Theres more background on this petition at http://svpow.com/2012/05/21/help-the-usa-into-the-21st-centu... for those who want it. The TL;DR is that the UK and the European Union are introducing long overdue mandates that all publicly funded research must be publicly accessible. At the moment, the USA has no concrete plans to do the same, but Open Access advocates have the ear of Obama's scientific advisor and think there's a good chance this could make it provided that we the people show it's an issue we care about. So please sign the Whitehouse.org petition at https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/require-fre...
Signed. There are few taxpayer-related issues that I feel as strongly about. I actually have pretty good luck getting a copy of taxpayer-funded research papers directly from researchers by sending a politely-worded request to the PI asking for a copy. But I shouldn't have to do that -- all this research should be available to the public.
Ultimately, I hope that open access journals such as those as PLoS continue to gain prestige and become top tier journals (some of them are almost there). But meanwhile, taxpayer-funded research should be made available to the public.
Most political petitions have no impact. They are just email-gathering campaigns. This one is different: it's on the Whitehouse site and it's not for gathering emails, it's to give Open Access advocates some political cover as they craft their proposal.
So if you sign only one online petition this year, make it this one.
I'd have signed, but after signing in, the button stays grey and I can't click it. Click on the help links brings me to an 'under construction' page. Clearing my cache and ctrl-reloading the page didn't help.
Obviously different petitions will have different worthiness-levels, both in terms of their cause and their likelihood to have any effect, but I don't think your arguments really back up the "if you only sign one.." statement.
This petition is being put together specifically in response to a meeting of Open Access advocates with Obama's Science Advisor. This administration understands the issue and wants to gauge the degree of public interest. In short: while skepticism about petitions in general is warranted, this is one that can make a real difference.
Yes. But NIH is one of a dozen US Government departments that have research budgets exceeding $100M per year. And so far it's the only one with a public-access mandate.
I'm not from the US and I don't have a lot of knowledge about US law, but it seems strange to me that the executive branch of the government is hosting petitions for what in most other countries would fall under the legislature.
Isn't it the task of Congress in the US to set policy about what requirements are attached to the expenditure of public money, does the executive branch really have any impact on stuff like this?
You have the philosophy right, but political reality has left that behind.
While the President doesn't have any official power over the legislating process, he can wield significant political pressure as de facto head of his party, via shaping public opinion from the bully pulpit and with the threat of a veto.
Presidents have, for some time now, been very active in setting/driving legislative priorities.
It would be possible in the US for something to be enacted by an Executive Action, basically a directive to agencies from the Whitehouse. There is also legislation at the moment in the House and Senata (FRPAA) that would also achieve the same thing. If there was Whitehouse support the chance of the legislation passing is higher and if the legislation gets support there is more chance of an Executive Action so this is going from both ends.
Congress could definately make this law, but they also delegate many policy details to the executive branch - so this is likely something that could be done by either branch right now.
Regarding the 'petitions'. The 'petitions' in question here have no legal standing at all. It is essentially a way for the current administration to let the people involved feel like their views are being heard. The end result of each of these is generally either a) a canned response about how they can't comment on the petition for whatever reason or b) a rehash of current policy.
The only real impact, if any, of the petition is if they sway the administration by demonstrating what public opinion on the matter is.
I'm no Elsevier fan, but I think that number is a bit over the top. Most Universities have site-wide access to pretty much any paper you can get your hands on. I have a really hard time believing that 10-20% of research funding feeds those journal databases.
A lot of people assume that making all research that included federal grant money free to the public would be unilaterally good. I like the idea in general because I actually like to read scientific papers sometimes, but my primary interest is to maximize the amount of research that happens. Or more precisely to maximize the speed at which we acquire knowledge/technology.
Are there any existing examples of places where this has been put into practice that we can compare to see which state of affairs is better? I'm unsure it would be beneficial because most of the public wouldn't read/understand the actual journal articles anyway, and I expect most of the scientists who do work in the field already have subscriptions. I'm worried there might be harm because government mandates of all kinds very often have negative unintended consequences and I'm curious what those might be for this area.
>Or more precisely to maximize the speed at which we acquire knowledge/technology.
Who do you mean by "we"? Because you certainly can not be referring to "we" as in
mankind. Locking away knowledge behind walls of bureaucracy and artificial monopolies
will certainly not speed up progress, but instead slowly grind it to a halt.
Just look at the state of the patent wars. Everyone is suing each other, or claiming
to just collect patents to be able to counter-sue. Microsoft, Google, Apple, and all
the other big players probably each have patents on all technologies all of them use,
a good amount of those more than once and worded as ridiculously over-general claims.
So if by "we" you are referring to the few dozen mega-corps that pretty much control
our shared heritage of knowledge, then yes, you are quite likely correct.
If, on the other hand, you want to maximize the rate of technological advancement for
the "we" as in all of humanity, then embrace Open Access, get rid of patents and
all that other nonsense, and realize that incremental, cooperative development
will speed up progress by magnitudes.
orbenn, please take a look at the Who Needs Access? website at http://whoneedsaccess.org/ -- it contains many case-studies of many different classes of people who need access to published research for reasons to do with health, education, commerce, third-world development and more. We definitely do need open access, and for many more reasons than just to improve the speed of basic research.
As far as I know the EU has decided that all research resulting from its 80 billion research funding program must be published open access. The US doesn't have this yet but there is a law in preparation to do just this for US government funded research. A petition might speed things up
The current petition is a different strategy towards the same goal, approaching the Whitehouse directly in the hope of catalysing a presidential-level directive that would jump-start the process. (Not a speculative hope, either -- relevant people have the ear of Obama's scientific advisor.)
