Publishers' Attack Free Government Sites 406
An anonymous reader writes "After succeding in getting the DOE's PubScience shutdown the Software and Information Industry Association and publishers' are now
targeting more. If the trend continues local tax dollars will increasingly be spent to buy access to information the federal government used to provide."
Knowledge wants to be free! (Score:2, Insightful)
But entertainment wants to be paid! (Score:4, Funny)
Actually... (Score:2)
Re:Knowledge wants to be free! (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess someone will now call me a Eurotrash commie or something equally enlightened, but how does this move improve literacy/understanding/progress in any way? Is the US government really that transparently corrupt?
Re:Knowledge wants to be free! (Score:2, Interesting)
Exactly my thoughts.
Doesn't a free market mean that you can "sell" your product at any price you see fit? Even if it means that you charge nothing for it.
Re:Knowledge wants to be free! (Score:2)
What's the answer? How about people who want to know something do their own damned research and stop getting the government to steal money to do it for them?
Re:Knowledge wants to be free! (Score:4, Interesting)
Beyond that, the main reason the smaller revenue drugs aren't getting developed is because of the ridiculous amount of money the FDA extorts to get them approved. Don't make it impossible to make a profit on a $10 million a year drug and you just might see more of them being developed.
Re:Knowledge wants to be free! (Score:2, Funny)
That's not the case.
Applications for government funded research projects are evaluated by the scientists themselves. In general, no-hope and crackpot projects do not get through and get funding. If the government does not pay for general basic research, no-one will (except giants like IBM but that's only for their own narrow projects).
But then again, I gladly pay taxes for public health care, controlled welfare (=with an evaluation of whether you're really trying to get back on your feet made every 6 months for two years; if not, you're out), national infrastructure (roads, railroads, airways), public transportation as well as police and the rescue services.
Grudginly I also pay for the military which, in my opinion, should always be the first target when it comes to cutting government budget.
Re:Knowledge wants to be free! (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh yes there is. The government has the enormous power to require you to pay money to them, whereas a nonprofit does not.
Re:Knowledge wants to be free! (Score:4, Interesting)
Answer me this honestly: do you think that the general population is well informed, educated and rational enough to be trusted the voluntary funding of something that doesn't bring them salty snacks, beer, faster cars and entertainment with big exlosions and titties RIGHT NOW?
No. Same goes for public libraries, education and health care, probably for the police and rescue services as well. The moron majority doesn't want to fund them until the minute they need them and that means that, on average, they will never get funding.
Cynical, yes. Elitist, yes. Yet what I see every day confirms this. Mob rules.
Re:Knowledge wants to be free! (Score:2)
What do you think?
Re:Knowledge wants to be free! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Knowledge wants to be free! (Score:5, Insightful)
P r o g r e s s w i l l s l o w d o w n
It is the free and open exchange of ideas and data that has spurred the rapid growth in understanding and technology. Lock it up and we go back to the dark ages (a truly Replublican ideal kind of arrangement).
Corelation is the key! Not islands of information distinct and separate. A mass of intelligent people working on the same problems (with free and open access to common data) will make more progress than a few rich researchers (with access to limited proprietary data). Genome Project anyone?
What about the poor kid who has no money to pay for fee-based information services but has an abundance of intelligence? Is he to be held back? Know what a library is? Should we now shut their doors? Should we go to privatization of schools and only teach the people who start life with money? Wait! I know what your answer probably will be.
Ben Franklin would not approve - and he was a civic minded type of guy.
Re:Knowledge wants to be free! (Score:3, Insightful)
>extend to eliminating educational opportunities for
>people based on their financial situation. I myself
>grew up in a lower-middle class (if that)
>household.
Overestimate but maybe not misconstrue. In saying "certainly does not extend" you also connotate that you advocate eliminating certain forms of information dissemination - not extending to educational opportunities for people based on their financial situation. But then again, I maintain you do. In removing a govt funded information site, you remove that which the common man has already paid for. You take away a freely and publicly minable information site. You put the few corporate over the many citizens.
I do not deny that corporations and commercial interests have given much in the way of technological success. I merely believe they *APPLY* more technology than they generate. They release technological advances on a predetermined profit schedule. They spoonfeed the public tidbits for cash. I don't want tidbits; I want a big hunk of marbled steak cooked rare with relish and honey barbeque steak sauce, a mashed potatoe with sweet cream butter and cold sour cream on the side. Throw in a great salad and a vintage red wine.
You see, I will not depend on corporations to do things for my benefit. They don't provide goods and services for my benefit - they provide them because I pay for em. I'm fine with that - profit is their motivator. But, I *will* depend on technological advances from academia and from the scientific community - these are the folks who generate the bulk of technology and *most* need the free and open information you advocate closing up. I'd like to have everyone be able to get online and have access to the Library of Congress, The Great Library in Alexandria, China, Japan, France, England, Austria, Germany, the Vatican, Rome, Athens, and yes governmental information sources generated using the tax dollars of the mass of taxpayers to benefit the mass of taxpayers... the sum knowledge of humanity available at your fingertips.
Ideas are born and advances made from the free and open availability of knowledge.
Re:Knowledge wants to be free! (Score:4, Insightful)
Is the US government really that transparently corrupt?
