California Bill Would Mandate Open Access To Publicly Funded Research 105
ectoman writes "This week, advocates of open access to publicly funded research are keeping an eye on California's Taxpayer Access to Publicly Funded Research Act (AB 609), which could soon find its way to the California State Senate. The bill requires the final copy of any peer-reviewed research funded by California tax dollars to be made publicly accessible within 12 months of publication. If passed, the legislation would become the first state-level law mandating this kind of access. Opensource.com is featuring a collection of articles on open access publishing, which you can read while you await the verdict on AB 609."
It only makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
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Why, for profit of course.
If we let any old schmuck access it, that could undermine the ability to patent research paid for by someone else and/or be first to market.
And not charging for the access would put the publishers out of business, and we can't lose their valuable contributions to science.
Don't you know the role of publicly financed research is to enrich corporations? Why do you hate America?
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Someone has to take the research papers to give to the people! You don't want the scientists talking with the people! We have people skills!
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We encourage those people to kill themselves.
Re:It only makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Why, for profit of course.
If we let any old schmuck access it, that could undermine the ability to patent research paid for by someone else and/or be first to market.
And not charging for the access would put the publishers out of business, and we can't lose their valuable contributions to science.
Don't you know the role of publicly financed research is to enrich corporations? Why do you hate America?
That's right!
If it loses money, socialize it and use it as proof that government is a failure.
If it makes money, privatize it, give it to the Job Creators, and trumpet it as a triumph of the free market.
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The ability of corporations to generate massive profits through government bailouts, handouts and subsidies IS proof that government is a failure and a fundamentally corrupt institution.
If government is NOT a failure, then how is the arrangement you describe even possible?
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Yes, but this is a case of government trying to fix itself.
The point he was making is that there will be public outcry about this from some corners, and those people are retarded.
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Capitalism, cronyism, nepotism, and letting people who worked in the industries who caused the meltdown in the first place to be setting monetary policy.
It was people from Wall Street who got appointed to run the show who set the awful policies which led to this in the first place.
You know, an epic failure of the financial system caused by the people who think they know how it runs, and who value profit over accountability.
Your free market is a joke, it always has, and always will be an oligarchy. Government fails because it panders to that, not because of an inherent failing in government. Republicans just think it's perfectly normal to let multinational corporations run the show.
There are some things that governments excel at, and some things that they do miserably.
There are some things that markets excel at, and some things that they do miserably.
There are some things that both of the above do miserably at and that entirely different approaches excel at.
The problem with so many people is that they expect one solution to be the silver bullet that works on everything. The proverbial "small child with a hammer" solution. Since the real world isn't so one-dimensional, most of their "s
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Not saying this is a bad idea, but you reap the rewards via invented cures and whatnot. Government isn't the only one investing in most of this, and you may slow things down by eviscerating exclusivity.
The cure is the reward.
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The researchers who want exclusivity don't have to take public money then.
Re:It only makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
That being said, I suspect this bill would have little negative impact. Journals might worry about institutions that normally would pay for their services going free, but a 12 month delay is pretty significant so I suspect any place that currently pays for access cares enough to want the latest feed.
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If the research develops into a marketable product, patents would protect them from other companies.
If the research doesn't pan out, then nothing is lost.
As for fund sharing, if Cali funds 20% of research that goes on to become the next Cisco, Google, etc, then Cali should get 20% of the company stock. Or get a 20% cut of quarterly revenue.
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Great concept! (Score:5, Insightful)
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FWIW, a couple of years ago the NSF added a new requirement that funding proposals must include a dissemination plan. I think we'll continue seeing (slow) improvement in this.
Meanwhile, if you can find out the researchers' names, and think of a couple of keywords to filter out false hits, there's a very good chance you can find the results of the research using a search engine.
Google Scholar is also a good way to filter out a lot of irrelevant hits.
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This bill makes it easier for people 'on the go' to access the research, but it does not change the fundamental accessibility since the majority of journals have always been available at libraries and such. This opens up individual (read: web) access so you can read it on your personal computer or mobile device.
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A lot of material is available for free. A lot of what we publish at SLAC (and probably other DOE lab) is available for free from our publications sites, (eg SLAC Pubs) Unfortunately those sites rank much lower than the refereed journals in google searches so many people probably can't find them. Most researchers would be very happy to publish in free sites if we could somehow fix the problem of funding and promotions being based on the number of publications in "high impact" journals.
Re:Great concept! (Score:4, Informative)
Useful tip: Once you find the abstract (usually on a pay site), search Google for the paper title and authors. Google Scholar is particularly useful here. Find the preprint copy of the paper, which is usually hosted on an author's Web site or on a site like arXiv. Download that.
If you really want to read a paper and can't find a preprint, e-mail one of the authors and ask for a preprint PDF.
