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Comment by WhoBeI | Hacker News Reader

I think this is a really good move. About bloody time to. I shouldn't have to pay twice to read research papers I helped fund and I certainly shouldn't be paying a private company for it.

EU is saying that when and if you choose to publish papers based on publicly funded research you must ensure those papers will be publicly available. This means you must budget for any cost associated with it but since your budget are public funds it's basically going to be paid for by the EU in most cases.

The "when and if" means that you can choose not to publish or you can choose to publish after you have sought protection (patent). You can also, as a publisher, have a wait period before research papers become "open access" to, I don't know, be an asshole I guess.

Reference (pdf): http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/data/ref/h2020/gra...

Edit: The little pdf warning.

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The devil is in the details: one possible outcome is that researchers must pay journals for open access publication, and this could change "'small science' fields" into 'big science' ones. I.e., a good but not grant funded researcher will need to find a 'rich' colleague to pay for the publication fee. Whether the 'rich' person should be a coauthor is then of course a matter of negotiation.

But does it say anywhere that it has to be a science journal? Isn't it enough for them to put the paper on their website to comply with that law?

Yeah not to mention that anyone can start a company to publish journals. A non-profit could do it.

> I shouldn't have to pay twice to read research papers I helped fund

Most researchers will publish in journals that publish open access for a fee and the money for the fee has to come from somewhere. So in the end the public will spend as much money as they are doing so far.

Maybe, but currently people outside of universities have a really hard time getting research papers (legally, anyway). So even if the costs stay about the same, a lot more people will have access to the results.

Which doesn't help much if pay-per-view journals are still cited.

IMHO.

Scientific output (and credibility of the paper) comes from the number of authors citing the work..

True, but this at least sets the incentives right to create a system outside of rent-seeking publishers. Journal editors are unpaid for the most part anyway, might as well make that a community effort.

Maybe, since publishing an open access paper is (currently) more expensive for the authors, researchers will end up publishing less often (and possibly more significant results), which is not necessarily a bad thing given the bloating state of research literature nowadays.

On a related note, a colleague of mine had this idea of an annual publication cap (3 papers) for researchers. Less burnout, less "superstar" researchers that "contribute" to 20+ papers a year (except for the fact that they have an army of Ph.D. students slaving off for them).

As long as universities and funding bodies - i.e. your potential employers and the people who give you money - judge you by the quantity of your publications and the impact factor of journals you publish in I'm afraid this won't happen.

We'd need a different way to judge someone's scientific output which is definitely hard - do we start to check Twitter or blogs for scientific outreach? Do we judge scientific "novelty" (of which maybe only the author herself/himself is the expert in, so only s/he can properly evaluate)? Do we start to evaluate preprints (biology doesn't do this much)? Many open questions, and not much is happening in terms of change.

(Edit: This is, by the way, one of the reasons why there is so much more Arabidopsis than Wheat research - Arabidopsis is easier to manipulate and grows faster, so you can get more publications out for the same amount of work)

>As long as universities and funding bodies - i.e. your potential employers and the people who give you money - judge you by the quantity of your publications and the impact factor of journals you publish in I'm afraid this won't happen.

Having seen this evaluation process from the inside, it would still work if everyone was limited to ~3 papers per year. In my experience sheer quantity doesn't land you a job, because quantity usually is a detriment to quality. More important factors are the prestige of the journals you published in, whether those journals are relevant to the position, how consistent your publishing record is (is there a five year break?, have you even stopped publishing?). In CS "best paper" awards from conferences also have significant weight.

Add to that that fewer papers make it easier to asses their quality, and being limited to three high-quality papers a year isn't a detriment to hiring.

Some of the work I've done that I like the best have been side musings that wouldn't make the "3 paper" priority cap, but have never the less been useful to me and others.

Also, you'd probably get a surge of shit submissions in November from everyone who didn't get their three in.

I know many may disagree but I'm curious about this movement of 'publicly funded should be publicly available' wouldn't this infringe on national competitiveness?

Like India nor the USA didn't funded these studies but...those people will have access to these research papers? Talk about a free lunch. And potentially demotivating to other countries, as they could be like 'well, EU did it...let's lower our investments in research'.

It's my opinion that there should be a gateway and one must us their state ID or something. And if you are at a public library, easy access. But not public to the whole world.

