Bill proposed to block public access to publicly funded research

[Pythagorean]

First, this bill does not "block public access to publicly funded research". It no longer requires that publicly funded research papers be posted on one particular web site.

Yeah, I actually didn't put that title. My OP title said "Not again...". In defense of whoever changed the title though, it depends on how you define block. For me, it's definitely a block; I can't afford to buy articles at $30 a pop, and we know what it means for the publisher's that are actually lobbying for it... that they're going to block access; it will be a coin-operated block, sure... maybe you would prefer "socioeconomic filter".

 

[MarcoD]

Personally, I think it's unavoidable that the Internet will, and must, change the rules of the publishing game. In my field, most information is already publicly available from the authors' sites or citeseeer.

The only hindrance I see is funding and 'keeping score,' or legitimacy. I would hope for some public sites where the publications are commented upon by professionals and are, say, backed with public endorsements of people. Which should be a better system since now a lot of comments on publications are now hidden from the viewers' eyes, which implies a lack of transparency, which implies a lack of scientific scrutiny and a lack of scientific debate.

To put that into perspective. Even in the semi-mathematical science which is computing science, I -as a hobbyist- frequently ended up having read articles which, on closer inspection, could not make their claims stick, or, rather, were just a damned waste of time to read. A public publishing scheme can avoid a lot of wasted time by scientists trying to decipher the legitimacy or validity of claims made.

 

[Vanadium 50]

For me, it's definitely a block; I can't afford to buy articles at $30 a pop.

Nothing in this, as far as I know, prevents an author from posting his work on PubMed or any other site. What it does do is change it so that authors can no longer be required to post their papers on one particular site: PubMed.

There is a difference between "not requiring" and "forbidding".

 

[Pythagorean]

Nothing in this, as far as I know, prevents an author from posting his work on PubMed or any other site.

One of our professors, in an open access conference, said that publishers have asked them to take their manuscripts down... not sure how many actually comply or if there's really any repercussions for not doing it.

Anyway, that wasn't my point (that authors can't post it). The point is that it's not automatically available. It shouldn't be left up to the author, either.

 

[Curious3141]

One of our professors, in an open access conference, said that publishers have asked them to take their manuscripts down... not sure how many actually comply or if there's really any repercussions for not doing it.

Anyway, that wasn't my point (that authors can't post it). The point is that it's not automatically available. It shouldn't be left up to the author, either.

In all the publications that I've made, there is a "transfer of copyright" from the author(s) to the journal. This is a sine qua non before they will agree to publish the paper.

This means that the author(s) lose the right to freely distribute or publish the article independently.

If the previous regulation (as I understand it) *mandated* that the article appear in PubMed as a precondition of the grant, then that's obviously something that the commercial publishing houses have to abide by. But in the absence of a legal stipulation, I suppose they can (theoretically, at least) come down hard on any author who goes his own way and publishes to PubMed (or anywhere else) without their explicit say-so.

 

[Curious3141]

Nothing in this, as far as I know, prevents an author from posting his work on PubMed or any other site. What it does do is change it so that authors can no longer be required to post their papers on one particular site: PubMed.

There is a difference between "not requiring" and "forbidding".

Please see my post with regard to "transfer of copyright". Seems to me that this would mean that authors who disregard the publisher's wishes would be on very shaky ground, legally speaking.

 

[ThomasT]

Are most physics papers presented for free access at, say, arxiv.org?

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

From an article printed in The Guardian last August, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/academic-publishers-murdoch-socialist,

Who are the most ruthless capitalists in the western world? Whose monopolistic practices make Walmart look like a corner shop and Rupert Murdoch a socialist? You won't guess the answer in a month of Sundays.​

The answer is of course academic publishers. Perhaps this is just a case of the non-academic media being a bit jealous of academic publishing. There is a quite a bit to be jealous of. Who else has 30 to 40 percent profit margins? From an article published in The Economist last May, http://www.economist.com/node/18744177/

Academic journals generally get their articles for nothing and may pay little to editors and peer reviewers. They sell to the very universities that provide that cheap labour. As other media falter, academic publishers have soared. Elsevier, the biggest publisher of journals with almost 2,000 titles, cruised through the recession. Last year it made £724m ($1.1 billion) on revenues of £2 billion—an operating-profit margin of 36%.​

I checked up on the profits for Elsevier in another discussion. They do not just publish journals so straight profit margins don't necessarily reflect the profits for journals. Same with Wiley and Springer.