Unfortunately, yes. It is. This kind of thing actually happens all the time. It is similar to the way that patents are awarded that were developed with public funds (IMO)
This actually goes much farther.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Unfortunately, this illogical policy goes much farther than just publications, where some giant publisher like Elsevier can claim the rights to US-taxpayer-financed research.
In fact, the taxpayers are being robbed blind at almost every corner. For the large defense contractors, the lion's share of their funding comes straight from Uncle Sam. Yet they have the right to deny the public's access to the results of their government-funded research, and slap the label of "Proprietary IP, Disclosure Prohibited" on everything. (note: this has nothing to do with whether the information is classified due to national security concerns.)
This is also done by the universities, which have the rights to the research done there, even if it happens to be funded by the public.
If it is capital provided by the taxpayers that funded, say, a certain type of microprocessor's development at a corporation, does that give said corporation the exclusive right to make money off of the idea commercially?
"right" to profit (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the spread of cost-plus contracting doctrine.
Think about it.
Increasingly companies have been getting away with portraying big business a some sort of glorious activity for the good of society (Think Chrysler bailout or protectionism for U.S. steel companies.)
Here in New York restaurants have gotten away with having almost all the street vendors shut down or regulated out of existence because it was "unfair" for some poverty income immigrant pooling the money of twenty relatives to sell tasty kebobs on a street corner and undercut the prices of snotty wealthy restaurants charging airport-style prices for food that customers (like me) didn't want anyway.
As far as I'm concerned our current regime is out of the closet by now. They are anti-capitalist and anti-productivity. True free market capitalism would take away their Microsoft-type profits and true productivity gains tend to come from the sorts of small companies that don't get favors from the Bushes and Cheneys and Powells.
Me? I'm the founder of a small business that sells formatted information to pay the bills. I'm well aware that to Reed-Elsevier, Time Warner, Westlaw, and their ilk I'm a street vendor cutting into their profits. In fact, if you take the story of the Steves offering their designs to Atari, that pretty well describes what happened to me with T/W and McGraw-Hill. They turned 'em down, now I'm doing it on my own. I plan to fight the dirty bastards right down to the goddamn wire.
Deal with it, people. The American public has elected a bunch of crooks who are systematically reshaping our country as their whore. Better get used to bending over and spreading wide.
Rustin H. Wright
Founder, Reed&Wright [reedandwright.com]
Former techie/consultant to the publishing business (Harcourt-Brace, Houghton-Mifflin, Scholastic, J.Crew, Bantam Doubleday Dell, Gruener and Jahr, Capital Cities, etc. etc. etc.)
Re:Knowledge wants to be free! (Score:3, Insightful)
As an American, let me say: Yes. This is an administration that will ALWAYS accomodate money. Look at the Anderson fiasco. They put thousands of people into unemployment, by prosecuting a whole company, rather than actually prosecuting the peoiple that did the deed and putting them in jail, because that sends the wrong message. Can't put a few big-shots in jail, that's bad. Thousands of working joes unemployed, that's OK. Fuckers.
Previous administrations were bad, but this one is absolutley shameless in its devotion to the monied interests.
Black and white vision (Score:2, Insightful)
I think this is yet another case of a black and white view on things: good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, public vs. private. It's always all or nothing, but yet the world is gray.
Same services provided by public and private entities can very well exist together without unfair competition. Take public health care and private clinics in Northern European countries, for instance. You can get your ailment treated within days or a week in the public sector, but if you want immediate action you can pay and use the private services.
It's the publishers' responsibility to develop a service that people find worth paying for!
The government should be allowed to make the raw science, paid by the tax money, publicly available for all with no or a nominal cost. This could be done, for instance, in a form of a pre-print library where the manuscripts with figures are stored in the raw format the authors prepared.
Now if the publishers would typeset these manuscripts into a neat format, print them out and deliver them via net or on paper, I'm sure that some people would find that worth paying for. Perhaps the publisher could have a website where supplementary data regarding the article can be submitted by the authors and accessed by paying customers. Normally such data is obtained by e-mailing the authors and requesting for it, but sometime's it's a hassle and having the data always available on a commercial data base would certainly appeal to me.
Assinine (Score:5, Insightful)
This is worse than the entertainment lobbies because they are limiting the rights that I have already brought with my hard "earned" tax dollars whereas the MPAA and RIAA are only targeting potential costumers. The SIIA and its members should be the only ones who should be barred from access to free information, peroid. This is insane people! Its things like the SIIA who make me want to go postal sometimes.
Re:Assinine (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't live in Canada, do you?
Over there, I hear people pay taxes for blank cd's. I would personally be very pissed off if I had to pay $0.50 tax on a blank cd, given that I have never burned music onto CD's - I use them for research and backup.
Nice tyopo.
Re:Assinine (Score:2)
Re:Assinine (Score:2)
Now is the time for us to be not be arguing such ideals, but to provide a balance against them.
a better title would be: (Score:4, Interesting)
OK... It's not a DivX version of spiderman, but scientific articles. But can someone explain the difference to me?
Re:a better title would be: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:a better title would be: (Score:5, Interesting)
The DOE was publishing information that was acquired through tax-funded government research. The results of the research were being returned to those who paid for it: tax payers.
This assanine publishing organization, which was taking this government-funded research and selling it, wanted to take the results and make libraries and individuals pay again to be able to see the results.
