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Government United States Science

Trump Could Mandate Free Access To Federally Funded Research Papers (arstechnica.com) 194

The White House is rumored to be working on an executive order that would require all scientific papers that are based on federally funded research to be made available online free of charge as soon as they are published. That would supersede a 2013 rule issued by the Obama White House that required federally funded papers to become freely available one year after publication. Ars Technica reports: The White House hasn't actually announced the new policy yet, but the rumors were enough to get the attention of scientific publishers. Last week more than 100 publishing organizations signed a letter calling on the Trump administration to scrap the proposal. The letter warned that an open access mandate would "jeopardize the intellectual property of American organizations engaged in the creation of high-quality peer-reviewed journals and research articles." Without the ability to charge the public for articles, scientific journals would have to pass those costs on to researchers or taxpayers, the letter warns.

There is undoubtedly some truth to that -- many open access journals charge fees to authors. These fees range widely -- from a few hundred dollars to several thousand. If the federal government mandated open access for all federally funded research, researchers would presumably see some increases in the fees they pay to publish their articles in top-tier journals. But supporters of the open access model question how much value traditional scientific publishers actually add. The peer-review process is typically carried out by working scientists on a volunteer basis. Meanwhile, you'd expect the Internet to reduce the costs of distributing scientific journals. Instead, the cost of subscribing to scientific journals has been rising much faster than inflation in recent years.

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Trump Could Mandate Free Access To Federally Funded Research Papers

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  • by oic0 ( 1864384 ) on Friday December 27, 2019 @09:07PM (#59563712)
    Its not like we payed for them or anything! What an overstep of authority.
    • by novakyu ( 636495 )

      Indeed. How dare they set conditions of grant! Have they no sense of what "grant" means?

    • Re:By what right?!?! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by arglebargle_xiv ( 2212710 ) on Saturday December 28, 2019 @12:16AM (#59564030)

      Without the ability to charge the public for articles, scientific journals would have to pass those costs on to researchers or taxpayers, the letter warns.

      It's a lose/lose situation. To get/maintain tenure or its equivalent in other institutions, you need to score above a certain point in whatever assessment system your academic institution is using. To do that, you need to publish in A-rated journals, most of which are owned by Elsevier or similar predatory publishers. If they can't charge institutions an arm and a leg to buy their mass-produced pulp, they'll charge the same institutions an arm and a leg to publish in their mass-produced pulp. Either way, the predators win.

      The only way to fix this is to change the system to no longer incentivise feeding the predators, which would require changing how most of the world's academic institutions assess their staff. The predators have a point, the system is set up to incentivise feeding them and adding a requirement for open access won't change that.

      • Alternatively, universities could stop offering tenure.

        • by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
          That makes such employment both poorly paid and insecure, and doubly so compared to other countries, so goodbye US leads in science and technology in 20 years unless wages increase. Offering tenure (since most researchers want to do research) is cheaper.
          • by dgatwood ( 11270 ) on Saturday December 28, 2019 @09:51AM (#59564580) Homepage Journal

            Or, you know, completely separate teaching and research. A sizable percentage of the researchers can't teach for crap anyway, so just have two tracks: a research track, where you're paid more and teach little or not at all, but have no tenure (and no disincentive to switch back and forth between universities and industry), and a tenure teaching track, where you aren't contributing to future university profits with your research, and thus get paid less, but have tenure.

            • by q_e_t ( 5104099 )

              Or, you know, completely separate teaching and research.

              To some extent they are. I don't see how this has much to do with the original issue, though.

              a research track, where you're paid more and teach little or not at all,

              That's already often the case as researchers are either not professors or buy themselves out of it. But removing tenure from the latter track is still going to compromise supply. Indeed, it's hard to get decent non-teaching staff. The issue with paying more is that pay is easy to roll b

              • by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
                I'll explain the last comment more. Universities rely on various things, including reputation. Good quality teaching, especially given the rise of social media, means that teaching quality is very important. Thus the quality of the teaching staff really matters and contributes to future profits as trashing the reputation of a university means that that it could potentially change from full to empty in half a decade in terms of students, and that's a huge potential revenue loss.
              • by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
                Also the 'do things' comment means that there might be latitude to follow some blind alleys that might not be as well-funded for a period of time. Most institutions would monitor that, but a certain security from expulsion for not meeting some new manager's targets adds a lot. Research is a creative process and sometimes there is time required for reflection, changes of pace, etc., which might be less productive.
              • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

                But the point of tenure is to allow researchers to do things without risking job security, so tenure for teaching staff makes little sense.

