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Who Owns Science?
Posted by
timothy
on Mon Dec 16, 2002 08:42 PM
from the wants-to-be-free dept.
from the wants-to-be-free dept.
immerrath writes "The New York Times has an article [Sorry, tomorrow's article, no Google link yet] on a movement that is rapidly gaining support in the scientific community: the Public Library of Science(PLoS). The founders, Nobel Laureate Harold Varmus, Stanford biologist Pat Brown and Berkeley Lab scientist Michael Eisen, argue that scientific literature cannot be privately controlled or owned by the publishers of scientific journals, and must instead be available in public archives freely accessible by anyone and everyone. This has very important implications for the fundamental principle that Science must transcend all economic, national and other barriers. For a while now, PLoS has been trying to get scientific journals to release the rights to scientific papers; many major journals have not complied -- in response, PLoS is starting PLoS-standard-compliant journals (for which they received a $9 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation), to demonstrate the validity of the idea and persuade academic publishers to adopt the free access model. They even have a GPL-like open access Licence, and their journals have some very prominent scientists on the editorial board. Here is the text of an earlier Newsweek article about PLoS, and here is a Nature Public Debate explaining the issues. Michael Eisen received the 2002 Benjamin Franklin award for his work on PLoS. Don't forget to sign the PLoS open letter!"
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nytimes google partner link (Score:3, Informative)
Merkac Dot [apocryphillia.com] : 48210
Links to Google Cache(N.B. Not always cached.)
article [nytimes.com] cache [google.com] [Link not cached at time of posting]
Public Library of Science(PLoS) [publiclibr...cience.org] cache [google.com] [Cache link active]
Nobel [nobel.se] cache [google.com] [Cache link active]
Harold Varmus [accessexcellence.org] cache [google.com] [Cache link active]
Pat Brown [stanford.edu] cache [google.com] [Cache link active]
Michael Eisen [berkeley.edu] cache [google.com] [Cache link active]
journals [sciencemag.org] cache [google.com] [Cache link active]
journals [publiclibr...cience.org] cache [google.com] [Link not cached at time of posting]
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation [moore.org] cache [google.com] [Cache link active]
Licence [publiclibr...cience.org] cache [google.com] [Link not cached at time of posting]
editorial board [publiclibr...cience.org] cache [google.com] [Link not cached at time of posting]
Check out arXiv.org (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Check out arXiv.org (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem with arXiv is that much of the stuff on there would not pass peer-review, and some of it never gets revised to pass muster. By the time the author gets around to publishing it in a peer-reviewed journal, the on-line preprints have moved on, so the topic is no longer considered worth the effort of publication.
The end result is that all the readers of preprint servers have to do their own peer review, which is incredibly wasteful of effort.
Journal publishers are *not* making any kind of outrageous profits. Instead, they are defraying the substantial costs they incur in managing the editorial process that keeps scientific journals from becoming cesspools of "we publish anything!!!"
Parent
Standing on the shoulders of Giants (Score:4, Insightful)
All science, and technology is built on prior theories, experimentation and research. Putting more information out there is the best to speed our understanding of the world. As well bring new technologies into being.
Re:Standing on the shoulders of Giants (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
You speak the truth, sensei (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:You speak the truth, sensei (Score:3, Insightful)
Think harder grass hopper.
Re:You speak the truth, sensei (Score:3)
I am not disagreeing with your case, only with your imprecision in describing it.
And as for another take on what a ghost is, that is likely to be at least partially correct in the long run, take a look at the research being done by Persinger at Laurentian University in neuro psych. Very interesting stuff. Here is a link [wired.com] to a pop article about some of his work.
Learning is Co-evolutionary (Score:5, Insightful)
A strange but perhaps helpful analogy might be the railroads. The paths the railways followed were those travelled by those who came before the railways but the capital investment necessary to lay the track and get the trains rolling required huge outlays of private capital. To compensate the capital investment much land and resources was given to the railways. Now with the new technologies the proprietory moguls are trying to make a case that knowledge can't be dissiminated without similar out lays of capital to that necessary to underwrite the railways. And that the outlay entitles them to ownership of the goods and services that use the infrastructure and technology. This is akin to the railways being given ownership of all the goods and services the railway brought to developing nations. This amounts to the old adage of putting the cart before the horse. For knowledge and research to thrive it must have free reign and if the new technology is to carry the fruit of new research then it must be underwritten by government or non-proprietory means.
