The Intellectually Dishonest Claims Of Those Fighting Against Open Access To Federally Funded Research

from the shameful dept

We've written a few times about the ongoing fight over whether or not federally funded research should be somewhat accessible to the public. This kicked off a few years back when the NIH, which funds a tremendous amount of research, required that any research that was funded by them had to be published in PubMed, its free and open database of such research one year after it was published in a journal. Scientific journals, as you probably know, are basically a huge scam. Unlike most publications, the journals don't pay the people who provide all the material in those journals. Instead, the researchers pay the journals to publish their research. Not only that, but in exchange for paying the journal, the researchers also have to hand over their copyright on the research. This gets really ridiculous at times, as professors I've spoken with have needed to totally redo their own experiments because some journal "owned" their research, and they couldn't reuse any of the data.

On top of that, these journals don't pay people to do peer review. Other researchers in the field are expected to do the peer review for free. Oh, and then did we mention that these journals charge ridiculous sums (thousands upon thousands of dollars) for subscriptions, which many university libraries feel compelled to pay? And that much of the research is paid for by your tax dollars anyway?

So the journals have been complaining about this attempt to actually have federally funded research available to the public who paid for it, where it can actually be much more useful. The American Psychological Association has been the worst of the bunch in dealing with this, trying to (on top of everything else) charge institutions $2,500 to "deposit" papers with PubMed as it's required to do (as if researchers couldn't just upload the paper themselves). On top of that, various publishers lobbied hard for a law to end the requirement to publish such federally funded works. Thankfully, it hasn't passed. Instead, the Obama administration has supported extending the policy beyond the NIH to make all federally funded research publicly accessible after a year.

As this is being debated, it's really rather stunning the level of intellectual dishonesty being pushed by those who want to lock up federally funded research. Glyn Moody points us to the astoundingly ridiculous claim from Steven Breckler of the American Psychological Association, that requiring free access to federally funded research one year after it's published would violate the administrations pledge for transparent government. Yes, read that again. With a straight face, this guy is claiming that a requirement for making federally funded research publicly accessible will violate a pledge for more transparency in government. This is shockingly dishonest.

If you want to understand the specious reasoning, it's as follows: the requirement for transparency from the government says that there are limits on that transparency, and those limits include "national security, privacy or other genuinely compelling interests." And, according to Breckler, one of those other "genuinely compelling interests" is his job. Well, that's not quite the way he put it. But, basically, he claims that if required to publish content after a year, there would be fewer peer reviewed journals. But he presents no evidence to support that whatsoever. In fact, what the research actually shows is that the journals that have chosen to be open are actually doing quite well when it comes to actually having their research being used for scientific advancement. They're cited much more frequently and used much more often in moving research forward. In other words, if the real goal is to promote scientific advancement, opening up federally funded research makes a tremendous amount of sense, totally contrary to Breckler's and the American Psychological Association's claims.

If you're a member of the APA, you should frankly be disgusted with this display of intellectual dishonesty.

And it gets worse. Moody also points us to an attempt by Patrick Ross of the Copyright Alliance to side with the APA as well. Ross, amusingly, always claims he's fighting the fight for "content creators." And yet, when you look at nearly everything that he and the Copyright Alliance seems to work on, it's always working with middlemen who regularly screw over the actual content creators. That's the case here as well. These journals are getting researchers to pay them to take away their copyrights. Defending them and pretending that's defending content creators is sickening.

But that's exactly what Ross does, where he claims that the rule would effectively limit copyright to 12 months. That, of course, is not true at all. But, more importantly, it's worth pointing out, again, that this is federally funded research. US copyright law already says that anything produced by the federal gov't should not get a copyright, and it's silly that this does not extend to research funded by the government as well. Beyond that, Ross' attempt to toe the APA's line is so blatantly misleading, it's amazing anyone takes anything Ross or the APA has to say seriously. In his writeup, Ross quotes new APA research (so that's not biased at all) that claims that only 15% of access to journal articles happen in the first year.

