What isn't free is all the work Lexis Nexis and West Law do to edit, cross-reference, index, etc, cases. As a practical matter, these additional features are indispensable, so the text of the opinions alone is of relatively less value.

Give Google access to all of the raw documents, and they will gladly cross-reference, index, etc all of the cases. I'd be willing to bet money that they will make it available for free, and wouldn't be surprised if they do a better job than Lexis Nexis or West Law do.

The one thing that Google likely wouldn't do is edit. But that's because they can't do that by algorithm.

Re: Petition: require free access to publicly-funded research

#73

Post by snambi » Mon, Jan 14, 2013, 11:37 PM UTC

btilly wrote: post #72

rayiner wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Case law is free as in beer and free as in speech. What isn't free is all the work Lexis Nexis and West Law do to edit, cross-reference, index, etc, cases. As a practical matter, these additional features are indispensable, so the text of the opinions alone is of relatively less value.

Give Google access to all of the raw documents, and they will gladly cross-reference, index, etc all of the cases. I'd be willing to bet money that they will make it available for free, and wouldn't be surprised if they do a better job than Lexis Nexis or West Law do. The one thing that Google likely wouldn't do is edit. But that's because they can't do that by algorithm.

this is probably true. provide access someone will gladly cross-reference, index and make it available.

Re: Petition: require free access to publicly-funded research

#74

Post by anigbrowl » Tue, Jan 15, 2013, 1:33 AM UTC

rdl wrote: post #54

anigbrowl wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spare us your sarcasm. What you want is already available via http://bulk.resource.org There is no copyright on judicial or legislative proceedings, nor any restrictions upon their distribution.

It is now. Wasn't that the whole reason aaronsw liberated PACER? (I honestly still don't understand all the parts of the federal court publication system; PACER, the commercial stuff like Lexis/Nexis, physical records, aaronsw's actions, etc. -- there are a lot of fairly undocumented parts)

Carl Malamud is the person behind resource.org. aaronsw downloaded several million documents breaking PACER's TOS, but no action was taken. The archive and 'firehose' feeds on resource.org are mainly thanks to a long-running lobbying campaign by Malamud and others. The PACER system is semi-free to access but part of why it has overhead costs is that it's integrated with ECF, which attorneys use to file documents in Federal court. The cost structure is a legacy of its heritage as a document retrieval system used in brick & mortar court offices where the per-page cost was tied to the paper and printing overhead. Copyright has never been an issue in regards to PACER.

Re: Petition: require free access to publicly-funded research

#75

Post by nathan_long » Fri, Jan 18, 2013, 12:28 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #59

riprock wrote: post #20

This needs to also happen for case law (free as in beer). How absurd is this: "Pursuant to common law tradition, the courts of California have developed a large body of case law through the decisions of the Supreme Court of California and the California Courts of Appeal. The state supreme court's decisions are published in official reporters known as California Reports. The decisions of the Courts of Appeal are publi…

Case law is free as in beer and free as in speech. What isn't free is all the work Lexis Nexis and West Law do to edit, cross-reference, index, etc, cases. As a practical matter, these additional features are indispensable, so the text of the opinions alone is of relatively less value.

>> What isn't free is all the work Lexis Nexis and West Law do to edit, cross-reference, index, etc, cases.

Sure. But they are paid with public dollars to do this work, and so are effectively working for the public. Therefore, their contract should state that their work must be made public.

Really, it shouldn't matter to them whether they get the right to sell copies or get paid more up front for the work; they make money either way. But it matters for democracy.