How Ironic... (Score:4, Insightful)
Dartmouth fMRI DC - Public Data Warehouse (Score:3, Informative)
The community [nature.com] has not yet decided if this is a good idea but they will come around.
I do (Score:4, Funny)
Bad Idea (Score:5, Insightful)
First, this will inevitably have a negative effect on the submission of papers; I certainly wouldn't have submitted my first paper (now published) while I was still an undergraduate student if I had to pay for it.
Second, this raises a conflict of interest. If a journal's costs are being met by its authors, there will be a pressure to keep those authors happy -- which means publishing their papers. The current situation, where a journal's costs are met by its subscribers is the opposite -- the journals are under pressure to keep the quality as high as possible.
Finally, remember that quite a few papers are available online already. This varies from field to field, of course, but most mathematicians I know have all of their papers from the past decade online.
Re:Bad Idea (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe, maybe not. In any event, in many fields of science, the investigator already pays. That's right -- for some journals, the author pays to publish, the subscriber pays to receive, and the journal holds the copyright! When I was a grad student, way back in the early 1990s, Astrophysical Journal charged about $100 per page.
Parent
Re:Bad Idea (Score:3, Insightful)
You have an interesting definition of "reputable".
Re:Bad Idea (Score:5, Informative)
As one of the organizers of Public Library of Science, I'd like to respond.
From the outside, $1500 per article may seem like a lot. If you think of this as individual researchers digging into their own pockets to pay to publish the results of their research, sound a bit unreasonable. But that is not what we are proposing.
The reality is that it costs money to provide the services that authors expect from a top scientific journal: rigorous peer-review, editorial oversight, and high production standards. We (the scientific community and the institutions, funding agencies and taxpayers that support us) are already paying journals to provide this service - total annual expenditures on scientific journals are well in excess of $1 billion per year.
We are asking the funding agencies, universities and research institutions that support our work to recognize that the costs of publication are a fundamental part of the scientific research process. If they committed to directly paying journals to provide peer-review, editorial oversight and production (rather than indirectly as they do now) the latest scientific discoveries could be made freely available online to every scientist and physician or interested citizen in the world in comprehensive, searchable open archives of the scientific literature.
There is a growing consensus in the community that this is a sensible model (it is supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and several major universities including the University of California and Harvard).
The system of giving away the copyrights to the original research reports and then paying to access them is woefully anachronistic. It costs more and it effectively deprives most of the world - including the people whose taxes paid for the research in the first place - from having any meaningful access to the results.
You are right to be concerned that $1500 is a steep price to pay for a student, or a scientist from a small university or poor country. We never want our publication charges to be a barrier to publication, and will publish any paper that our editors and reviewers deem to be appropriate for the journals, either by significantly reducing or waiving the charges. In addition, organization like the Soros Open Society Institute, are providing funds to help offset the costs of publication for scientists from developing countries.
I should also note that we expect the costs to decline significantly over time, as automated methods for peer-review develop, and as authors start to more widely use tools that allow for automatic conversion of documents to XML and properly formatted XML. In the end, the remaining costs will be primarily for editorial oversight, and authors will be able to choose the level that is appropriate for their work.
Your concern about conflicts of interest are unwarranted. There were certainly be journals that will, for a fee, publish anything that is sent to them. These already exist. However, nobody will want to publish their works in these journals since the citation will carry no significance. Why pay to publish in a journal that publishes anything when you can just post the article on the web for free? Many journals will still have a tremendous incentive to maintain high editorial standards, because this is something that scientists value.
Finally, you are correct that in fields like mathematics, computer science and physics, many works are already freely available. This, however, isn't true in biology and medicine, and thus initiatives like this are essential.