                Nonsense. Tenure started in public schools right around the time the first (private) research university came into existence. Its purpose has nothing to do with research. Rather, tenure was designed to allow teachers to teach controversial subjects without risking their jobs, and to prevent schools from firing teachers without cause. This is considerably more importa

                • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

                  Teachers teach students, and good teachers affect current revenue a great deal, but short of the university developing a really bad reputation, are unlikely to have much of an impact on future profits.

                  Or, to put it another way, even though a single good or bad teacher could certainly have an impact on the odds of someone choosing to donate money to a given program, or have an affect on students' future success, which in aggregate contributes to the school's good reputation, that effect isn't readily quantif

            • Or, you know, completely separate teaching and research. A sizable percentage of the researchers can't teach for crap anyway, so just have two tracks: a research track, where you're paid more and teach little or not at all, but have no tenure (and no disincentive to switch back and forth between universities and industry), and a tenure teaching track, where you aren't contributing to future university profits with your research, and thus get paid less, but have tenure.

              I've been advocating for this for a long time.

              I went back for a PhD in some hard sciences after getting a masters in education. It was eye-opening how grossly incompetent most PhDs are when it comes to teaching. I was surrounded by dozens of great researchers, and there was all of one functional teacher among them.

              It was really clear to me then that the best course of action would be to split the two. The researchers have to be accessible to the teaching faculty, but they do need to be separate and distinct

        • by Dr. Tom ( 23206 )

          Or university labs could start accepting corporate sponsorships, put up advertising all over the campus, allow admins to hand out plum corporate research grants, and most importantly, publish branded science journals.

      • by clambake ( 37702 )

        Sounds more like a *them* problem than a *my tax money* problem.

    • Its not like we payed for them or anything! What an overstep of authority.

      If a bunch of monkeys in a white mansion do random stuff for long enough, eventually they are bound to do something sensible, even if it is by sheer coincidence.

      • I think the quote you are looking for is not a bunch of monkeys producing Shakespeare, but rather - Even a broken clock is right twice a day - Benjamin Franklin

  • by Iamthecheese ( 1264298 ) on Friday December 27, 2019 @09:22PM (#59563746)
    Without that income science journals are going to have a much harder time of things. How can science even be done without paywalling publicly funded research? How else are they going to exploit publish or perish desperadoes, graduate students, people who look at the journal title before they believe a paper, and people who can't be arsed to replicate studies? How else can they make a quick buck? If this continues they'll be forced to provide value. It's unconscionable.
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      How can science even be done without paywalling publicly funded research?

      Yeah it is hard to imagine.

      OK, not really. It does remind me of one of my favorite quotes though, from the Climategate emails; "We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it." - Phil Jones.

      Notwithstanding the fact that comment represents the complete antithesis of the scientific method, it's also work that was financed by the public, and they expect us to make huge and profound public policy decisions based

      • How can science even be done without paywalling publicly funded research?

        Yeah it is hard to imagine.

        The physics community has been making preprints publicly available for years with arxiv.org [arxiv.org].

        So far the sky has failed to fall.

    • by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Saturday December 28, 2019 @12:08AM (#59564018)

      Without that income science journals are going to have a much harder time of things.

      Journals currently earn income by selling subscriptions, especially to institutions.

      But that is not the only revenue model. Instead of "reader pays" they can use "author pays". The cost of publishing will be built into the grant.

      It is also important to require the results of ALL federally funded research to be published, even (or especially) if it is not accepted for publication. Negative results (Drug X does NOT cure cancer) are often even more important than positive results. Michelson and Morley [wikipedia.org] did an experiment that failed, and eventually, that failure led to a revolution in physics.

      • by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
        That's great in theory, but it would require that people be a lot more organised about their research to be able to make such things available. Whilst being more organised is not a bad thing it is a cost. It would be like saying to people they must not sort and store all the trash they create in a year rather than dump or recycle it. The ratio of useful data to all data generated in a project can easily be as low as 1:1000, and storing the 1 is hard.
      • Journals currently earn income by selling subscriptions, especially to institutions.

        But that is not the only revenue model. Instead of "reader pays" they can use "author pays". The cost of publishing will be built into the grant.

        Journals use all of the revenue models you mentioned, and more.

        (1) Author pays to publish in journal.
        (2) Institution pays to subscribe to journal.
        (3) John Q. Public pays $30-100 for a single article.
        (4) Manuscripts submitted for publication are vetted, for FREE, by professors and sc

    • Without that income science journals are going to have a much harder time of things.