Edited: I'm heading to sleep and I'd like to discuss this to those that want to. I'll return to the thread in about 24 hours as I have a busy day tomorrow.

wouldn't this infringe on national competitiveness?

A rising tide lifts all boats...

This makes no sense. A "tide" just happens, it doesn't get "created" or "caused" by anyone, which is the case for public scientific research. A crucial difference.

What's really going on here is that some individuals aren't exactly happy/eager/willing about giving away, for free, things that they have funded personally funded (through taxes). This is a perfectly reasonable opinion to hold.

It's the same reason we have things such as patents. So as to reward individuals and groups that create something new. They then get exclusive rights to the profits/benefits that such an invention creates. Yet somehow if it applies to nation states, that no longer holds?

This makes no sense. A "tide" just happens, it doesn't get "created" or "caused" by anyone, which is the case for public scientific research.

It's an analogy, and all analogies are somewhat flawed. The point is, increasing the overall pool of scientific knowledge throughout the world makes life better for everybody in the long run. I mean, if somebody in Botswana invents the first viable fusion reactor, and publishes a paper for free, maybe Botswana as a country won't get "oil country rich" off of it. But as cheap, plentiful electricity spreads around the world, everybody, everywhere, will have a better life as a result. That's what I mean by "a rising tide lifts all boats".

You're asking the wrong person, because I am opposed to patents in general. shrug

What would be the reasoning behind dropping funding? That you can read the output of another country instead of duplicating work?

I doubt heavily that would happen but even if it did that'd be a good thing.

> It's my opinion that there should be a gateway and one must us their state ID or something.

A full, international login system for every person in the EU just in case someone else in the world might want to read a paper? That sounds expensive and complicated compared to just using the web as it exists.

Sure, it may be expensive but it would be good to ensure those that paid for it receive it.

You don't need to do that to ensure those that paid for it receive it, just to stop others.

As a taxpayer I really don't want to spend even more of my money for worse access.

Those other countries already have universities that have buy access to the journals that the papers appear in. Research isn't secret. It's just expensive to access for normal people.

> I shouldn't have to pay twice to read research papers I helped fund

In fairness, we pay twice for many things, such a toll roads. The first payment isn't always sufficient.

That doesn't make any sense... How does having one screwed up system justify another? Maybe we should start paying twice for groceries too, because we pay twice for toll roads and research papers...

My point is, whether or not you pay a fair amount doesn't depend on how many times you pay. Let's say your fair share is $10; $3 goes via taxes and $7 via the other mechanism. Here's a couple of scenarios where it's a good choice:

1) The new road is 60% in the public interest and 40% in the interest of its users, so 60% is paid with taxes and 40% via tolls.

2) Society feels it's reasonable that all children, regardless of family income, should have educational resources. 90% of school is funded by taxes and 10% funded by fees paid by students' families (lunch, field trips, books, etc.).

Both of these are reasonable, as long as the payment is actually covering costs - but in this case the first payment covers some of the costs, and the second payment increases the cost. That is, as a taxpayer I'm paying 1) for the research and also 2) for the extortionate access fees for universities, and as an independent researcher I'm ALSO paying 3) for my own private access to the results. The problem is that the funds from 2 and 3 do not fund the research, they fund the parasites that make 1 more expensive. I have no problem with a two-part payment for things where private benefit and public interest have the relation you describe, but when the secondary payment is a) entirely unnecessary, because the entirety of the work done is funded by the first, and b) feeds disgusting evil parasites that do nothing but harm to society, it's clearly immoral.

> The problem is that the funds from 2 and 3 do not fund the research, they fund the parasites that make 1 more expensive

Speaking generally, paying for someone else's profit is essential to the free market. Without profit, much less would get done.

Speaking about this case in particular, knowledge, at least much of scientific knowledge, should not be sold at whatever prices the market will bear, which is what these publications seem to be moving toward. Imagine the prices you could demand for knowledge of immunizations, relativity, DNA, law, history, etc. (if they weren't already publicly available). Imagine the disruption to science, to the advance of knowledge, and the incredible cost to humanity if only a few with enough money could access these ideas.

Have you actually published a paper ? You (the researcher) don't earn money from the publication of one.

The first payment is the one you and I make because it's valuable to society for the research behind these papers to be written.

The second payment is for you only, because you are getting specific and temporal value from access.

But at least when you pay your toll, the money goes to the government and not some private corporation.

Unless it's a private highway, although theoretically the owner saddled the cost of building it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_highway

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