This is a case of private industry stealing public information under conspiracy with the federal government.
the scientific publishing mafia (Score:5, Insightful)
The government pays Dr. Smith to write a scientific article. Dr. Smith gives the article to a scientific publisher and receives no compensation. That's the same publisher that Dr. Smith also puts in many hours in unpaid editorial work. The government puts Dr. Smith's paper on the web. The publisher, who contributed nothing to either the creation or the editing of the article, complains about this. They have neither a legal leg to stand on (the government refuses to sign over the copyright--they are big enough to be accomodated), nor do they have an ethical leg to stand on (the publishers contributed nothing to the content).
It gets even worse for educational or private researcher. Prof. Johnson writes a scientific article and needs to get it published in order to get tenure. The IEEE or Springer or whoever says: we only publish this article if you sign away all your rights to it and then some. Prof. Johnson also needs an editorial board position on his resume to get tenure, so he puts in many more unpaid hours doing editing, reviewing, and clerical work for the publisher.
Scientific publishing is a racket similar to the mafia. The only difference is that scientific publishers don't kill you with a bullet; it's just if you don't cooperate and put in hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of specialized, unpaid labor, your scientific career is over.
So, there you have your answer. For the DivX, the legal and ethical copyright holder complains. For the scientific articles, companies with no legal or ethical basis flex their political muscle and get their way. It's pretty disgusting.
tell me about the IEEE mafia, please. (Score:3, Informative)
I've never worked with IEEE. Give me some inside juice. The terms look beter than most on the surface.
Peer review is part of active research and should be thought of as part of any research position. It keeps you up to date and sharpens your brain, kind of like Slashdot but there are fewer trolls.
The burden of clerical work is a different and unrelated issue. You should have an expert at digital publishing who can take your plain text, raw data and notes on equations, and turn them into decent looking papers on the web and on paper trough Apache, LaTex, DX and any other useful system. Secrataries should be up to this task. Anything else is wasteful of real research time.
Re:tell me about the IEEE mafia, please. (Score:4, Interesting)
Not going after PubMed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not going after PubMed (Score:4, Informative)
PubMed actually works like a search engine for articles, but you have to go to the publisher's web site to read the paper. They cannot get any better advertising. A commersial version of PubMed would by necessity draw fewer eyes, so it is in the interest of publishers to keep it free, which is why I think they will never be interested in shutting it down.
in unrelated news (Score:2)
Breeding elitism (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, God forbid any old moron be able to access scientific papers and advanced knowledge. That's a commie concept. People should be happy with whatever the ad-supported news media gives them for free.
I would think making such information available would be in the interest of everyone... except those people who see a way to make a buck off it, which probably says a lot in itself.
Two in particular rile SIIA members: "One is law-related, the other has to do with agriculture," LeDuc said. He declined to identify them further.
Anyone care to guess which useful databases are about to be locked off to anyone who can't cough up the required dough?
I could go into a rant about how a "free market" in so-called intellectual property seems to rely heavily on restricting access to existing information instead of increasing access to previously-unpublished information, but I'll leave someone else to get flamed by the mindless defenders of privatization right or wrong.
Re:Breeding elitism (Score:2, Insightful)
The worst part is, we (taxpayers) will pay either way, since a *LOT* of research is gov funded anyway. So what LeDuc is really saying is, "it's fairer for the gov to give *US* the money that they would be spending on the website". Oh, I'll bet the website cost less to run than the revenue generated for access to the articles...
Jon
Re:it's simple (Score:2)
Perhaps the government should consider not taxing the life out of the country and making programs like this?
As well, once one of them has the information you're selling, what's to stop him/her from writing their own version of the information, basing it purely on the scientific facts contained within what you're selling, and giving it away to his/her friends for free?
I suppose you are one of the many that think that Linux will never make it in the commercial world because you can download it for free? Asside from that, I don't care what they do with it after they have paid me for it. That's all part of freedom. If they can, without any revenue stream, present it in a professional manner that would match mine... great! I'm going to continue to get good information and even sell it in practice. I doubt the fellows not getting paid could do that.
produce interesting new ideas and ways to physicall implement those ideas.
This I can certainly agree with. The thing is, not everyone really benefits from any of the information disseminated by the government. However, everyone is paying for it. That sounds an aweful lot like stealing to me. For instance, immagine the government paying millions of dollars to research a particular thing, then passed a law stating that it's use is prohibited. This happens all the time. A company can't just have you arrested for doing something to protect their revinue. They have to have a law passed. Government doesn't have to lobby. The just do.
private fiefdoms and state dictatorship
Greed is a powerful motivator. As a saying goes "The path to hell is paved with good intentions." It doesn't take long, as is evidenced by the socialization of the US since our good friend FDR took office, to ruin a good idea(the US government in this case). I really don't care what party anyone belongs to. I really don't care what invisible friend anyone subscribes to. You mess with my freedom, I'll kick you in the teeth.
These people make me fucking sick. (Score:2, Insightful)
Here (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Here (Score:3, Informative)
more members (Score:2)
Re:Here (Score:5, Informative)
If you want to target companies for protest, start with those of the board of directors:
- Edge Technology Group
- Oracle Corporation
- AOL Time Warner
- The Thomson Corporation
- Borland Software Corporation
- The McGraw-Hill Companies
- Citrix Systems, Inc.
