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Santia Velazquez shared this post on Twitter. (January 12, 5:08 PM) |
Research Works Act - HR3699
In his book, Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science, Physicist Michael Nielsen discusses why scientists jealously guard their data and are slow to adopt online tools for collaboration. 
The smart funders will work with the pre-existing prejudice of researchers, probably granting copyright and IP rights to the researchers, but placing tighter constraints on the terms of forward licensing. That funders don’t really need the publishers has been made clear by HHMI, Wellcome Trust, and the MPI. Publishing costs are a small proportion of their total expenditure. If necessary they have the resources and will to take that in house. The NIH has taken a similar route though technically implemented in a different way. Other funders will allow these experiments to run, but ultimately they will adopt the approaches that appear to work. Bottom line: Within ten years all major funders will mandate CC-BY Open Access on publication arising from work they fund immediately on publication. Several major publishers will not survive the transition. A few will and a whole set of new players will spring up to fill the spaces. The next ten years look to be very interesting. 
Many scientists and librarians consider Amsterdam-based Elsevier, which publishes over 2500 journals in all fields of science, one of the villains in the scientific publishing industry; its journals can cost up to $20,000 a year, while the company's profit margin in 2010 was 36%, according to an annual report. The petition mentions three main gripes: the "exorbitantly high prices" for the journals, the fact that many are sold as part of 'bundles' that include titles that libraries don't care for, and Elsevier's support of measures such as the Research Works Act, a controversial bill that would undo the National Institutes of Health's "public access" policy. 
The three-part indictment of Elsevier: They charge exorbitantly high prices for their journals. They sell journals in very large “bundles,” so libraries must buy a large set with many unwanted journals, or none at all. Elsevier thus makes huge profits. They support measures such as SOPA, PIPA and the Research Works Act, that aim to restrict the free exchange of information. As of this writing, 2,820 people had indicated their support for the boycott by signing up at the website, in most cases signaling their intention neither to contribute content nor to provide reviewing or other editorial services for Elsevier journals. 
Boicot científico a la editorial Elsevier Más de 1.500 científicos comienzan un boicot a la editorial holandesa Elsevier por sus precios abusivos. 
Science is broken. No, I do not mean that it is no longer making exciting and important discoveries, but it is broken in the sense that accountability is shot to aych, ee, double hockey sticks. Increasingly, research is undertaken for a purpose other than the advancement of knowledge, and we are seeing increasingly a trend towards falsifying results to fit a particular conclusion. 
Over the Christmas period, a short Bill was introduced into the US House of Representatives. The Research Works Act aims to make it illegal to require researchers to make their work publicly available. If passed, Australian researchers and the public will lose access to a considerable amount of US research. The taxpayer cannot continue to pay more and more in university library subscriptions to commercial publishers to access research. The ramifications of the Research Works Act are worldwide and it must not be allowed to pass. 
Explore the billions of dollars special interest groups are spending on lobbying in Washington, D.C. A special interest's lobbying activity may go up or down over time, depending on how much attention the federal government is giving their issues. Particularly active clients often retain multiple lobbying firms, each with a team of lobbyists, to press their case for them. 
Peer-review is the process by which research articles are sent out to other scientists who read and evaluate them for rigor, clarity, and importance. Reviewers score articles and then recommend them for publication, revision and resubmission, or rejection. Reviewers aren't paid for their services, and in most cases, neither are editorial board members who shoulder the actual responsibilities of coordinating peer-review. But as you can imagine, these journals are a lucrative business. Then who sees the money? Publishers do: companies like Elsevier and Wiley. The fact that you've probably never heard these names before should tell you just how (un)important they really are in the whole process. 
Broad access to the latest research and scholarly findings is a core value of the association and a fundamental component of a free society. Open access policies of government agencies—such as the National Institutes of Health’s mandating that manuscripts resulting from agency-supported research projects be deposited in publicly accessible archives—have advanced these ideals, both giving taxpayers an important return on their investment in academic research and aiding scholars in circulating their work. Given its commitment to exploring new ways to improve communication between scholars and the public, the MLA is concerned about any legislation that would limit the capacity of funding agencies to promote the free circulation of ideas and research. Lecture at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland, 18 April 2011: A new talk about open access to academic or scientific information. 