Parent
Some thoughts (Score:4, Interesting)
I signed the Open Letter long ago, not because I agreed with every point, but because it was good to see something stir up some noise. I also licensed my thesis [urn.nb.no] under the PLoS license, not because I think it has much legal value (it confuses "public domain" with RMS' concept of copyleft), but because I think that if anybody wants to copy that thesis, it can only help me, and besides the fuzz you created was great! As it turns out, all of those of my childhood friends who have become scientists have independently signed the Open Letter! :-)
One of my main beefs with the PLoS is the insistence of a centralized archive. True, it may be easier to build something good on the top of for example the existing Arxiv.org [arxiv.org] (I'm an astrophysicist), but decentralization is one of the fundamental principles of the web [w3.org]. It is wise to learn as much as possible from these architectural principles, and make use of them as fast as possible.
I have for long wanted to write an article with the many thoughts I have in my head, but time has not allowed me to. The future of scientific publishing is perhaps the topic that I would most like to work with.
I noted in the Nature debate [nature.com] (which I submitted a link to [slashdot.org] some time ago), that some of the non-profit publishers wouldn't let go of their published articles because they couldn't ensure the integrity of the articles [nature.com]. This has a rather obvious technical solution to most people here on Slashdot, in the form of signatures. Now that XML Signature [w3.org] is a W3C Recommendation, I think it is just a matter of implementing it, the problem is really solved.
As for finance (now comes the excuse for posting in this thread), it is a problem that needs addressing for the whole Internet community. Many different modes should be available, for example, a nice, printed journal set by a professional typographer will not seize to be attractive although the article is available on the web. Some may well find a steady income there. Also, micropayments is something that is worth checking out.
I would personally like to work on those solutions, so if anybody is hiring... :-)
Parent
Re:Bad Idea (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, academic journals used to make small profits until the mid-1980s, when a wave of consolidations changed this entirely. In fact, last time I looked into this (a few years back) the profits of academic journal publishing divisions had been rising steadily and well above inflation.
A typical journal article is paid for by the investigators to cover costs of printing.
Wrong again. Depends very much on the area. Math and computer science are not this way. Physics is about half and half, with some journals being free, others charging above a certain number of pages, and lastly others charging a per-page fee.
It's pretty simple actually (Score:4, Interesting)
IANAL, but I still feel that the automatic assumption that these two things will always get better rests on the broad but not infinite shoulders of Aristotle, the Founding Fathers (regardless of where you live), and Ayn Rand-like characters.
IIRC from my studies, during the 'Dark Ages', the accumulated knowledge of centuries vanished, and these instants nearly coincided with repression of freedom (either from church or state).
PMFJI, but there is much evidence that the American era is coming to an end, and with it may come darker ages than those ever before known. (specifally, I cite the FDA, for crushing the advance of pharmacudical/medical science, as well as the departments of education, for caving to the mysics in their insistance that creationism be taught in public schools; and the gov't in general for any and all attempts to regulate, censor, or tax the Internet.)
This may sound TLTBT, but I say enjoy the freedom you have while you still have it. Our time time may be running out.
TXS.
google research (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:google research (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.scirus.com/
Not "science" -- "biology" (Score:5, Insightful)
Note that the PLoS plans to start with two journals which focus on biology and medicine. These are the fields where basic research can yield megabucks in the relatively short term. In my own field (astronomy), there's not a cent to be made by anyone; hence, I doubt we'll see a PLoS journal of astronomy or astrophysics anytime soon.
Note also that if researchers didn't care about getting money from industry, they wouldn't be chary of publishing their results for all to see. The real problems occur when scientists need big money to set up big labs employing many people to develop new medicines (or do research which has obvious applications to new medicines) which can treat "wealthy" diseases: diseases which affect many people in wealthy countries. I don't see a way around this: investment by big pharmaceutical companies WILL speed the pace of such research (that's good), but will also lead to secrecy and higher drug prices for some time after the products first appear (that's bad).