      Without that income, publishers are going to have a much harder time of things.
      Without those expenses, scientists (and science) are going to have a much easier time of things. The worst that can happen is that we are forced to read a paper with typos or misplaced captions (gasp!).

  • Go Trump! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Jesus H Rolle ( 4603733 ) on Friday December 27, 2019 @09:36PM (#59563768)
    A stopped clock's right twice a day.
    • The exact phrase is - Even a broken clock is right twice a day - attributed to Benjamin Franklin. Unfortunately, most millennials have no clue what that means. A broken clock, ro them, projects no display.

      • by shanen ( 462549 )

        Reminds me of the sad case of the lightbulb jokes. Love 'em, but try to explain changing a lightbulb to today's kids. The LED bulbs are older than they are.

    • More like once a lifetime. And only half-right that time, since most federally funded research is already highly accessible. Make that one-third or less right. A lot of the federally funded research that is not accessible is hidden because of secretive "security-justified" classifications that are often unjustified (and which you may safely wager will not be revealed by this proposal).

      Ever hear of James Ellis? Probably not. He was the GCHQ spook who sort of developed public key cryptography some years befor

    • A broken clock is right twice a day.

      Forgive me for correcting you, but in Trumps' case it had to be done.

  • a good idea (Score:3, Insightful)

    by hdyoung ( 5182939 ) on Friday December 27, 2019 @09:49PM (#59563800)
    This is a good idea - something that would genuinely benefit humanity, but no conventional president would ever consider it. It rocks the boat, the publishing biz can be influential, there are always more pressing matters, etc. etc. It would only be pushed by a president that's all out of f***s to give. This is the weird flipside of having an idiotic ape like Trump in the oval office. Most of what he flings around are his own feces which just make a mess, but occasionally he just might hit a bullseye due to pure randomness.

    But it's super good idea, and he should get some real cred if he implements it. The current scientific journal structure has lots of problems, and most of them would be fixed if the fed mandated that all federally-funded research must be published open-access. Peer review does not work well with private enterprise. Capitalism is awesome, but it doesn't work for everything, and it doesn't work well for the process of basic scientific research.

    To make it work for real, there would need to be some sort of enhanced professional or financial incentive for peer reviewers, and probably some sort of federal support to the outfits that do the open-access publication. The journals still need some form of funding, and it ultimately comes from federal dollars in some form or another. Funding structures would need to be slightly modified to make it work.
    • by fred911 ( 83970 )

      ' Capitalism is awesome, but it doesn't work for everything'

      Capitalism is exactly the motivation behind the mandate. Business don't allow the fruit of their investments to be used by another business gratis.

      The American people have the right to see all work produced by grants, upon submission and without
      paying an third party an unnecessary share.

      It's a shrewd decision by a president elected because he promised to treat treasury funds with a business like attitude.

      Questionably he's done a better job at it pu

      • Capitalism is NOT the basis of this mandate. This isn't meant to be a slam at you or a criticism of capitalism - it's something that very few people understand, unless you happen to be right at the interface between science, engineering and business.

        Basic research is VERY far removed from what businesses actually need. What really happens is that basic research goes to other researchers, who produce more basic research, which goes to slightly more applied researchers, who do more research, etc. etc. E
  • Oh come on (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Friday December 27, 2019 @09:54PM (#59563810) Homepage Journal

    Does anyone else see this as something rather unlikely to come from the administration? Scientists say that Open Publication is good for the world. There are deep-pockets publishers on the other side, with rent-seeking to protect. You tell me how this is likely to go.

    • Re:Oh come on (Score:5, Insightful)

      by zugmeister ( 1050414 ) on Friday December 27, 2019 @11:35PM (#59563964)
      One could argue that a lot of the ill will generated towards Trump is as a result of his devil-may-care attitude WRT stepping on toes. There are a lot of issues from NAFTA to North Korea to the Paris Climate Agreement to funding the UN where he's pretty clearly said "this is BS and I'm not kicking the can down the road" as so many of his predecessors have done. Maybe (fingers crossed) this is one such issue. Given the scope of his other political opponents, I can't imagine he's too scared of scientific journal publishers.
      • There are a lot of issues ... to North Korea ... where he's pretty clearly said "this is BS and I'm not kicking the can down the road" as so many of his predecessors have done.

        What if it's not a can he's kicking? Maybe it's a beautiful Christmas vase?

      • by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
        He's definitely kicking the climate can down the road.
      • by gtall ( 79522 )

        Trump doesn't have a devil-may-care attitude WRT to toes. He's constantly at war with anyone or institution that represents adult supervision toward his behavior. He's sucks up to the Christians and Fox simply because they help him generate things he can whine about. He's got no policies for anything, he defines himself by what he can whine about. There's nothing more to it than that.

