Who Owns Science? 308
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!"
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)
Public libraries (Score:2, Interesting)
When I want a copy of Science, I take a short bike ride to my local public library. It's good excercise, and it saves me quite a bit of money.
Granted, this doesn't solve the problem with distribution in the Third-World, but I think that can be solved mainly through grants and generosity on Science's part. Third-World doctors are unlikely to subscribe due to the financial costs involved, so Science isn't going to be losing any potential paying customers anyways.
You speak the truth, sensei (Score:5, Interesting)
information is one only (Score:1, Interesting)
Apples and oranges, for all practical sake, should be counted for as many there are. ie. 10 apples in this basket. Same goes for CDs or books. Anything solid. But for information, you cannot know something twice. You may have two of the same CD, but the information should count as one.
Now lets add the internet to the picture. The internet has no hard copy. Information is either online or offline. Everyone has it, or no one has it. And ANYONE can publish anything for virutally no cost. Even what someone else wants to keep secret or restricted.
Hence all businesses that bank on the delivery or copying of data, should either find another job, or change their attitude to "selling hard copies" from "selling you the info".
Inevitably, there will be a shift of value towards the creators of information, and not the copies of information. Information alone, is either available or unavailable. But the creators are solid. The creators have restrictions on time. The creators can decide what they create. The creators can decide what to make public. And money may as well influence their decisions.
We, the individuals are the creators. The 21st century will be the century of the individual. No longer will people get filthy rich for selling other people's work. No longer will creators stay rich when they are no longer creative. No longer will the market govern innovation.
Finally, this century, innovation will govern the market. Simply because that is how we wish for things to be. And our wish is our next creation.
bio science is already on a slipppery slope...... (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.radioproject.org/transcripts/9846.html
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.
I agree (Score:1, Interesting)
I agree. That's why science is diying
This, and the so-called ``peer review'', which is neither, but editorial censorship, and that has never been shown to be a good method of quality assurance (quite the opposite, the last frauds have shown!) but does allow the existance of cliques, black lists, and the censoring of most revolutionary science.
I'm afraid it's the the paradigm of science itself that is obsolete; science-as-we-know-it has survived its usefulness.
Time to go for Version 2.0
Science™ was never peer reviewed! (Score:2, Interesting)
Peer review---real peer review---means no editors (editors are not you peers) and no consoring, that is, publish first, and what you publish is reviewed by you peer. That's science.
>If it is public I mean, then couldn't anybody submit and be published?Well, yes, that's true science. Publish, be reviewed, get grilled by your peers. Just like Free Software.
But no, this proposal is not that. It's just the same ol same ol, but just make sure that the `papers' are available for free (after six months!). This proposal is not good enough; and it won't save science.
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.
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.
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.
staff articles versus scientist articles (Score:2, Interesting)
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... :-)
PLOS does not go far enough. (Score:3, Interesting)
Spock said it best (Score:3, Interesting)
Spock said it best...
"Since the information on Memory Alpha is freely available to everyone, no defensive systems were deemed necessary."
Hopefully we don't make the same mistake. The federation did not have an evil copyright industry to contend with.
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!!!"
Re:Science is open to everyone (Score:2, Interesting)