 

[D H]

There is a difference between "not requiring" and "forbidding".

Exactly. By requiring that papers whose research was funded at taxpayer expense eventually be made freely available, publishers are forbidden from denying such eventual publication. Lifting these requirements makes publishers free to forbid authors from doing so.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Yes, journals ask for transfer of copyright. They do that today with results going to PubMed. There are complex legal reasons for this, reasons that I do not entirely agree with. However, nothing changes.

If I transfer the copyright to the journal and post the results on PubMed, and (as hard as it is to imagine) was sued for that, the fact that it was a condition of my grant or contract is not a valid defense. (If A commits a tort against B, the fact that A had a contract with C to do so is not a defense. Although it might also get C in hot water) This is true today, and it will be true if this bill passes.

There are certainly legal issues with the way things operate in real life and the way copyright is held and transferred. Eventually these will come to a head and things will have to change to bring the practical and the legal into alignment. But this bill is not trying to change any of that, so it's somewhat of a red herring.

 

[Curious3141]

Yes, journals ask for transfer of copyright. They do that today with results going to PubMed. There are complex legal reasons for this, reasons that I do not entirely agree with. However, nothing changes.

If I transfer the copyright to the journal and post the results on PubMed, and (as hard as it is to imagine) was sued for that, the fact that it was a condition of my grant or contract is not a valid defense. (If A commits a tort against B, the fact that A had a contract with C to do so is not a defense. Although it might also get C in hot water) This is true today, and it will be true if this bill passes.

But under the old "scheme", the journal should have been aware that an NIH grantee was under the obligation to publish to PubMed. I'm not an expert on contract law in the US (so please put me right if I'm wrong), but isn't it reasonable to expect knowledgeable contracting parties to be aware of each others' obligations, especially ones as well-publicised as this? Which means that winning such a lawsuit against author(s) simply fulfilling the condition of their grant would have been highly unlikely because it would've been easy to argue that the journal ought (reasonably) to have been aware prior to accepting the paper. Since, after all, authors are required to declare all sources of funding and potential conflicts of interest. The fact that the journals agreed to accept the paper anyway could be deemed to have been tacit agreement to let the author(s) fulfill that particular obligation.

If it was difficult for the publishers to win such a suit before, maybe it's easier now. And authors might now feel more intimidated about publishing their work freely to sites like PubMed in the absence of any sort of prior contractual stipulation to fall back upon. Would you agree with that assessment?

 

[Vanadium 50]

, but isn't it reasonable to expect knowledgeable contracting parties to be aware of each others' obligations, especially ones as well-publicised as this?

That's not how it works. Under US Law (and I believe UK law as well), if A violates his contract with B, the fact that A had a contract with C to do so is not a defense.

It's fair enough to oppose this bill - indeed, I oppose it. But the opposition needs to be grounded on what is actually there, on what problem is trying to be solved, and what the alternatives are.

 

[wuliheron]

This reminds me of the radical right wing having a field day with the news the government had spent a few million dollars studying lobsters walking on a treadmill. Like everything else they took the research completely out of context and conveniently forgot to mention that the US seafood industry is one of the strongest growth industries we have today and already worth 70 billion dollars a year. The government spending a few million and lending their expertise on the subject to help the industry was a small investment to encourage its growth.

Like gerrymandering all these proposals for increased censorship are aimed squarely at manipulating the vote and the reason they do it is because it works. Despite congress now having an 8% approval rating 80% of the house seats have not changed party hands once in the last ten years. The things we to do to maintain the fiction of still being a democracy never cease to amaze me.