Ross then takes this to conclude that requiring open access after year one is asking a publishers to "forfeit 85% of their economic return." Except that's simply not true at all. Not even close to true. This assumes that all journal revenue is on a pay-for-access basis. But that's not the case at all. First of all, journals make money from the fees researchers and professors pay to submit their articles. Second, the vast majority of their income comes from subscriptions from libraries. Most libraries will continue to pay for subscriptions for important journals, because it'll still be worth having access earlier. The fact that people access the data later doesn't change the economic model very much, and certainly not by 85% as Ross claims.

The whole thing, frankly, is ridiculous. Academic journals are immensely profitable operations, in part because they not only get free labor from peer reviewers, but they also get people to pay them to give them their content. No other publishing business in the world has it so good and so easy. And much of this rides on the back of the American taxpayer. The system, as it stands, is effectively a way to transfer taxpayer dollars to private publishers, and lock up federally funded research in the process. It helps no one other than the publishers. It doesn't help the researchers, who have much more difficulty sharing and building on the research of others. It doesn't help science, which is held back by having such research locked up. And it certainly doesn't help the public or the government who foots the bill.

On top of all that, there's increasing evidence that the traditional peer review journal system doesn't even work very well. More and more frequently, we're hearing of junk science making it through the peer review process. Simply having two people review a work and signing off on it is not a real peer review. A more open system, where lots of experts get to look at the information and weigh in on it is significantly more effective and efficient.

What's amazing is that this is all so painfully obvious to anyone who looks at this stuff, that those who are still trying to defend this ridiculous taking of taxpayer money in an effort to lock up federally funded research for profit are forced to make such laughably intellectually dishonest claims to try to keep such a scam going. It's really quite shameful, but does suggest the lengths to which some people will go to keep cash flowing in their direction.

Filed Under: copyright, federally funded research, journals, open access, research
Companies: american psychological association

British Library Worries That Copyright May Be Hindering Research

from the as-well-it-should dept

Michael Geist points us to the news that The British Library has apparently come out with a new report entitled Driving UK Research -- Is copyright a help or a hindrance? The paper brings together 13 different researchers to all share their opinions, and the general consensus appears to be that copyright today is a serious problem in need of reform (and, no, the "Digital Economy Act" in the UK didn't help at all). Basically, the key points are that copyright shouldn't be allowed to get in the way of research activities. As the overall report summarizes, four key suggestions for copyright reform come out:

• calls for an extension to fair dealing provisions under UK copyright law to bring them into line with fair use doctrine in the US. One author addresses the difficulties of applying fair dealing provisions in the study of music and sound recordings.
• allowing the use of 'orphan works'. One submission advocates that 'orphan works' be placed in the public domain.
• enforcing creators' moral rights in order to preserve future creativity, and the need for exceptions to copyright law not being overridden by contract or by technical protection measures.
• addressing the issue of text mining and data indexing in the context of the barriers posed by the existing copyright regime.

Funny, of course, that the Digital Economy Act, which was supposed to modernize UK copyright law didn't appear to address any of these points. Well, no, actually. Not funny. Depressing. But the concern here is both very real and very serious. As Dame Lynne Brindley, the CEO of The British Library notes:

There is a supreme irony that just as technology is allowing greater access to books and other creative works than ever before for education and research, new restrictions threaten to lock away digital content in a way we would never countenance for printed material.

Let's not wake up in five years' time and realise we have unwittingly lost a fundamental building block for innovation, education and research in the UK. Who is protecting the public interest in the digital world? We need to redefine copyright in the digital age and find a balance to benefit creators, educators, researchers, the creative industries -- and the knowledge economy.