I'm in two minds about it. (Score:2)
In principle, I'm all for using public money to "commission" public works/research etc.
On the other hand, a lot of public money is offered as seedcorn to help establish ongoing viable income streams. IE. we give you funding now, but not forever.
Right now it's "we give you funding now and forever", but perhaps a mix of the other two would be best...? The government can commission research as public property OR give a grant that allows the research institute to keep the profits on the understanding that the
Golf Clap (Score:2)
Something reasonable finally coming from the California Legislature. Let see how well the (D) can screw this up, by exempting their buddies.
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It's not a fairy tale; it's a strategy. (Spock: "A lie?" Valeris: "A choice.")
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Hardly. While a bill like this makes perfect sense at the national level, all this does is encourage moving even more high quality jobs out of state.
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Scientists always talk about how hard it is to get grant money. If there's money to be had in California, there will be people doing research there, regardless of publishing restrictions.
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True. Researchers (or more correctly, organizations that hire researchers) will just try to get funding in every other state first (where they can have their cake and eat it too) and then come to California. If they find it elsewhere, they will leave. Eventually, the type of research that will be done in CA will be self-selected in that there were no issues with open access to begin with. Perhaps this is acceptable, I don't know.
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Explain to me, how it is an (R) problem when the (D) party controls just about everything state wide, and has controlled the legislature for more than a decade. (R)s have held the governor's office here and there, but were mostly RINO neocons like Wilson and Arnold . The last relatively "conservative" governor was Dukemejian.
I love it when liberals blame others for the mess they have created for themselves. California gets what it deserves, and the (D)s can blame nobody but themselves.
Oh, BTW, I'm Libertari
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Well, it is obvious the liberal (D) can't run things. Every place they infect, there is huge problems. Chicago, DC, California ....
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> Out system best performs when it is socially liberal, fiscally conservative, basically Libertarian.
Actually, our system performs best when it is run the way that I think that it should be run.
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I love it when liberals blame others for the mess they have created for themselves. California gets what it deserves, and the (D)s can blame nobody but themselves.
You talk about liberals, but then you talk about democrats. Which is it?
Why does this sound so strange ? (Score:3)
Re:Why does this sound so strange ? (Score:4, Interesting)
Free and unlimited access to publicly funded research should already, without a law to enforce it, be a fact. So it is here in Europe, at least.
Yeah! That's a change [wsj.com] the European Union made weeks ago.
The policy change brings the EU in line with the U.S. and Australia, which both recently made open-access publishing mandatory for any papers that received government funding.
Oops.
$1 Grant (Score:5, Insightful)
If this passes, I would like to apply for a $1 grant even though I am not in California. Some publishers allow open access only when required by law and this would give me leverage. (As an academic it is in my interests to have my articles as easily accessible as possible. I never see a dime from the paywalls on my published articles.)
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Why can't you post it online yourself? Would that violate university or journal policy?
That's what usually happens. Most articles published in the field of CS since ~1990 seem to be available on line, and sometimes scans of older ones. Don't know about other fields.
Some print journals have a "self-archiving" policy that lets authors post their article to their own web page. Then they get found by your favorite search engine, and there you have it.
I suspect print journals have adopted the policy to keep prospective authors from taking their work somewhere else. I also suspect that lots of
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Journal policy, generally. But most journals don't restrict the publishing of preprint copies, which is what polite authors offer, gratis, on their personal Web sites.
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The problem with this approach is that it only works in cases where the researcher already has the clout to publish open-access in the first place. You clearly want to publish open-access --- as any academic will. But why don't you already? Perhaps because there are pressures "from above" to publish-or-perish in particular prestigious (but closed) journals. Any researcher who is currently "unable" to publish open access because of forces against their will would still be unable with $1 California grants bei
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Something you and a few other commenters seem to have missed is that many publishers already have policies that allow Open Access (or some sort or another) if it is required by a researcher's funding agency. What they don't allow is Open Access just because an author wants it.
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You can already just send your article out for free on the internet. You don't because, although you may not see a dime from the paywall, the journals offer credibility/exposure - and they know you have to publish to make tenure.
All this means is they'll stop accepting your work if it requires compliance with this new law. More likely, you'll
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They'll never know whether it was because of the California law or just dull results.
The peer review process is separate from the publication process. One is run by volunteers from academia. The other is run by employees of the publisher. You'll absolutely know if they try to blackball you due to your funding sources. (My apologies if I'm misreading you.)
Lastly, even if it cuts out half the research, most for-profit journals would rather do that than all the revenue.
