Scientists, Fight For Access!
By Kevin Zelnio | January 6, 2012
Ask many scientists what they believe separates the pursuit of scientific inquiry from most everything else and you’ll get a wide range of open-ended, flowery, idealistic, and nearly altruistic, statements like ”unlock the mysteries of the world”, “the thrill of discovery”, “making a meaningful contribution to society”, or “improving people’s lives”. No matter how you cut it, scientists tend to agree that science is an important framework for systematically establishing the validity of claims by relying on evidence.
Scientists’ idealism is honorable, and genuinely heartfelt. Few other groups of people really do want the change the world in such a positive, progressive manner. Yet, in a twist of irony, few other groups who prize evidence and free thought systematically follow dogmatic traditions that are directly in conflict with their idealistic world view. Why are some of the smartest people in the country allowing publishing companies to fleece them, their institutions and libraries, the federal government and the american taxpayers of their money?
Sadly, what is occurring is not illegal, but to the average person it might sound like a fine line between fee-for-service and embezzlement of taxpayer money. Scientists, at least those receiving federal and state grants, are awarded taxpayer’s money based on merit of proposals by a groups of their peers. This money is managed through academic institutions and when it comes time to publish these results in the peer-reviewed literature, fees are paid out to private, profit-driven publishing companies. The publishing companies provide editorial assistance and the peer review process and once accepted, print it out or make the works available online and ship copies to subscribers. There is nothing wrong about providing fees for service, but these publishing companies then charge the same academic and federal institutions and the taxpayers who provided the initial funds for the research to access the information that they paid for.
Herein lies the paradox. Consider an investment broker who takes clients’ money offshore evading the United States tax system and then charges their clients fees to access their own money and to merely look at their portfolio or balance. Not a perfect analogy, and not entirely illegal perhaps, but it smells just as funny. This is why there are groups of people, not only scientists, that insist on open access of publication results and data for taxpayer-funded research. Who else wants access to research besides scientists? Non-profit groups with strapped budgets, advocacy groups for patient rights, teachers and students at grade schools or even non-research universities, journalists and writers working on news stories or books, etc. – all are participants of the knowledge ecosystem along with the researchers. Many are indeed taxpaying United States citizens who have actually helped to fund the research they desperately need access to.
In 2008, the National Institutes of Health recognized the irony and proclaimed that all federally-funded research publications be made openly accessible. The even provide a repository (PubMedCentral) and a gave researchers (and publishing companies) a generous leeway up to 12 months post-publication to accomplish this. The publishing companies still had a year to make money off the research and taxpayers would eventually get to read relevant research results after an arguably reasonable period.
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http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/evo-eco-lab/2012/01/06/scientists-fight-for-access/
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