      • Re:Oh come on (Score:5, Insightful)

        by pjrc ( 134994 ) <paul@pjrc.com> on Saturday December 28, 2019 @05:37AM (#59564352) Homepage Journal

        Pretty amazing to claim "not kicking the can down the road" about an administration (and congress, fully controlled by Republicans for 2 of Trump's 3 years in office) which has greatly increased deficit spending during a record-length period of sustained economic growth.

        Only several years ago, during Obama's 2nd term where deficits returned from sky-high stimulus spending back to Bush era deficits (hardly a pride-worthy accomplishment), Republicans were calling for a balanced budget, even a constitutional amendment to require balancing the budget. Now just look at them!

        If we can't manage to balance budgets and start paying down accumulated dept during the best of times, when ever will we? And who will be the adults capable of fiscal responsibility? Democrats?!?

      • I can't imagine he's too scared of scientific journal publishers.

        Probably not. Trump ignores science completely.

    • It would be a surprise to be sure, but a welcome one. Neither Trump nor the others in his administration strike me as a particularly scientifically minded individuals, to put it mildly, but in the unlikely event he does this, credit where it's due it'll be a good thing. They're already pushing that in the EU [sciencemag.org] and contrary to the publishers' objections, the world's still turning.

      This is one small step toward making the world a little bit better. If it happens, of course, and yes, I wouldn't be surprised i
    • Scientists say that Open Publication is good for the world.

      But is that a consensus or just the scientists who are not part of the club?

    • Scientists say that Open Publication is good for the world. There are deep-pockets publishers on the other side, with rent-seeking to protect. You tell me how this is likely to go.

      Well since that was put in place under Democrats, why is it so hard to believe the policy is reversed by the "other side".

      Republicans are for real science, unlike Democrats (countless examples of them throwing scientific method out the window and using scientism as a religion).

      • by Teun ( 17872 )

        Republicans are for real science, unlike Democrats (countless examples of them throwing scientific method out the window and using scientism as a religion).

        Pfff, you conflate and confuse regular Republicans and Trump.
        The orange man takes pride in not (never?) reading reports but instead take his ques from low-lifers inside his bubble like you find on Fox News and Breitbart.

      • by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
        Republicans are for real science, unlike Democrats

        Really?

    • by gtall ( 79522 )

      Unlikely is not quite the word I would use. Remember Trump does nothing but for himself. He doesn't give a rat's ass about research, he is interested in throwing a monkey wrench into the academic world. This is the yo-yo who wanted to cut research funding throughout the government and especially anything involving climate research because it contradicts money grubbing at all costs.

      One result of this sort of rule is that it may encourage more privately funded research which will reflect the interests of the

    • Yes, I am still waiting for some wrinkle that changes the context of this move. For example, expanding what research gets federal funding like climate change denial, intelligent design, vaccine-autism links, all fast-food diet is good for you, etc. Before the papers would have some discretion in publishing which articles and acted, for better or worse, as a gate keeper. With any topic open for publishing, it would grant faux and instant creditability to any research.
    • You tell me how this is likely to go.

      I was thinking that maybe it was possible that at least one good thing would come from the Trump administration.

      But you mentioned the powerful publishers' rent-seeking. That is the very thing that Trump formerly did. Considering that, it seems extremely unlikely that he would do anything to damage someone else's powerful racket (outside of his turf).

      There is either a bigger story behind this, or it is just a whisper on the wind.

  • https://www.sciencemag.org/new... [sciencemag.org]

    a quote:

    “Going below the current 12 month ‘embargo’ would make it very difficult for most American publishers to invest in publishing these articles,” argues a letter to President Donald Trump released today by the Association of American Publishers in Washington, D.C., and signed by more than 125 research and publishing groups"

    No funding for publishers = no publishers = no articles = no science available to the public.

    • HOW EXPENSIVE IS IT TO HOST PDFS ONLINE? If Library Russia can afford to host BILLIONs of items online with no real income, we're supposed to feel bad for the McGraw-Hill of science publishers?

      I mean, come on people. We've completely muddled the reality of the situation. These are not poor mom-and-pop stores. These are billion dollar corporations that benefit from exploiting the good will and hardwork of the pioneers of human knowledge.

      • HOW EXPENSIVE IS IT TO HOST PDFS ONLINE?

        Yes because hosting is 100% the cost of being a journal. No effort or cost is spent in reviewing and editing the article for publication.