Some problems are just plain complicated. This is one of them. I wish the PLoS the best of luck, but I don't give them much of a chance. As long as a few researchers are willing to work in secrecy, they can use the PLoS results plus their "secret" results and often beat the "public" researchers to the punch. It's not unlike the prisoner's dilemma.
Enter Politics (Score:5, Insightful)
But
This changes subtly capitalistic influences to a subtly politicized ones.
I don't care how accomplished these prominent scientists on the editorial boards are, they're not gods, and they'll have their own subconcious axes to grind. In journals like Science and Nature, at least the capitalistic incentive is dry and impersonal, unlike the motivation to maintain dogma.
I'm not so sure the monetary incentive is worse than the political one which would emerge here.
Re:Enter Politics (Score:5, Funny)
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Distribution Models and the 'net (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to disagree with this viewpoint. Just because the majority of people who want to get to this information are "experts" doesn't mean you shouldn't make it available to everyone. There are plenty of people (I am one of them) who have an interest in various scientific fields and like to read papers and yet who aren't studying for their PHDs. When are they going to start one of these journals for physics! (I guess there is Arxiv [arxiv.org].)
Some people have said that lots of scientific work is copyrighted/patented, but that doesn't prevent free distribution. The whole _point_ of the patent process is to give the patentee a guaranteed limited monopoly so that they _will_ immediately publish their works, instead of hording them as secrets. Free distribution doesn't mean noone can make any money.
Really, this seems like the trend that is happening in many areas where distribution has hitherto been controlled by a small group of publishers, due to the high cost of publishing. The internet can change the way we distribute information without killing commerce!
At least Nature (the magazine) isn't passing their own version of the DMCA...
My reply to Nytmes.org (Score:5, Informative)
You had a feature describing the reality of scientific publishing today.
As a scientist I can unfortunatey inform you that it was nowhere near
the actual situation today.
This is the typical sequence of events for a scientific publication:
1) We do science. This is sort of a basic prerequisite for anything else
to happen. It is also usually funded directly by the public, or
indirectly funded by various foundations. This part - which by many is
seen as our core competency - is largely funded by public institutions.
2) We try to publish. Now, here is the problem: We try to publish in the
most 'prestigious' journals that we can. Why? Because the number of
papers that we publish - and the importance of the journals that we
publish in - is absolutely critical to our future careers. And our
carreers is rather important to things like money for food, clothes to
our children and so on. There is no certainty in the academic world
apart from the one that expounds that few papers = few citations = no
future. Of course, having a lot of papers in prestigious journals
guarantees nothing except a greater chance of being noticed.
3) So, our important paper has been sent away - in some cases with a $10
charge (or more) per page. This paper is immediately sent on to the editors. Who
are the editors? Why, our own colleagues. The very act of being an
editor for any publication is still regarded as being important. In no
case is either the author nor editor compensated for anything-
4) Now, after several rounds between us, the editor and the reviewers
(who, like the editor, are doing the work for free), the paper is
finallyu ready for publication. Observe that not only is the content
finalized, but the entire typographical layout has been perfected by the
very same authours that are being paid by the university (ie. either a
private grant or by the public) to do research, but are now spending a
month of their time making usre their manuscript is conforming to the
smallest detail to the publications' standards.
4.5) As a small addendum, the authors are requested to sign a form
agreeing to the publication actually publishing the paper in question.
The researchers, having little choice, sign it.
5) Finally, the paper is out. It appears, formated exactly as the
researchers did it, in the next 'issue'. The number of 'issues' is equal
to the number of research libraries prepared to pay $5000 or more for
four issues of maybe four or five of these papers a year.
These publications pay nothing for the content (the researchers
sometimes evan pay cash to get content into them), editing (it is done
for free by otherresearchers) or typesetting (as it is done by the
researchers themselves). The total work for these publishers is
maximally in one half-time secretarial position to connect papers with
appropriate editors and reviewers. Yet they charge $5000 per year (or
more - sometimes much more) for four issues - or more than $10 per page -
for the very same results that the univerities, and, in the end, the
public, has paid for being conducted in teh first place.