 

[D H]

This reminds me of the radical right wing having a field day with the news the government had spent a few million dollars studying lobsters walking on a treadmill.

How does this remind you of that? This bill has bipartisan support. One of the two sponsors is a Democrat, the other, Republican.

 

[John Creighto]

We don’t need Journals to keep score. How good of an indicator is publication count when there are many publications which are cited very little? It seems to me that the number of times an article is referenced would be a better indication (sort of like a Google rating) except that it matters who is referencing it and where it is referenced. Surely we can come up with a better rating system then Journals.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Citations have their own flaws. I wrote a paper once that has 30 citations. The previous paper I wrote on that subject had 185. The reason 30 << 185 is that that paper definitely settled an issue. Several lines of theoretical research were immediately shut down by this paper, which unambiguously showed they were wrong. Since nobody wrote any more papers on this subject, why cite it?

Which is the more important paper?

 

[John Creighto]

Citations have their own flaws. I wrote a paper once that has 30 citations. The previous paper I wrote on that subject had 185. The reason 30 << 185 is that that paper definitely settled an issue. Several lines of theoretical research were immediately shut down by this paper, which unambiguously showed they were wrong. Since nobody wrote any more papers on this subject, why cite it?

Which is the more important paper?

What about citations from textbooks or literature surveys? If people purchase the textbook, the schools considers it relevant. If a textbook cites a paper it considers it relevant to the material it is presenting. Text books tend to collect established research and consequently should cite what is considered relevant at the time.

Your point is relevant but even when a paper shuts down a line of research don’t people often cite it as a rational for not taking that given approach?

 

[Vanadium 50]

No, what happens is that people explain why their new ideas are good, not why their old ideas are wrong. I gave you the numbers above.

 

[atyy]

Is the bill really that damaging? It doesn't prevent scientists from putting their work on arxiv first, then submitting it for peer-review as is the norm in theoretical physics. Arxiv does have a biology section. It will just put the onus on scientists to behave as if they believe in open access.

This solution existed before the NIH open access requirement. This solution used to be partial, since although Nature and http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authorsview.authors/preprints permitted posting on arxiv before journal submission, some journals such as those run by the American Physiological Society did not permit it. As I understand, that society has now changed its policies, meaning that the theoretical physics solution is even more available to biologists than before.

It's my impression that experimental physicists put their work on arxiv less habitually than theorists. Is this true?

 

[Borek]

From CHMINF-L:

For an opportunity to weigh in on the Research Works Act (RWA)HR 3699, which threatens to reverse progress made in ensuring open access to publicly (NIH) funded research, please consider signing the "White House We the People" petition at http://wh.gov/K25 (slow loading). *You will need to create an account on whitehouse.gov before signing. *

This "White House We the People" petition needs 25,000 signatures by February 22 for the White House to take action, so it is another mechanism, other than writing to your congressional representative, to weigh in with opposition to HR 3699. Please consider signing, passing along to others.

 

[Pythagorean]

Thanks Borek! Ill pass it along!

 

[Borek]

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/01/testify-the-open-science-movement-catches-fire/all/1

For years, the open science movement has sought to light a fire about the “closed” journal-publication system. In the last few weeks their efforts seemed to have ignited a broader flame, driven mainly, it seems, by the revelation that one of the most resented publishers, Elsevier, was backing the Research Works Act

scientists are pledging by the hundreds to not cooperate with Elsevier in any way — refusing to publish in its journals, referee its papers, or do the editorial work that researchers have been supplying to journals without charge for decades

Read also two series of comments below the text.

 

[MarcoD]

No, what happens is that people explain why their new ideas are good, not why their old ideas are wrong.

I would put that into more cynical words, but those words would get me banned.

 

[Borek]

First it was a post in Tim Gowers's blog, now it is a site:

http://thecostofknowledge.com/

 

[Borek]

And the war with publishers continues:

http://the-scientist.com/2012/09/18/university-library-ditches-acs/