- NetSchools Corporation
- Bloomberg, L. P.
- RealNetworks
- Reed Elsevier Inc.
- Sun Microsystems, Inc.
- Novell, Inc.
Re:Here are email addresses... (Score:3, Informative)
1) The appropriate person is listed as a member of the Board of Directors
2) Thank them for their support of scientific research
3) STATE THE ACTION THAT YOU DISLIKE
4) Politely urge them to take action
5) Politely notify them that you will post this on their community web sites that you post to (if you do)
With that out of the way:
Novell is represented by Gary Schuster. Novell Invester Relations is 'ptroop@novell.com'
Sun Microsystems is represented by Michael Morris. Sun invester relations is 'investor-relations@sun.com'
Real Networks is represented by Kelly Jo MacArthur. Real's contact is 'public_relations@real.com'
NetSchools, now owned by Plato, is represented by Kathy Hurley. The contact is 'meredith@netschools.com'
Citrix is represented by Traver Gruen-Kennedy. The contact is 'eric.armstrong@citrix.com'
Borland is represented by Dale Fuller. I used my corporate contact, so look up your own.
Thompson is represented by Edward A. Friedland. I used a friend who works within Thompson, so look up your own contact.
Oracle is represented by Daniel Cooperman. The contact is 'investor-us@oracle.com'
Please, use them only for good.
frob.
This is nothing new (Score:2)
PubMed is safe (Score:5, Insightful)
Now that I am in medical school, research is like ten times easier because we have PubMed. I think that the goverment really has a responsibility to make sure all the research it funds is accessable to people anywhere in the country. I mean we paid for it, we should be able to see the results.
For those of you who don't know, to publish information to scientific journals amounts to extortions. First you have to pay for research, then when you have written your paper, you have to pay to submit it to a journal, then if they accept it you must help with publishing costs. Finally they require you to give them the copywrite to your work, and it you ever want to have another legal copy, you must purchase it from them.
Modern scientific publishing is extortion
You forgot as step. Time for more DIY. (Score:4, Interesting)
What makes you think the folks as that "service" that charged $5/minute does not want pubmed shut down?
What's over the top here is that the government does not need the services of these "publishers." The government pays for all the bandwith it needs, organizes the research it funds, and could easily share these articles with everyone without anyone's help or additional costs. Next thing you know, the publishers will be asking Uncle Sam for base operating costs because no one wants to use their overpriced service. It would really burn me up is the "publishers" in question were getting their information from the govenment to begin with and they have restricted other's access to the same.
As the government has bowed out, it's up to researchers now to present their work themselves and form their own peer reviewed journals and librarians to organize it. The government has told these publishers that they may live by the sword of free competition. Let them die by it as well. If public libriarian can not aid the effort, let private school librarians do the work and share it. If "publishers" can get this information from the government, librarians should be able to as well. This is what researchers and librarians do for a living, right? Librarians don't just exist to collect comercial publications, they are supposed to collect ALL infromation available and present it in a usable manner. Researchers create the information.
Didn't I pay for this? (Score:2)
Oh yeah, the lawyers. I forgot about that cancer on society. I think I will always support canidates that support tort reform. If you don't prepare to live a society where wiping your arse will require a form filled out in triplicate.
Remember in the business world, it's not if you have the best product, you are the most competitive, or you did the R&D. It's if your legal team can
1. sue anyone that smells like competition,
2. successfully make it scary for people to try and sue you.
3. file bankrupcy and convince a judge that getting your netowrk for free and screwing your vendors really will make the world a better place
cluge
Re:Didn't I pay for this? (Score:2)
Re:Didn't I pay for this? (Score:2)
cluge
Picking and choosing (Score:2, Insightful)
OK, so they just don't feel like going after one PubMed, because it is stronger and more powerful. The other site (PubScience), it's got no problem rolling over.
Sounds like an organization with well defined goals, with no agenda to push. They can pick and choose which offenders to go after, and clearly state they have no intention of chasing after another (larger) offender, does this seem wrong?
P.S. there is definitely something wrong with the apostrophes in both the title and the story below it. The title should be either "Publishers' Attack on Free Government Sites", or "Publishers Attack Free Government Sites"
Let me just make this clear (Score:3, Insightful)
The Federal Government provides nothing. It has no money of its own. Every cent comes from the taxpayer. There is no reason that a taxpayer should have to pay twice for any government service. Alternatively, taxes should be cut and all services should be offered on a pay-for-what-you-use system. Governments and NGOs need to learn that they can't have it both ways - that's nothing more than common theft.
Re:Let me just make this clear (Score:2)
I'm assuming that you live in the US. If you believe the government is stealing your money, you have several alternatives:
1) Find something in the Constitution that prohibits the government from taxing and/or spending your money as it is, and challenge the relevant section of tax or budget law in court; or
2) Vote for candidates for elected office who will tax and/or spend less; or
3) Run for office yourself on a platform of lower taxes and/or less spending.
4) If none of the above work, you can always leave and try to find someplace to live that will let you keep more of your money. Lotsa luck.
Re:Let me just make this clear (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly right.