6) So, even with this gouging, our researcher and her doctoral students
have at least a good publictaion to their name? Well, no. It turns out
that the to publish the rsults, the publishing company actually owns the
text of the paper. The doctoral students can not use the text they have
written as part of their theses. The people that have done the research
- and that want only to spread the results to their colleagues - do no
longer own their own text. Only with permission - and with a great deal
of money - may they actually use their own text in other situations,
like on the web or in their onwn theses.
The end result is that the authors do all the preparatorial work, using the publics' money; the editors and reviewers does their work using the publics money, and som printer somewhere prints a few hundred copies of the publication for a standard (low) fee. Meanwhile the company owning the publication retains the ownership of the papers and $5000 minus the printing cost of one (out of a few hundred (at the max)) printed copies of the journal.
Hell yes, I'd be delighted with being in a business with a 20000% profit margin...
Re:My reply to Nytmes.org (Score:3, Insightful)
Now if you could summarize it in fewer than 20 lines it might get printed in the 'letters' section...
citeseer.org (Score:5, Informative)
I think (and hope) that this will continue to take off and become more and more complete.
The reality... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's gotten so bad that unless I am familiar with the author(s), I often pass on a paper just based on the title. If the title looks promising, I scan the abstract. If the abstract looks promising, I add the paper to my "to read" list, hoping I'll have time to get to it.
Let's face it, with more people than ever actively engaged in research, the biggest threat to important scientific ideas is not the control of publishers or the oppression of government/religion/CowboyNeal, it's the threat of being lost in the crowd.
Not free, already paid for (Score:3, Interesting)
So, we've already paid for their research. The journals are charging people for what they've already paid for. Yes, they add the value of filtering, but the same could be achieved by an epinions.com like system, which would be much more effective than the journal's anonymous peer reviews.
The end of papyrus journals would SAVE Universities, once again the state i.e. us, piles of money in acquisition, processing, and storage.
The downside? Springer-Verlag loses a cash cow.
Why this will happen: there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.
Why this will not happen: academicians themselves are unwilling, unable, or unlikely to change and stop relying on or submitting to paper journals.
Re:Not free, already paid for (Score:3, Informative)
The first part of what you say is espeically true for my field (astronomy), there is certainly no denying it. However, the last part is probably not strong enough. In most fields, I'd imagine that it's not just a 'change in status' that one is looking for, but for career survival.
And, really, that's OK because if there wasn't that motivation, what would drive one to sit down an waste time writing up what you've done for the last few months instead of plunging forward with fun, new stuff? And, in an economic sense, this motivation, no matter how ego/self-centered it can be twisted to appear, is important for documenting the product of those tax dollars spent. Even if published in journals with subscription fees, the research is 'out there' and you can ask the author for a reprint or she/he can put it up on their website/FTP/Gnutella (at least for all the publications I submit to...). So, in the long run, I think it's a much better motivation than the possibility that you would be paid for submitting, that's for sure.
Filtering certainly has gotten a lot of press lately, but it's not the only function of the peer review. When it works well (and I've had the pleasure of seeing and hearing of it working well in many instances recently), a reviewer/editor can actually recommend articles to be published that they've verified (to some extent) are accurate in method but that they don't agree with in interpretation. It's very tough to do, but I've seen it happen several times recently and it restores my faith in this system a little. Remember that a lot of great science actually comes from the fringe first and takes a long time to be 'accepted'. I belive science would loose a lot going to a model where public opinion (even if the 'public' is just field colleagues) rules.
I think this model does have a place though. There are a lot of preprint archive servers popping up in many fields. The one we use (arXiv.org/astro-ph) is one of the oldest. Since such places are never going to do filtering, I personally think that these could benefit from a little public discussion to put submissions in context. Sometimes results from these places are used in other works before they are published. I'm not too hip on that, personally.
Maybe astronomy is different than other sciences, but I don't think I've looked up a paper in a 'papyrus' journal in years. In fact, I first met the current librarian in the coffee room a few months after she started. I barely go to the library anymore and nearly all our journals publish on-line with multiple media options as well (PDF/HTML/PS). It's been great, but bad for burning those few extra calories a day
Frankly, I wouldn't care if all the journals I submitted to stopped producing paper copies.