The full report is below:

Filed Under: british library, copyright, research

Children's Hospital 'Allowed' To Continue Research Using System It Developed After Patent Fight

from the bizarro-world dept

Last month, we wrote about the absolutely ridiculous situation, where Children's Hospital of Orange County had to shelve its research into brain diseases for children for three years, because the company StemCells claimed it had a patent on the technique the researchers at the hospital were using. Of course, the hospital researchers had developed the technique entirely independently (potentially before StemCells did), but due to the patent, apparently that didn't matter. The small bit of good news is after three years of stifled research, StemCells and Children's Hospital have worked out an agreement to give the hospital a "license" for free. While this is good news, it's still quite worrisome that we had to deal with three years of stifled research to get to this point where some researchers could use techniques they, themselves, developed.

Even worse, because of the nature of the agreement -- a license from StemCells -- the press gets to erroneously suggest that somehow Children's Hospital had taken something from StemCells. Note the opening sentence of the article above:

Palo Alto biotech company StemCells will allow a children's research hospital to use its patented technology for free, clearing the way for greater study of conditions such as autism, brain cancer and neurological disease.

Remember, this is a technique that the researchers at the hospital came up with on their own, and now the press is saying that some other company "will allow" them to use it? And saying that it's actually using that company's "patented technology," when that's not true at all? The hospital isn't using StemCells' patented technology. Its using its own techniques that it developed.

This is a point that we've raised before. So many reporters contribute to massive misconceptions about patents by writing sentences like the one above. It implies that patent lawsuits really are about one group "copying" an idea or technology from another, and that the patent holder "owns" the technology itself. This is blatantly untrue in most cases.

What a ridiculous world we live in where a hospital researching brain diseases for children has to beg and plead for three years to be "allowed" to use its own technology, and then have the press make it sound like it had copied that technology from someone else.

Filed Under: patents, research, stem cells
Companies: children's hospital, stemcells

Is Copyright Holding Back Research?

from the but-of-course dept

When we write about copyright issues here, it's not uncommon for people to say "well, fine, if you don't like copyright, don't use it, but why do you care if others use it?" Indeed. If copyright didn't interfere with the rights of others, that would be a reasonable point. The problem, however, is that it quite frequently does interfere with all kinds of rights. Michael Scott points us to a recent study of communications professors, which determined that copyright quite frequently stifles or interferes with the research they're doing. One interesting aspect of this, however, is that it's often the perception of copyright law that is the problem:

A survey of communication scholars' practices, conducted by the Ad Hoc Committee on Fair Use and Academic Freedom in the International Communication Association (ICA), reveals that copyright ignorance and misunderstanding hamper distribution of finished work, derail work in progress, and most seriously, lead communication researchers simply to avoid certain kinds of research altogether.

Nearly half the respondents express a lack of confidence about their copyright knowledge in relation to their research. Nearly a third avoided research subjects or questions and a full fifth abandoned research already under way because of copyright concerns. In addition, many ICA members have faced resistance from publishers, editors, and university administrators when seeking to include copyrighted works in their research. Scholars are sometimes forced to seek copyright holders' permission to discuss or criticize copyrighted works. Such permission seeking puts copyright holders in a position to exercise veto power over the publication of research, especially research that deals with contemporary or popular media.

Now, one response to this might be that these professors need to be better educated on the boundaries, exceptions and limits to copyright law. However, it's not so simple. Part of the reason why there is so much fear of copyright law is because of the actions of many copyright holders, who not only aggressively push an extreme version of copyright law out to the public -- such as the MPAA's infamous (infamously wrong) "if you haven't paid for it, you've stolen it" education campaing -- but who have used ridiculously high statutory rates to publicize the idea that for very marginal copyright infringement, you may be liable for millions in damages awards (not counting legal fees).

The copyright holders themselves have been trying to paint this picture of copyright as being much more than it really is -- and as a result of that, it's now actively stifling all kinds of important research.

Filed Under: copyright, research

Patents Now Getting In The Way Of Important Brain Research

from the promoting-the-progress dept

Slashdot points us to yet another in a very long line of stories about patents holding back key, potentially life-saving, research. This story involves a biotech firm, StemCells, that is making a legal threat to a hospital doing research on brain diseases in children. Because of the threats, the research has been shut down for three years:

With his research stymied, "all the money has shifted from the lab to the lawyers," said Schwartz, who said he believes the cells may hold deep secrets to such devastating conditions as autism, brain cancer and neurological disease.