Alternatively, taxes should be cut and all services should be offered on a pay-for-what-you-use system. Governments and NGOs need to learn that they can't have it both ways - that's nothing more than common theft.
It is corporate welfare, a natural consiquence of Corporate Fascism, and something that has been around for a very long time. It is the dirty little secret of the oligarchs
Now, their rapacious appetites never to be sated, they have decided to rape our public commons, with us the people, as always, footing the bill.
Let the publishers buy the material from the taxpayers at cost, or a little above cost. I mean the real cost
See how long they can stay in business if they, instead of the taxpayer, start having to foot the bill for the product they are repackaging.
I think everyone will agree, very quickly, that tax funded scientific websites will become very preferable to these private robber barrons in promoting ubiquitous education and science, just as publicly funded libraries have proven themselves to be.
Shouldn't the public decide (Score:2, Insightful)
"LeDuc said it is fairer to charge researchers for the articles they use than to charge taxpayers for the cost of running a Web site that makes them available for free. "
If its taxpayers money paying for the site, then we should be the ones to complain and say dont use our money any more. By shutting down a site that benefited more than just the scientific community the Software and Information Industry Association appearently speaks for ALL taxpayers.
In Soviet Russia (Score:2)
Scientific publications craziness (Score:2, Insightful)
It works like that:
Now that the web is there to distribute the article, what is the added value of the publisher?
If the SIIA behaves like that, nobody will complain when publishers are replaced by online journals.
Unfortulately, science evaluation is still made by counting the printed publications. When that is changed, the scientific publishers will collapse without anybody complaining.
WTF - rant rant rant (Score:5, Insightful)
"We have no intention of going after PubMed."
First off, damn straight! Pubmed is just an abstracting service, you still need to pay for access unless the article is free (yeah PNAS), so why would they bother. Also, PubMed is instrumental to pretty much all research which is medically related. There's a general complaint about the PubMed barrier, if it is old enough to have been published without ending up in pubmed, many people treat it like it doesn't exist.
What confuses me was that I thought PubScience was supposed to do the same (abstracting service) for general science, which is much needed service, seems most of the decent physical sciences search sites don't just charge but charge a huge amount for the service. A broad based PubMed style abstract/search service is critical. Why kill it?
Here's a quote from the launch of PubScience (why I got so excited about it):
PubSCIENCE allows users to search across thousands of bibliographic citations from multiple journal sources to identify information of interest. It focuses on the physical sciences and other energy-related disciplines and is modeled after the National Institutes of Health's PubMed. A link, once identified, will deliver the user directly to the publisher's doorstep website to view the full text if made available by the publisher. Alternately, a subscription, site license, or pay-per-view options may be necessary dependent upon publisher provisions.
If that's really what they were trying to do, why kill it? It is a basic, necessary service. If anything it should increase publishers revenues as it gives exposure to smaller journals and decreases the barrier to literature searches, making it much easier to find articles that you want, no matter where they are published. They must have been trying to push it further or something or why would they bother fighting it. Does anyone know what the now defunct service offered, beside abstracting services?
Then this sends me off on a whole different rant...
LeDuc said it is fairer to charge researchers for the articles they use than to charge taxpayers for the cost of running a Web site that makes them available for free.
Fairer, maybe. In science though making information availible to all is a very important thing. They quote a figure of $15 - $40 for articles. This is accurate but ridiculous. No one in academics is going to pay that much (industrial research yes, but even they complain, come on, you're going to read a lot less if you have to make a purchase request every time you want to read an article). The only reason that literature system currently works at all is that institutional subscriptions are negotiated such that they are affordable, and reasonable use is interpreted pretty generously. You can always write the authors and ask for a copy but this is a system which is dying (it is much easier to manage a pdf than a paper copy). If you're at a small school though, it really marginalizes your work, you just can't get all the literture.
The really offensive thing here is the taxpayers comment. I disagree with it strongly. The taxpayers, by and large, pay for the research in the first place. The only research that isn't at least partially paid for by tax payers (this includes indirect things like charitable foundations) is usually proprietary. Worried about different countries contributing differently, the amount that the literature database is used will pretty much be in direct proportion to the degree to which you are in a position to contribute to it.
Why not make it available to everyone at a price everyone can afford? Sure accuse me of being a clueless idealist. It sounds like the publishers had a ligitimate gripe with people mirroring some of the articles that were availible from pay sites. My point is that the research is paid for by tax payers, the articles are written by researchs being paid by taxpayers and the articles are reviewed by peers, who are paid by taxpayers. In the past it made sense because the cost of actual publishing was high. These days there are only a few journals that people actually seem to want in print, almost everything is done by the internet, its just faster and easier. As most everything is paid for by tax payers, why not take it one step further and make it availible to them as well. All that would be needed a system for running the actual editing/online publishing system, which believe me could be done for much less than a grand per article (assuming only 100 people would have paid for an article and that the prices were lower, $10). Maybe its time the PNAS model (online everything is free) was expanded and the government pays for a few free but high/medium profile journals.
Hey! They left out the last sentence ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Okay, so I'm aware of not being in possession of all the facts, but if I'm trying to sell something that someone else is giving away for free, I would call that "being pretty SOL". If someone else in the same situation tries to cause the free source to be legislated into oblivion, I would call that "quite some bloody nerve".
How much is the taxpayer saving on this, and where is that money going instead?