Pubmed central (Score:5, Informative)
-Sean Mooney, PhD
Stanford University
Changing a $10 billion industry... (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason publishers exist in the first place is due to the economies provided by a division of labor. Actually printing out the books has never been the primary expense of scientific publishers (as somebody mentioned referring to their "small print runs"). As Tim O'Reilly [openp2p.com] mentioned the other day [slashdot.org]:
O'Reilly was talking about book and music publishing, the "trade" market, but scientific publishing is really little different. As others have mentioned here, many people read scientific journals (or are interested in them) who are not among the researchers who would be authors. And the huge volume of research published these days makes organization of it (traditionally via journals) more important than ever. And why not use the "free market" as reflected in library buying patterns to determine what journals exist, and which ones are discontinued for lack of interest? Is there an equivalent balancing measure in the PLOS plans?
Ultimately, the proposal is very much like Red Hat's offer on operating systems, to turn a $10 billion industry into something much smaller. Publishing revenues may well decline as things become more efficient elsewhere, but publishers will still be around for a long while - as O'Reilly said, ""Free" is eventually replaced by a higher-quality paid service"!
Missing the point (Score:5, Interesting)
What would be nice, not to mention benificial to all of science, would be a place where I could (a) publish my own works, preferably in a peer-reviewed way to keep out the crackpot crowd (reviewers are rarely paid - it's a prestige thing, much like being a moderator on /.), and (b) have access to the works of others for free or a small, fixed, fee. Basically, the problem is not that scientists are greedy (you don't get money for publishing, sometimes you have to pay), but that we have the middleman journal publisher who, while maybe needed 20 years ago, is just a drag on the system today.
All or Nothing (Score:4, Insightful)
If we believe that science is to be open and freely available, then we need to accept that all science needs to be open and available to everyone. We can not say that certain things need to be restricted because of their potential risk to other people. We can not try to hide certain ideas because of their negative implications on the world as a whole.
And once we come to that decision, where does science begin, and comerce end. The implimentation of certain ideas is no less of a scientific discovery than the base idea. So where are the open and free research telling me how to make serin gas, so I don't have to go shoot up my school next time.
We have come a long way from postulating that a stone and a feather fall at the same rate, or that 1 mass unit of gold has less volume than the same mass unit of some other metal. The research we do costs a lot of money. You can't even begin to compare todays science to days of old, when parapetitic schools and the socratic method ruled the land (or even more recent examples). Super colliders cost a hell of a lot more money than an unexposed film negative.
The cost of research, both in its dollar amounts, and human costs are too high to believe that there is some sort of universal ethic that is inherent to science. It becomes very taxing to support research for research sake for institutions in the private sector. It is impossible for the public sector to efficiently allocate resources to productive research. Just think of all the people that have bitched on this very site about what NASA could have better used their money for, or more specificlly, what the US could have better used NASA's money for. Your really neat idea is my unacceptable research.
For this reason scientific research shouldn't be publicly funded, and if it isn't publicly funded, the the private sector foots the bill. If the private sector foots the bill, then it is reall hard for a reasonable person to believe they are just going to give it away. And writing code in your basement in your free time is not the same as building a super collider, not to mention all the equipment it takes to observe the results of a super collider.
Sorry for rambling, I know my thoughts weren't too coherent, but if you took them from a step back, they might make some sort of sense, whether you agree or not.
Re:Science is open to everyone (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Science is open to everyone (Score:3, Insightful)
OT: .sig (Score:3, Insightful)
"If not all fruits are oranges, it stands to reason that not all oranges are fruits, either." Um, no... it exactly does not stand to reason.
Re:Science is open to everyone (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the very point is that mosts cientific publishing is not in the vein of science or nature. There you get the finished results; the consensus stuff or the magnificient breakthroughs that would be a pride to any daily paper headline setter.
