Hacker News Reader

Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

How hard would it be for the government to issue an edict like "from 2025 all research must be published in an open access journal to receive public funding"?

View on HN

> How hard would it be for the government to issue an edict like "from 2025 all research must be published in an open access journal to receive public funding"?

In France it is more or less like that. You have to upload your publications to http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr you want them to "count" (from the point of view of public research).

I wasn't aware of this. The model actually works great since I've personally accessed multiple papers from INRIA/IRISA from the HAL archives.

Probably harder than simply creating and standardising a .gov website that hosts research. It's difficult to demonstrate how journals are more than (or utilised better than) search engines.

AFAIK the problem isn't with finding a place to host the papers, but that the non-open access journals require you to sign over the paper's copyright to them.

I think the problem with open access and such is that they're relatively unknown. When you have a standardised, credible, authoritative source, well, that's all journals have for them. Only this time it's government-guaranteed instead of an appeal to corporate authority.

An issue with open access is that you have to pay thousands of dollars up front to get published - fine if you’re in a rich western lab, not so great if you’re in India or some other emerging country.

Why do you have to pay thousands of dollars up front though? It doesn't cost that to host a paper. Reviewers don't get paid. Where does the money go?

To the Journal. They want money too, but for open access it comes from the researchers. For closed access, it comes from the subscriptions.

Forcing open access is still the same as just paying for the subscription, as far as it goes, since if public funds are used for this, it's all the same thing.

Maybe the science education should involve some basic marketing training to teach the scientist that the fruits of their skills + months of their work + expensive equipment + other funding doesn't add up to something they can just give away. Maybe if they paid for everything themselves it would be ethical. Either way it is just incredibly dumb and we should punish them for spending tax money like that if they don't grow up soon.

Maybe just bill them as an extra tax if they want to publish behind closed doors. Gradually increase the tax until they see the light. Or call it a fine if you like.

This has happened in the UK and Europe already, I believe. The UK definitely - research only counts if it is open access and deposited within a certain number of days of being accepted. Otherwise it doesn't "count" towards evaluation of research output when reviewed.

Well considering that much of the research one would want to access might be published outside the country, pretty hard...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com