Is it legitimate for a gov't agency to disseminate scientific papers, a) if they are gathering them anyway, because they are using them themselves, and b) at low cost for the agency, and the cost of an internet connection for the user? Or rather - how can that be construed as illegitimate?
I can understand that the publishers are pissed, but to stand up on their hind legs and claim that pay-per-use (and yes that's into our pockets) is in any way at all better - and to keep a straight face
Disgusting (Score:2, Interesting)
News flash boys and girls: By definition, members of a free market economy should not be offered any concessions of this sort.
Sigh... Wake up America! We now live in a socialist society!
Re:Disgusting (Score:2)
Actually no, we live under what could be politely termed "Corporate Faschism," in which the state is effectively owned, or controlled, by corporate interests, and the government serves and enforces those interests.
This is just another shining example of that ideal, brought to you by the 1978 Supreme Court and a 1996-2002 congress unwilling to give up legalized bribery in exchange for campaign finance reform. Get used to it, because anything short of an armed revolution isn't likely to change anything, and none of us have the stomach for revolt.
Is This NAFTA? (Score:3, Interesting)
NASA COSMIC (Score:2)
Recently the Open Channel Foundation [openchanne...dation.org] did begin making it available free. Open Channel apparently hopes to fund itself by commercializing some software.
Would almost make a communist of me (Score:2)
This makes me sick, if this is what capitalism is leading to, I don't want to be a part of it.
What such companies do is making the public only shift to radical left (seriously, I'm not at that level yet) and thus destroy themselves in the long run.
It depends on who funded the research (Score:3, Insightful)
And the company charging the outrageous fees should be sued for fraud.
If its privately funded, then sure, it was wrong to publish for 'free' and all bets are off..
Whose paying? (Score:5, Informative)
When I was a grad student, the taxpayers paid about $750K/year to keep our lab going. We published five or six papers a year.
Those papers were then sent to UNPAID peer reviewers (professors at other universities.) Of course, that's part of their jobs, and a good chunk of their salary comes from the same government grants.
So far so good. I think the publicly funded research has generally been good for the country and humanity as a whole.
Now, the journal we published the articles in holds the copyrights, charges $20 for a reprint, and a subscription is literally tens of thousands of dollars a year. Remember - they didn't do the work, or pay for the research, or even pay the article reviewers.
So this nonsense about "the government paying for something than can be provided privately" is nonsense. The government has paid for 99% of it already, these companies want to profiteer on the back of those government expenditures.
If the government is funding the research, should the citizens have open access to the results?
I think that the headline should have been... (Score:2)
We can't allow taxpayers to get what they pay for! (Score:2)
LeDuc said it is fairer to charge researchers for the articles they use than to charge taxpayers for the cost of running a Web site that makes them available for free.
Right on! In other news, it is much fairer to charge students to enter public (taxpayer-funded) schools than it is to charge taxpayers the cost of maintaining the doors. And those damn drivers should have to pay a private company to get through intersections instead of having taxpayers pay for traffic signals on roads. Taxpayers might pay for all of these things, but we need to make sure that the actual users pay private companies for the right to use them. After all, the trivial cost of access is the real burden, not the research/development/construction/staffing/mainten ance costs...
What you missed - Wayback machine results (Score:2)
Interesting that so many publishers are sponsors! Big Shrug!!!
Government competition? (Score:2)
Since when does the U.S. government have an obligation not to compete with an existing commercial enterprise? This is literally saying that if I'm in the paving business, it's illegal for my local government to have a department of public works...
Cake And Eat It Too (Score:3, Insightful)
And it also is OK for Disney to sell a things based on the public domain like Treasure Island, but not OK for others to use the Mickey Mouse stories which should now be public domain. We certainly wouldn't want someone to be placing Mickey Mouse in a futuristic setting...like Futurama.
Journal price increases above inflation. (Score:3, Insightful)
What I find even more surprising/disturbing is what is being done at www.umi.com [umi.com]. The link is especially pertinent to those of you out there who have written or are going to write a dissertation that is filed away at your University's library. If you have already written a Ph.D. dissertation, go ahead and see if your dissertation is listed. If you've just recently written it and it is listed, most likely it is also available for download at a price! Now, mind you, none of that money goes to YOU the one who researched, wrote, stayed up late hours of the night to ponder and rewrite! Every last dime probably goes to UMI (and their partners). I don't know what sort of questionable business contracts UMI has with your University's library or the Library of Congress, but I know someone out there is profiting from works that others so painstakingly prepared. This racket has yet to be fully scrutinized.
Lets make no mistake of it. The SIIA is as bad if not worse than MPAA, RIAA, and Microsoft who are using bullying tactics to maintain their monopolistic grasp on a niche (but very important for the advancement of humankind) market. The information published by the scientific community wants to be free--why else would researchers write and publish THEIR work? The cost is now so restrictive, that those of us who should be benefiting and learning from the information (the lowly students) cannot afford to do so!
Graduate students make somewhere between $15,000 to $22,000 a year. Bear in mind that most journals cost somewhere from $100 to $200 (or more) a year to subscribe. And for me, a grad student in the biomedical sciences, I scan somewhere around two dozen different journals. If I had to pay for access for all of these journals, I'd have to shell out somewhere between $2400 to $4800 a year--a good 10-25% of my salary!