Most of scientific publishing is very boring, very cautious or very incredible. I know that all I've published certainly belongs to this class. That doees not mean it's bad science; for every revolutionary, you need a small army of people dotting the I:s and crssing the T:s. In that process you also tend to find a surprising amount of good, solid science.
Unfortunately, as soon as you step away from the Big Stars of science, things look bleak, as so many othes are documenting.
Parent
Re:Science is open to everyone (Score:5, Insightful)
Those that would steal their hard work because "Science is for everyone" doesn't quite grasp the concept of the reward system.
"Stealing" is not quite the word that I would use. Remember that every piece of science today is based upon someone elses past research. In order to develop and prove new theories, you have to "steal" from someone else. If you, as a researcher had NO information on widgits, how would you even start developing a theory? Most researchers would begin by finding out what everyone else thinks of Widgits and go from there.
This all reminds me of a quote I read in college (can't remember the person that created the quote). "Western Civilization is a footnote to Plato". This means Without Plato beginning political discourse, the western world would probably have developed in an entirely different manner. It's the same way in pure science. Without having someone to start, how do you develop your own theories?
Parent
Re:Science is open to everyone (Score:5, Insightful)
1/ Plato hardly started the philosophies that much of Western thinking are based upon. You may recall that Plato studied under Cratylus and was heavily influenced by Socrates. And Cratylus studied under...
2/ Many of Plato's views would likely be considered pretty horrible by those of us working in many of the major Enlightenment streams of thought. Western Civilisation may owe debts to Plato, but the like of Adam Smith, J S Mill, Woolstoncroft, Bertrand Russell, William Morris, and sundry others play a much more immediate role in our day to day lives, in much the same way that Rutherford splitting the atom is more meaningful for people getting their electricity in the US than Newton's work.
Essentially, picking Plato is arbitary. And that's the problem with most notions of identifying the "great thinkers", especially in collaborative areas that build and change over time; things are all too often reduced to popularity/PR contests. Hell, how many people think Edison was a great inventor?
Parent
Re:Science is a process (Score:4, Interesting)
Now then, most scientists are not exactly in science for the money, so I'm skeptical about the reward system argument. Moreover, I agree that 'stealing' may not be the correct term to use. Therefore, I am going to go out on a limb here, and say that it may be the case that scientists themselves may not completely understand the reward system.
Now, I've known a lot of scientists in my time, and I'd have to say that most of them:
1) Specialize in a certain field, and have a great grasp of that field;
2) Don't have a great concept of money (unless they are specializing in that field, although that still doesn't mean that they have alot of money).
3) Have general human interests and desires, just like everyone else (health, security, friendships, feeling of importance, etc).
4) Are interested in receiving credit for work they've done.
5) They wind up receiving credit for their work, but rewards go to other groups, because of the structure of modern science.
Anyhow, I'm digressing. Your question: Without having someone to start, how do you develop your own theories?
Yeah... That question has sort of been asked, and answered, by a guy named Thomas Kuhn. He writes to the affect that generally one has to start with someone else's theories. The exceptions which proove the rule are what he calls 'Anamoly of Oservation' (I think that's the term he uses). Anyhow, the answer to your question, as I understand it, is that you develop your own theories by observing something which nobody else has ever observed before, and stating a theory about it. This is a rather difficult proposition generally, but it does happen. Examples include:
measurement of the speed of light (constant! no more Ether!)
radioactive isotopes (they glow! different weights!)
electromagnetic spectrum (waves in the air!)
nucleic acid alpha/beta structures (stores information! genetics!)
penicillin production (germs! small things! drugs!)
columbus crosses the atlantic (america! real estate for the taking!)
These examples illustrate general 'ah-ha' experiences and fundamental observations which may very well defy the 'reward system' and the concept of stealing (well, maybe columbus and folks stole america, but that's another story).
I'm rambling. Signing off.
Parent
Re:Science is open to everyone (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Science is open to everyone (Score:5, Informative)
Someone doesn't understand the concept of the academic reward system, all right. Unfortunately, that person is you.