I don't know how it is in other areas, but the publishers in my area wouldn't survive the backlash if half the submissions were barred from publication over this. The social dynamics at play are subtle, but if even 10% of articles acce
Grant for Open Access fees (Score:2)
On a slightly more serious note, I wonder if California could start a series of grants just to pay for the "author-pays" fee ($2000-$8000 depending on publisher). Some publishers are typically closed, but allow an author to make a particular article Open Access if they pay this fee. Unfortunately, paying that fee could enough of a barrier to prevent young researchers without enough money from choosing Open Access (especially if they are publishing multiple papers per year), but a grant to cover just that
No patents either (Score:4)
I would like to see the next step be that products, medicines, and continued research utilizing public research as a starting point should all be prohibited from utilizing patents.
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Do you drive? If so, I imagine your car, like most, has a steering wheel. The skills you aquire driving one car easily transfer to the next car because it too has a steering wheel. And a gas peddle. And a break peddle.
What if Henry Ford or someone else in the early car industry had patented these devices? What if every car you ever drive has it's own proprietary system of controls?
I didn't say there should be no patents in the world. I just said if you leverage research from a publicly funded study th
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>> "Despite the endless drivel about science, knowledge, children, and society, the entire purpose of public funding in the US is to support future commerce."
The early space program had the side bennefit of showing the Russians we were good at launching missles. There was a saber rattling component.
There are many reasons for public science. It will not go away just because companies can't take public reasearch and try to wrap patents around it.
I'm suggeting public research should be like the GPL.
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What are Global Warming people? Are they people jogging in place trying to warm things up?
Saves California money... (Score:2)
This will save California money by reducing the number of grant requests. This is a great way to get the same result!
Despite how I feel about the openness of public funded research there will be those that will seek other sources of funding. In this case, you'd say "good riddance!"
Now if California was to openly state that they wanted to cut funding to research grants by 20%, you'd be very angry right now.
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s/their/there
Sometimes I hate auto-correct.
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Nope.
In fact, when you submit a manuscript to a journal, the author usually pays the journal either at submission or acceptance. This money typically comes from grant funding.
The editors of discipline-specific journals are usually not paid by the publisher. Rather, they do it as part of the service component of their job as a professor or researcher. Some top journals like Nature and Science have professional editors, and a few discipline-specific journals pay editors a stipend.
The reviewers never g
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Reviews are unpaid and (in my field) usually anonymous. I think *some* journal editorships are paid, but I know not all of them are.
There are two ways for research professors to benefit financially _as_ professors: getting grants, and moving up the university hierarchy. Both of these are likelier if one's papers are (1) in high-status journals and (2) much cited. The not-open high-status journals are leaning on (1) really hard to prevent everyone posting all their papers to make (2) easier.
There's a slower
It is Just as well AND saves money. (Score:1)
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Sucks for the grad students (Score:2)
An unintended consequence could well be to make it harder for researchers without a lot of funding (i.e. grad students, post docs) to publish. Publishers often offer the choice between paying them to publish it open access (several hundred dollars), or publishing it for free behind a paywall (a paywall that most researchers don't see because of institutional subscriptions). So, most of the work of my dissertation is technically behind a paywall because I had to.
Of course it's also on the preprint sever (htt
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Be careful what you wish for CA (Score:2)
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I was just thinking the same thing. Open access is great! Who's paying for it? The costs of my last publication were nearly $3000 because I chose open access. I'm lucky to have the funds to do it at the moment.
I hope that this action is backed up with sufficient support to actually publish as open access. Somehow I suspect maybe not.
Death throes of the old establishment (Score:2)
Academic publishers have had a very long and profitable run, and are now fighting back against the free flow of information that they once thrived upon. They are fighting a losing game.
Publication has now become essentially cost free, the only costs being those to maintain the online information resources, and the time invested to review. Since reviewers were never paid in the past, and because data storage and access are incredibly inexpensive, and becoming even less expensive, and because finding and re
federally funded research (Score:2)
While I agree whole-heartedly with open science/open access, most public research in California is federally funded, not state funded. Although some institutes, like the NIH, require publication to journals, the journals themselves can and do have commercial policies. This is where real battle is currently being waged.
Lots of it is already freely available (Score:2)
I work at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), a large (4000-person) Department of Energy research lab that is, unfortunately but understandably, often confused with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. We get lots of funding from DoE, of course, but also from other federal and state agencies.
Almost all of the work we do is published in the form of "LBNL reports", most of which are freely available, although hard to find. Much of the work is later published in scientific journals, and it is so
This will lead to more university patents (Score:1)
Please Contact Federal Congressmen About Bill (Score:3)
Feathercoin Success (Score:1)
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That's exactly what's happening. Only the research that is funded by the public must be made available to the public.
You are an unrepentant parasite. Grow up. (Score:5, Insightful)
There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.
--Robert A. Heinlein, Life-Line (1939)
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The revenue goes towards a private company, not towards research therefore the funding can remain the same and that's the whole point. Why should the taxpayer pay for research that benefits a very small group of private companies?