I'm glad /. put this article on the frontpage because it outlines how dire the situation truly is. Forget about music and movies, this directly pertains to a lot of livelihoods and careers of /. readers--their bread-n-butter. At least ponder this: at a time when technology can easily publish scientific material [arxiv.org], why are we allowing these large publishers to hoard and monopolize OUR own work and making it difficult for us to access that material at the same time? (This is a rhetorical question, obviously; and I'm sure you have lots to say why we allow it. But really, the answer appears to be so simple, but so out of reach.)
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
Huh? That's not true, and also, it's irrelevant. The site was shut down because the gov't isn't allowed to compete with private companies/people.
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
nah.. they don't care how much or how many times you pay.. as long as you pay them at least once.
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:2, Informative)
FYI: At least in the food part of it, there is a refrigeration fee or someshit. It's still less than sales tax though last time I checked.
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:2, Insightful)
Where does it say the publishers were paying for the material?
The jist I got from the article was that publishers charge for access to the materials and the goverment didn't, hence the site was shut down as it was competeing with the publishers. Not that PubScience was republishing the publishers material.
Re:The Solution (Score:2, Insightful)
Here is one: since this amounts to yet another sell out of the American public by its elected and appointed managers (politicians and bureaucrats), I suggest that the control loop (wherein the American people control its managers) is dysfunctional/incomplete.
The battle is not between us and Al Queda, or us and the corporations, but between us and our managers.
What we need is to elect politicians who have a serious grudge against govt and politicians, and hopefully these grudgeholders will institute punishments sever enough to deter this type of betrayal of the American people. Here is one possible deterrent: pass laws that allows the hanging politicians for this sort of bad behavior (selling out to corporations, etc).
If we start hanging politicians for this sort of behavior, I suggest we will get a lot less of it.
"The" Solution? Not so simple, friend. (Score:2)
Um. Not quite. Much though I understand your sentiment (look at my post above to see just how pissed I am), one problem does not simply cancel out the other. There are any number of foul and destructive things in the world.
Our kleptocratic government/corporations are one problem.
Anti-progress violent reactionaries are another.
Just because there are dangerous sleaze here doesn't mean that the existence of dangerous sleaze elsewhere is somehow less real or urgent.
Yeah, it sucks. We're in a multifront war and we've handed the keys to our defense against one enemy to another enemy. Good thing the actual military is still on our side.
Oh, and by the way, simple answers like "just elect angry people with a grudge against the current power structure" is how the even worse tyrannies get created.
Look into the history of Nazi Germany. The Nazis said all sorts of things in the twenties and thirties that were very convincingly anti-corporate. Same for Mussolini and, *ahem*, Saddam Hussein.
No simple answers, folks. No quick fixes. You can't clean a two bedroom house in one step. We certainly can't clean up a three hundred person nation in one.
Rustin
Science publishers do not pay for the writers (Score:4, Informative)
In fact, it can be the other way around. The most prestigous journals like Science, Nature and Physical Review Letters charge the scientists who want to get their results published!
Re:Science publishers do not pay for the writers (Score:2, Informative)
Not only that, but they also make the university departments and libraries pay extraordinary subscription fees while selling ads on the side. Pick up a copy of Science or Nature and just count the number of the ad pages.
Subscription fees for what, you might ask. A very good question as the publisher doesn't have to do any editorial work. Most editorial boards consist of scientists and the scientist themselves peer review the articles. Publisher's only expenses are the paper, ink and delivery.
No wonder these creeps don't want scientific information out in the net for free.
Re:Science publishers do not pay for the writers (Score:3, Informative)
Well, yes and no. In most cases you have to cover extraordinary costs only (like printing full color images, or failing to write a concise paper). You do, however, pay dearly for the reprints, so the basic tenet is true. We scientists pay for the privilege to give away the copyright to our work. I'm content with that as long as it's not my personal money that picks the bill.
Oh, and consider choosing Nature instead of Science. Besides the higher impact factor, at least the last time around I didn't have to pay for the publication of my article there.
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems like more 'fair use' erosion to me.
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:2)
If I own something I am entitled to offer it for sale at whatever price I choose. If I don't own it, I am not entitled to offer it for sale, period.
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:2)
The list of grants is the same, either you compiled it, so you own the copyright and can sell it, or you got it from someone else who allowed you to copy it, again you own the physical copy. Of course if you copied it illegally (i.e. without copyright permission), you do not own it and cannot sell it. Pretty simple really.
"Stealing and publishing"? (Score:2)
Before coming to any conclusions, I'd like to hear what the *editors* of these publications think of this decision - NOT the companies reselling their articles.
you are wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Just like we're not allowed to sell things for less than they cost, the DOE should not be allowed to do this.
Quite to the contrary. It is actually the primary function of governments to give us services at a price that would be unaffordable for the people who need them if they were made available by the market. You or I can't afford to buy police protection, or highways, or a military on the open market, but we need those services, and we elect our government to provide them to us outside the usual market mechanisms.
When it comes to scientific literature, society has a compelling interest in divorcing its availability from market sources. It should not cost $15 or $40 to get a research article. If it does, publishers are either price gouging, or they simple can't provide the service at the price that researchers can pay. Either way, the government has a strong interest to step in.