There is no longer any reason whatsoever in the online era for restricting access to refereed research only to users at institutions that can afford to subscribe to the journal in which they are published. That's not what research is funded for. |
The anger over RWA has begun to snowball, leading to speculation that this could be a major opportunity for the open science movement, which proposes to completely reimagine how science is reported. What do you think? Do publishers add value to science? Do they own the scientific findings published in their pages, or should the taxpayers and scientists take back control over the knowledge they produce? 
Maybe I’m wrong, maybe academic publishers will lead the media industry into a new era. Maybe they’ll realize that their business model is outdated and develop new ones. Maybe they’ll change their publishing and distribution strategy so as to make open-access viable (especially given that the libraries would love to move away from physical journals and pay-per-print is viable for those who want a bound version). This would make me ecstatic and I would happily volunteer to review for any traditional publisher who decides to go open-access. But I can’t stand by and watch another generation of scholarship get locked down. It simply isn’t right. 
First, Elsevier charges too much for its products. Second, its practice of “bundling” journals forces libraries which wish to subscribe to a particular publication to buy it as part of a set that includes several others they may not want. And third, it supports legislation such as the Research Works Act, a bill now before America’s Congress that would forbid the government requiring that free access be given to taxpayer-funded research. Michael Nielsen is one of the pioneers of quantum computation. Together with Ike Chuang of MIT, he wrote the standard text in the field, a text which is now ... 
Nearly 34,000 scientists signed that letter, but only a handful of publishers committed themselves to making their articles available as the letter requested; worse, few signatories followed through with their promised boycotts of the publishers who refused. Will things be any different this time, in the post-SOPA world? 
The Lancet also strongly opposes this Bill. Medical and scientific publishing benefits society by creating and sustaining research collaborations, identifying and giving space to emerging and neglected concepts in medicine, positively discriminating on behalf of unheard voices in health, and opposing the forces that undermine the values of our profession. The RWA does none of these. This bad Bill should be rejected. 
Even when I do NOT agree I have to include both sides of the coin --->>> We as scientist have nobody to blame but ourselves for the mess that scientific publication has become. If we lack the courage to risk career setbacks by publishing in ‘third-tier’ open access journals, experimenting with open science using the many free tools the Web offers, or boycotting old-guard publishers, then we must wait patiently for digital destruction to break this ridiculous cycle for us. 
Scientists have a complex relationship with their publishers — they love to get published in high-impact journals (most of which are run by major publishing companies) but hate the abuses of impact factors made by their own community in promotion and funding committees. They applaud the ethos of peer review as a valuable quality-control mechanism and a cornerstone of the amateur ethos of science that has persisted despite the global professionalisation of research, but grumble that publishers get this arduous service for free. They love to see their work in published form — a particular thrill the first time it happens — but complain that they often have to pay to do so, both as authors who have to meet page and colour figure charges, and as readers whose universities must meet subscription charges that place increasing strains on library budgets. 
Cerca d 1.5 millones d investigaciones científicas se publicaron en 2011. ¿Dónde están? La ciencia necesita adecuación digital. (E. Zugasti) 
Why is this a ridiculous distraction? Because it tries to reverse a slow but strong political tide that is in favour of access, and because even its supporters believe that it has no chance of passing. 
The publishing industry seems to be grasping at straws in order to tighten its hold on the role it plays in the system. Is this just a grab at higher profits? Or maybe they sense that change is in the air. Open access publishing has become a truly viable option for the future. Journal publishers may recognize that their field is evolving, but the solution will surely be to evolve with it, not to clamp down on the accessibility of information – a real blow to scientific advancement and the democratization of knowledge. 
For-profit journals are fighting back at the idea that they should give away even a modest part of this content. Now a law is in the works, called the Research Works Act or RWA, that would totally lock that content away. How can I be so sure it's "totally"? Here's how: the bill exempts peer-reviewed work from free access. That basically means all science. |
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