Comments on: John Conyers and Open Access

By: اشعار حب

اشعار حب — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 19:04:30 +0000

This is a great post. Thank you for bringing it to people’s attention.

By: Clem Weidenbenner

Clem Weidenbenner — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 12:36:43 +0000

Sander: An excellent point – that scientists have less choice if open access is mandated. But I wonder whether a certain contract isn’t in force before a manuscript is even prepared? When one seeks grant support from an agency requiring open access publication, haven’t they already made a choice? I’m sympathetic to the argument for cases in which the rules changed during the process – Dr Joe gets an NIH grant on Monday, and on Tuesday learns he’ll need to skip publishing in Nature. But even in this instance it seems to me there are many excellent choices at Dr Joe’s disposal. Publishing in PNAS and paying the fee to be open access hardly seems a step backward to me. Am I missing something here?

By: John

John — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 19:06:54 +0000

Josh: Which is why the tenure & promotion culture of Universities needs to change. Without the requirement of publishing in the most prestigious journals, faculty and researchers would be free to publish in open access publications.

By: Josh

Josh — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 15:42:48 +0000

Sander: the bill does seem to be written as a defense of choice, but that's on the surface. Academic scientists -- which is most of us -- must publish to get jobs and get promoted. That's why we call it "publish or perish." So while technically one could "choose" not to publish in a journal, the alternative isn't a very good one.

By: Rick

Rick — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 23:58:55 +0000

"Well no one can know what goes on the heart or mind of Congressman Conyers"

Truer words were never spoken. He seems to have his daylight positions, like adopting a stronger position than the Senate on investigation of the Bush Administration's activities, but this one seems to be one of his more shadowy ones. Has Conyers publicly offered justification for the bill?

By: Michael Sander

Michael Sander — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 23:58:24 +0000

I think I see the problem here.

Lessig's statement that the "business model of the scientist is to spread his or her knowledge as widely as possible" is false. If that were true then scientists wouldn't submit their work to journals that charged money for access.

I think there are different motivations at work here. Scientists are motivated by recognition of their intelligence and work by their peers. They publish articles in Nature rather than The Public Library of Science because Nature is more prestigious and will likely lead to a more successful career.

If you oppose this legislation I think you have to be clear why... We value free access of scientist's research over the scientist's interest in being published in a journal of their choice. That is a fair and reasonable value judgment. But, to be clear, in making the choice we are taking something away from scientists.

By: Liane

Liane — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 13:36:25 +0000

If you own a private company and someone using your company's funds invents something new, you get the rights. This is the equivalent for the public sector: if someone using our (public) funds invents something, we get the rights. Publicly funded work should be available to the public.

By: Michael Sander

Michael Sander — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 11:24:05 +0000

I'm not sure this bill would have such negative impact:
"The law would forbid entities like the NIH from requiring that recipients of government grants make the product of their research openly accessible."
As I understand it, the law would let the scientists keep the rights to their work. Under the bill, if a scientist wants to release their research for free they can; if they she wants to publish the work in a proprietary journal they can. They retain the choice on how to release their information. As you said, the "business model of the scientist is to spread his or her knowledge as widely as possible." If that statement is true, then the scientist will choose the most efficient mechanism for getting their research into public hands. If the best way of releasing information is through a proprietary journal, then we should use it. This bill seems to give the power to the scientists. Whereas you suggest that the NIH have that power.

By: Jacob Freeze

Jacob Freeze — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 11:08:48 +0000

This is a non-issue for almost everybody in the world, and selling it as "tax dollars paying for the same thing twice" merely panders to the public's anti-tax idiocy. Americans pay less in the way of taxes than citizens of any other developed nation, and (surprise!) also enjoy less in the way of public services and suffer from the absence of anything that could reasonably be described as a "social safety net." So now there's yet another example of "wasted tax dollars," and it's a pathetic example at a moment when $9.7 trillion has been committed to cover the losses of failing banks.

By: Josh

Josh — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 21:15:10 +0000

This is a great post. Thank you for bringing it to people's attention.

It's not commonly remarked upon, but the current open-access journals require authors to pay fairly hefty fees. NIH, I believe, has started paying the publishing costs for work they funded. Does this bill eliminate that as well?

Again, since the publishing costs are pretty serious, this could have a significant effect.