What is particularly galling about this is that the publishers actually pay nothing for the content: the content is created by researchers often paid for by the government or industry, and all the reviewing and editing is also done for free by volunteers. Authors even typeset the stuff themselves these days. If anybody is "stealing", it's the scientific publishers.
Re:you are wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd go even further. You or I probably could and would pay for private seucrity if the government did not provide it. If the alternative was for us and our families to be at the mercy of robbers and murderers, we'd find a way to pay. There would be a private market in security, except that by providing this service for free, the government has destroyed the market.
Which in this case is a good thing.
While certain firms would benefit in a wild west scenario, private firms as a whole would not because of the atmosphere of lawlessness and theivery that would result. While government is by nature an inefficient provider of goods and services, ignoring the existence of an enormous shared public interest in establishing a lawful society means that leaving security completely to the private sector is a bad idea. The same goes for education, and perhaps health care.
Now, of course, the government can contract public services out to private firms. This means that the public specifies the nature of the public good to be provided and leaves the details of implementation to private firms. In many instances this is the best apporach, although perhaps not in the case of police services, where there is important public issues in the all the various aspects of the way that the services are provided.
It is not enough to say that the government has destroyed the opportunity for some private firms to make money selling information. You should have to show it is in the public interest for the government to get out of the business of offering information to its citizens.
Re:you are wrong (Score:2)
OK, I'll correct you. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's too bad that the site is not in the wayback machine, but as long as we're making inferences, this clearly is not what happened. If there were copyright violations, the site would have been taken down immediately. Clearly, the site was making information available to US citizens that they already have the rights to. According to the article, the site was not taken down for IP reeasons, it was taken down as a matter of public policy.
Just like we're not allowed to sell things for less than they cost, the DOE should not be allowed to do this.
I don't know about you, but Uncle Sam makes me pay taxes. So, the DOE is just giving me what I already paid for.
Let's be clear about what the private interests behind this are doing. They are not producing information, they are brokering information that the public has a right to. They want to restrict the public's access to public information so that they can sell it back to them.
It's a lazy man's business model. It's like obtainng the right to charge people rent for using their own property.
Has anybody here heard of the Lockean Proviso? The proviso tries to specify when it is OK for a private person to lay exclusive claim to a public resource. It says that a private entity can stake a claim to an unowned thing so long as the stock of such things is not in any practical sense diminished. If there are plenty of desert oases, then you stake your claim to one and build "Ahab's Desert Resort and Theme Park". In fact it does the public good, by providing added value among the choices of oases. If, however, there is only one critical oasis that everyone who crosses the desert needs to share, then it is not right to deny the public access to it.
Observing the Lockean proviso encourages people to build business around adding value, not restricting access. This is what the people selling the public access to public databases should do: build more comprehensive, better indexed and organized data. Witholding information from the public so that some private entity can profit is bad public policy and immoral.
Re:Not only that (Score:2, Insightful)
Surely these "luxury of freedoms" are part of your way of life, so the terrorists are threatening your way of life, but the goverment is actually taking away your way of life to protect it from the terrorists. Ironic, is it not?
Re:Apostrophes? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Apostrophes? (Score:2, Funny)
Publishers' Attack Free Government Site's
Editors: plz fix k thx
Re:Apostrophes? (Score:4, Insightful)
- Publishers Attack Free Government Sites
- Publishers' Attack on Free Government Sites
The form, as written, merely states that many publishers own something called "Attack Free Government Sites." I suppose that means that publishers own government websites which sponsor nonviolence?There are many publishers who are attacking free government sites.
This article is detailing an attack by many publishers on free government sites.
At any rate, it needs some fixing up.
Re:Apostrophes? (Score:2)
Re:Apostrophes? (Score:4, Interesting)
"That's not writing, that's typing."
To continue your line of thought. (Score:2)
While "Where y'at?" is common in New Orleans it is poor grammar. However with your enlightening addition to the slashdot.org comment section I'm extremely impressed and humbled by your obvious intellectual superiority over the previous poster.
Re:To continue your line of thought. (Score:2)
So, what if I'm from New Orleans?
In hindsight my post probably was not appropriate but I had the fever of being one of the first posters so tried to belt something out quickly and this is the result.
This should be a lesson to all posters everywhere. See? I'm actually educating, not trolling.
Re:OK, so it's OT and trolling, but I'll bite! (Score:2)
either...
1) There's an editorial rule to quote submissions exactly as submitted without making corrections
or...
2) The editors don't know squat about grammar.
It seems more like the former to me, really.
That would LEGALLY defined you as a terrorist (Score:2)
Yes, Even if it's a policy of facilitating unfettered corruption.
Here's a suggestion for you and other irate Slashdot readers: LEARN as much as you can about politics. Aspire to know the top 50 lobbiests, where they get thier money and what they are getting in return. Find out what issues people really care about, and learn how to leverage thier concerns to care about your concerns. Go beyond hypothesis and speculation, and get the facts. Share your findings, make your findings compelling, share them with everybody.
When the terrorists flew into the World Trade Center, there were hundreds of millions of Muslims who understood why...
We're about as understood as those radical enviromentalists, yet our issues are non-partisan that mainly address plain-vanilla corruption.
Someone mod the parent post up! (Score:3, Informative)