        If Library Russia can afford to host BILLIONs of items online with no real income, we're supposed to feel bad for the McGraw-Hill of science publishers?

        You mean the National Library of Russia that is financially backed by the Russian government? I think we have different definitions of "income" as private journals do get their funding from a government.

        I mean, come on people. We've completely muddled the reality of the situation. These are not poor mom-and-pop stores. These are billion dollar corporations that benefit from exploiting the good will and hardwork of the pioneers of human knowledge.

        Are they all journals from billion dollar corporations? There are four main categories for publishers that I know about when it comes to scientific journals:

        1. Professional A
    • Yeah, it's too bad publishing is such a hurdle to overcome. You need a publication license, insurance against liability, a printing press, a few talented technicians on staff, your own fleet of delivery vehicles, local contacts in every major city, and a host of other things before you can even begin to do scientific publishing.

      We should really come up with a cheap way to publish information for wide distribution.

  • Last week more than 100 publishing organizations signed a letter calling on the Trump administration to scrap the proposal. The letter warned that an open access mandate would "jeopardize the intellectual property of American organizations engaged in the creation of high-quality peer-reviewed journals and research articles." Without the ability to charge the public for articles, scientific journals would have to pass those costs on to researchers or taxpayers, the letter warns.

    That's hilarious. What they mean is that it would be a challenge to their cash cow business model whereby someone else does all the work, commonly with some form of public funding, and then they take a cut off the top. I don't like Trump, and I'd be surprised if the Trump administration did this, but if they do, good.

    These organizations should be ashamed of themselves. They're supposed to serve for the betterment of all humanity through the advancement of their respective fields, not keep publicly funde

    • " They're supposed to serve for the betterment of all humanity through the advancement of their respective fields"

      You must be new here....
  • by solanum ( 80810 ) on Friday December 27, 2019 @11:41PM (#59563980)

    As a biological scientist of 20+ years, who does of course have to publish papers to keep my job (and that's fine), I can tell you the whole scientific publishing model is broken.

    The old model relied on reputation and honesty, but on the whole it worked quite well. Even if there was a problem in the short-term it would work it's way out over time. Currently, even the best of the open journals are a bit patchy and there are thousands upon thousands of bad ones. We get tens of emails a week from open journals with zero reputation and usually from a different field, trying to cash in. Couple this with the pressure on time that we now have and the infinite growth in publications that is expected and the peer review is often poor. It's still good in the best (usually paid for) journals, but few others.

    So we need a new system and I have no idea what it is. We should of course have as much scientific data and interpretation available to the public as possible, but the open journals right now are failing from the quality stand point. I don't believe it is going to improve, even the PLOS and BMC journals are often not as good as their impact factors suggest; a fair bit of crap gets in and they have been going for 15 years or so.

    We aren't going to get the old system back, it's done for. The question is, how do we come up with a new system where we (scientists) can trust what we read in our fields?

    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      If the private sector doesn't solve the problem, maybe there should be public sector journals.

    • by shanen ( 462549 )

      How about linking the funding of the research to the problems it is trying to solve? It could be a variation of my ancient and crazy idea of the CSB (Charity Share Brokerage). In this variation, a website that publishes a scientific article would follow it with some links to projects that are related to the article, with the CSB acting as mediator to help make sure the projects are well prepared and feasible and that the results are reported back to the donors and the world. (QR codes can be included at the

    • Worth repeating:

      The question is, how do we come up with a new system where we (scientists) can trust what we read in our fields?

    • I would imagine getting rid of the "publish or perish" system would work wonders. The intense pressure for scientists to publish is what creates this market for these predatory journals that'll publish just about anything if you pay them. It would also get rid of thousands upon thousands of low value articles that really don't have anything meaningful to contribute, but are published anyway just for the sake of publishing something.

  • Why are they trying to take our DMCA rights away?

  • Wait, why did they make it an open letter? Why not put it behind a paywall?

  • All of our military is publicly funded (by definition). They do a huge amount of scientific research (via contractors and possibly also in house). Would that research also get opened to the public? Are those not considered grants?

    I'm sure that most three letter government agencies also fund various projects that have various levels of security placed on them. Would they get opened up too?

  • After all, doing something that is good. Can't have that.

  • It seems every time Trump implements good policy, it's done in the most disastrous way possible.

    Should we have left Syria? Yes. Did we do it in any kind of sane fashion? No. Should we be promoting Iran as player in the Middle East to balance Saudi Arabia? Yes. Should we have done it accidentally and without planning by leaving a power vacuum? No. Should we play hard ball with China? Yes. Should we...

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