1) Scientists (and other academics) get their rewards (tenure, grants, etc.) by publishing material so that others can build on it, not by hoarding it or selling it for large amounts of money. That's how academia works.
2) Academics almost never get any money from journal articles. In fact, some journals CHARGE THE ACADEMIC FOR PRINTING THEM.
In the past, journals were expensive for a legitimate reason: printing a small press run (and let's face it, most academic journals have circulations measured in the hundreds or low thousands) resulted in a very high unit cost.
Now, with online publishing, there's no reason for this, yet the journal publishers are still charging exorbitant fees to their subscribers.
Academic publishing isn't anything like commercial fiction or non-fiction publishing, sorry. It's an entirely different business model.
If you have a vision of some guy doing neurobiology becoming the next Tom Clancy, you're just wrong.
Parent
Re:Science is open to everyone (Score:5, Insightful)
Those that would steal their hard work because "Science is for everyone" doesn't quite grasp the concept of the reward system
Who's stealing from whom? Journals don't do scientific work; scientists do. They've already been compensated for their work. They only publish because they want to contribute to the sum of human knowledge, because they want the prestige, and because their tenure-track job depends on it.
If Nature or Science or Cell can make a buck by printing a researcher's work and selling copies to other people, good for them. By putting together a selection of good papers they're saving me time and providing a useful service. After six months or a year, they've really squeezed all the money they're going to get out of the papers. (Very few reprints are purchased after this point.) The manuscripts should be released to a public repository. If anything, it may stimulate more research and lead to more fodder for the printing presses. And it ensures that older papers are not lost--trapped, mouldering, in musty old library collections--if a publishing house goes out of business.
Parent
Re:Science is open to everyone (Score:3, Insightful)
Almost all scientific journals charge the researcher money to publish in them. This money is paid from the grant that supported the research activity.
Like almost anyone, academics like to be well paid, but it isn't journal subscriptions that pays any part of their salary.
Re:Science is open to everyone (Score:3, Insightful)
That kind of thinking is just wrong.
If scientists are motivated only by the money, they're in the wrong field. The reward is knowledge itself, and being the first person to discover and share that knowledge. Eureka! That's what it's all about: that is what has driven scientists for centuries.
I'd wager that scientists today haven't changed all that much on average. It's the big companies backing them that drive the lust for money and power.
There are other ways to make money than to hold the information ransom. What if Einstein Co. had all the rights to general relativity? How much less would we have advanced as a result?
Ultimately, I think, big picture of the future is that our willingness to learn will be the driving force behind humanity. That's a looong way off, though, but the winds of change are blowing and open source, sharing of information, and revolutionary new concepts and ways of thinking are helping to make it happen.
Re:Science is open to everyone (Score:3, Interesting)
You might notice the common trend: only journals receive money. Much more money than the cost of publication. And they don't want anyone else publishing -their- papers (the ones they didn't write, nor pay for).
Science should be free. Most researchers have to jump through hoops just to get published, and they get no pay for having published, just notice and prestige. I completely agree with the PLoS.
Francis Bacon (Score:3, Insightful)
Key to these ideas was the view that science advances through the open commnuication of data and ideas. Once published, stealing "their hardwork" is an absurd idea. Without the review of others, their "hard work" might have been little more than mistakes and nonsense. Besides which, few journals pay authors much. The "carrot" a journal offers is usually exposure - fame not wealth.
Re:its time for a systemic change in acad publishi (Score:3, Informative)
The plan you outline here is very similar to those set out by Harold Varmus while he was NIH Director in his e-biomed proposal. See the original proposal [nih.gov] and comments.
Unfortunately (and not unexpectedly) this plan came under withering assault from the established publishers who cast it as a government takeover of the publishing industry.
So, in its place, Varmus launched PubMed Central [pubmedcentral.gov] - an open archive of the scientific literature that would allow full-searching and free downloads.
However, content still needs to be placed into PMC, and most publishers (the pioneering BioMed Central [biomedcentral.com] excepted) will not do this, or do so only after a delay or with restrictions.
It is a desire to see PMC and similar open archives of the scientific liteture thrive that drived PLoS.