What's really annoying here is that the doctor doing this research at the hospital had developed the technique himself with some others at the Salk Institute, but they chose not to patent it (perhaps following in the footsteps of Jonas Salk himself, who when asked about patenting the polio vaccine replied: "There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?"). Of course, StemCells jumped in and patented the technique themselves, and then went after the doctor in the midst of his research.

Apparently, "promoting the progress" doesn't include saving kids from deadly brain diseases.

Filed Under: brain, patents, research
Companies: stemcells

If Gary Locke Wants To Incentivize Commercializing Research He Should Look To Get Bayh-Dole Repealed

from the fix-the-problem dept

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke is apparently greatly concerned about getting more federally funded research out of university research labs and into the market:

"the United States cannot afford to merely fund research and say a prayer that some entrepreneur will commercialize it down the road,"

So he's asking for advice on how to improve the commercialization of federally funded research. Here's a simple and practical idea that he almost certainly won't consider:

Get the Bayh-Dole Act repealed.

Bayh-Dole, of course, was officially designed to do exactly what Locke is supposedly now looking to do. It specifically gave universities and other organizations the right to patent and control federally funded research, with the misguided belief that this would increase commercialization of federally funded research. The law was enacted thirty years ago, and we can now say, pretty conclusively, that it has failed and has only served to hold back commercialization efforts and to massively stifle federally funded research in a number of areas, through a series of (somewhat predictable, if you understand what monopoly rights do) unintended consequences.

Research studying the impact of Bayh-Dole found that it did not increase university research commercialization. Instead three things happened, all of which were bad:

1. First, tons of universities set up tech transfer offices because of Bayh-Dole. Thinking that the law would suddenly create a new revenue stream in licensing patents, universities spent heavily on setting up such offices to facilitate the transfer of patents to commercial entities. Unfortunately, patents, by themselves, are rarely that valuable, and most universities greatly overestimated the value of their patents. This hurt in multiple ways. Fewer patents than expected were licensable -- and even when a potentially licensable patent came up, the tech transfer office often valued it way too high, such that companies refused to license it, or if they did, were saddled with such debt that they couldn't build a real business. On the whole tech transfer offices have been a huge money loser for the majority of universities.
2. Second, Bayh-Dole actively stifled important research. Academic research has always been about active sharing of information, with different individuals testing, retesting, and modifying various hypotheses and tests. But with the focus on patenting, suddenly universities didn't want their professors sharing any more, greatly holding back the standard process by which research actually becomes useful.
3. Third, by focusing on patenting and creating an exclusive right around federally funded research, it limited what fields that research could be applied to for commercialization. That's because often, the licensing would be on an exclusive basis to a single company in a specific field -- blocking out all other potential commercialization routes.

If Locke is serious about improving commercialization of federally funded research, it's time to work with Congress to dump Bayh-Dole. Federally funded research is research paid for with American taxpayer money. To lock it up such that only a single organization can make use of it is a travesty, and is doing tremendous harm to both actual research and commercialization efforts. Instead, it's time to recognize that the drive to innovate comes from market needs and competition, not from gov't granted monopolies.

We've had nearly thirty years to witness that Bayh-Dole failed in its stated purpose. It's time to get rid of it.

Filed Under: bayh-dole, commercialization, federal funding, gary locke, research

Why Shouldn't Jurors Be Able To Use Technology To Do More Research?

from the yeah,-that's-not-going-to-work dept

We've pointed out in the past that, eventually, the judicial system is going to have to come to terms with the fact that people use technology to research and communicate, rather than trying to pretend it can be stopped. But, it sounds like that's going to take a while. Courts are increasingly looking to ban jurors from using any kind of technology. And yes, before we go through this again, we understand the arguments why courts do this (so no need to keep repeating it in the comments like last time). The question is does this really make sense? The idea that you have no outside influences in making a decision as a jury is an idealistic fantasy anyway. Jurors always make decisions based on their own history and experiences. It's part of what makes a jury a jury. Otherwise, you'd just have one guy who would weigh all the facts in a case and who would always pop out a perfect decision. So, if we can admit that jurors are always bringing outside information (in the form of their own life history and knowledge) into the court room, can't we at least begin to understand why there's an argument for letting smart jurors make use of technology to better understand the issues at play?