How many journal articles are not just tweaks on conference papers and the like that are already available on-line?
This is a serious question. Back when I was seriously tracking a couple of areas, I didn't care at all about journals because they were about a year behind.
This varies a lot between fields. In palaeontology, conference "papers" are only 200-word abstracts with no illustrations or references, and are not considered to be science. So papers are everything. I believe it's less straightforward in maths, for example, where conferences are much more important.
I've signed it, but I have a general question: has there been any petition on the WH site which has resulted in significant change (like a new law being submitted to Congress by the WH, or a new directive being issued) ?
I signed it, that only makes sense If the public is going to fund it, then they should be able to see the research. To be honest, I didn't even know that publicly funded research wasn't all public.
I don't want to pay to access gov funded research, but content that takes that research and either applies a better organizational structure or adds additional value seems worth paying for.
If the author of the book wasn't adding any value, you wouldn't need the book, you could just read the research.
Just having the research available isn't the full investment in a book that uses it. If the government further funds the book based on the research, maybe that would be appropriate. If, however, I invest time and money into writing a book that incorporates research, I'd want a return on that investment.
[+] [-] MikeTaylor|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eric_bullington|14 years ago|reply
Ultimately, I hope that open access journals such as those as PLoS continue to gain prestige and become top tier journals (some of them are almost there). But meanwhile, taxpayer-funded research should be made available to the public.
[+] [-] pdonis|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] loevborg|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] geoffschmidt|14 years ago|reply
It only takes a minute to sign :)
Most political petitions have no impact. They are just email-gathering campaigns. This one is different: it's on the Whitehouse site and it's not for gathering emails, it's to give Open Access advocates some political cover as they craft their proposal.
So if you sign only one online petition this year, make it this one.
[+] [-] wccrawford|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] corin_|14 years ago|reply
> So if you sign only one online petition this year, make it this one.
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petitions
Obviously different petitions will have different worthiness-levels, both in terms of their cause and their likelihood to have any effect, but I don't think your arguments really back up the "if you only sign one.." statement.
[+] [-] ck2|14 years ago|reply
Or are petitions just some way to keep people busy and feel like someone cares?
[+] [-] MikeTaylor|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kghose|14 years ago|reply
http://publicaccess.nih.gov/
[+] [-] MikeTaylor|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] avar|14 years ago|reply
Isn't it the task of Congress in the US to set policy about what requirements are attached to the expenditure of public money, does the executive branch really have any impact on stuff like this?
[+] [-] roc|14 years ago|reply
While the President doesn't have any official power over the legislating process, he can wield significant political pressure as de facto head of his party, via shaping public opinion from the bully pulpit and with the threat of a veto.
Presidents have, for some time now, been very active in setting/driving legislative priorities.
[+] [-] cameronneylon|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kenj0418|14 years ago|reply
Regarding the 'petitions'. The 'petitions' in question here have no legal standing at all. It is essentially a way for the current administration to let the people involved feel like their views are being heard. The end result of each of these is generally either a) a canned response about how they can't comment on the petition for whatever reason or b) a rehash of current policy.
The only real impact, if any, of the petition is if they sway the administration by demonstrating what public opinion on the matter is.
[+] [-] benmccann|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshuaheard|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] delinquentme|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cantankerous|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] orbenn|14 years ago|reply
Are there any existing examples of places where this has been put into practice that we can compare to see which state of affairs is better? I'm unsure it would be beneficial because most of the public wouldn't read/understand the actual journal articles anyway, and I expect most of the scientists who do work in the field already have subscriptions. I'm worried there might be harm because government mandates of all kinds very often have negative unintended consequences and I'm curious what those might be for this area.
[+] [-] slowpoke|14 years ago|reply
Who do you mean by "we"? Because you certainly can not be referring to "we" as in mankind. Locking away knowledge behind walls of bureaucracy and artificial monopolies will certainly not speed up progress, but instead slowly grind it to a halt.
Just look at the state of the patent wars. Everyone is suing each other, or claiming to just collect patents to be able to counter-sue. Microsoft, Google, Apple, and all the other big players probably each have patents on all technologies all of them use, a good amount of those more than once and worded as ridiculously over-general claims.
So if by "we" you are referring to the few dozen mega-corps that pretty much control our shared heritage of knowledge, then yes, you are quite likely correct.
If, on the other hand, you want to maximize the rate of technological advancement for the "we" as in all of humanity, then embrace Open Access, get rid of patents and all that other nonsense, and realize that incremental, cooperative development will speed up progress by magnitudes.
[+] [-] MikeTaylor|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] greboun|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MikeTaylor|14 years ago|reply
The current petition is a different strategy towards the same goal, approaching the Whitehouse directly in the hope of catalysing a presidential-level directive that would jump-start the process. (Not a speculative hope, either -- relevant people have the ear of Obama's scientific advisor.)
[+] [-] anamax|14 years ago|reply
This is a serious question. Back when I was seriously tracking a couple of areas, I didn't care at all about journals because they were about a year behind.
Public access to data, that would be something.
[+] [-] MikeTaylor|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ajays|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jes5199|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rhino42|14 years ago|reply
As far as I know, laws? nada
[+] [-] dkroy|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dkelly|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wtvanhest|14 years ago|reply
If the author of the book wasn't adding any value, you wouldn't need the book, you could just read the research.
[+] [-] brodney|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] febeling|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MikeTaylor|14 years ago|reply