Filed Under: juries, jurors, research, technology

Why Does The IEEE Make It So Difficult To Access And Share Research?

from the hoarding-mentality dept

Matt points us to an article by Martin Rowe about the difficulty of accessing and sharing information and research published by the IEEE, which he finds to be a bit of a travesty, since the IEEE should be in the business of promoting technical knowledge. He describes how he found an interesting paper that he wanted to share with his readership, but that the IEEE forbids just reposting their content (a restriction he's fine with). Instead, though, he hoped that the author of the paper would post it publicly (rather than behind the IEEE's paywall) and let him link to it. The author agreed, but since the author wasn't a member of the IEEE, he didn't have a copy of the full paper (this part seems a bit odd -- you would think at some point the author would have a copy of his own paper). So Martin agreed to download a copy for the author of his own paper -- but the IEEE stamps it with Martin's name and says that it can't be used by anyone else.

Of course, you can see what the IEEE is thinking. It wants to hoard the information in order to build up its membership ranks, fearing that if it made that information available, people would be less interested in becoming an IEEE member. I would argue that's rather short-sighted, and there are plenty of other ways the IEEE could make membership more valuable (member-only gathering, access to other members online, discounts on events/publications/etc.) while still making the papers it publishes free. In fact, by freeing up the content, and highlighting those other benefits, it could even make membership more valuable.

Filed Under: access, ieee, research

Jurors Cause Trouble By Friending Each Other On Facebook, Using Wikipedia For Research

from the no-friending-allowed dept

We've discussed numerous court cases where modern technology has caused significant procedural problems from "the old ways" of doing things. CitMediaLaw points us to a story that includes two more cases, both in Maryland. In one, lawyers are seeking a new trial because some of the jurors became Facebook "friends" during the trial. This follows on the news that Florida is forbidding judges from friending lawyers on social networking sites, but is it reasonable to prevent jurors from friending each other? For many Facebook users, "friending" people you meet is quite natural and something you do almost immediately upon meeting someone new. So it should be no surprise that some jurors would choose to quickly friend each other. It's hard to see how that would make the results of the jury verdict suspect, however.

The second case involved jurors using Wikipedia to look up some terms. This is hardly a new concept. Some judges these days are specifically warning jurors not to use the internet to look up anything related to a case, but for a generation of folks who consider internet research to be an adjunct part of the thinking process, it's not hard to recognize why many would ignore this, and not think they're doing anything wrong (and they might have a good argument). The real question is whether or not there are reasonable ways to change the way the jury system works to allow for what many people consider perfectly natural: doing additional research on their own. For those who are comfortable with the old system, this may seem like a horrific idea (and yes, we all understand the reasons why the current system wants to limit things to just what's said in the courtroom). However, at some point the system may need to recognize that an artificial constraint on learning about the details of the case may not actually be the best system.

Filed Under: friending, jurors, jury, research, social networks
Companies: facebook, wikipedia

Nobel Prize Winning Scientists Say Federally Funded Research Should Be Available Free Online

from the good-for-them dept

For many years, there's been a lot of debate over the fact that many scientific journals effectively lock up the results of federally funded research in expensive journals that are inaccessible to the public -- including many other researchers. Locking up useful research is troubling enough, but when it's federally funded, it's really problematic. Many scientists are quite troubled by this, and Glyn Moody points out that a group of Nobel Prize-winning scientists has now urged Congress to require federally-funded research to be freely available online. Really, they're pushing in favor of a new law, the The Federal Research Public Access Act of 2009, which seems to make a lot of sense. If the government is funding the research, the more widely available it is, the better.

Filed Under: federal funding, journals, open research, research, science