if only all current scientific publishing was like this

Time to terminate the "Research Works Act" which aims to terminate public access to publicly-funded science?

The Research Works Act aims to terminate the NIH Public Access Policy which ensures that results of publicly-funded research are publicly available. Michael Eisen has raised attention to this issue, including an eloquent nytimes op-ed essay.

I wrote to Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, the sponsor of the bill, with these concerns, and below is her reply.

Dear Dr. Kentsis:

Thank you for taking the time to contact me about your opposition to HR 3699. As someone who represents thousands of researchers, research institutions, and publishers, and a strong advocate who helped double NIH funding, I appreciate the opportunity to respond. 

First, I think it’s important to point out that this bill does NOT impact research reports and raw data generated by government-funded research. This information would still be available at no cost to the public. Reports that suggest that these NIH funded research papers (prior to peer review) will not be available for free are wrong. Authors still retain the ability to share data, reports, and other forms of research findings derived from the taxpayer-funded research. However, once a publisher has worked on a manuscript, spent private funds to improve it and has peer-reviewed it, under this bill, the government would not be able to take that work-product and disseminate it for free. The information, the manuscript, and the data can be made available for free before they receive any private investment. 

The purpose of HR 3699 is to support the continued investment and innovation by private-sector publishers in scientific, technical, medical and scholarly journal articles and to advance the public interest in the important peer-review publishing system that helps ensure the quality and integrity of scientific research. 

The importance of peer review cannot be overstated. It is the system by which experts give informed comments on papers in highly specialized fields of science. It is essential to providing independent, informed, objective assessments to maintain the quality of scientific articles and ensure that science develops independently of ideological and political interests. Because peer review happens and fixes problems prior to publication, we never hear about the false or erroneous research that would otherwise make it into journal articles. 

Moreover, the publishing industry has invested in providing public access to scientific journal articles. Patients can get free access to information on new research through various publisher programs including PatientINFORM. Anyone can go into research libraries for free access to the articles in which publishers have invested substantially to ensure their high quality. 

Two-thirds of the access to PubMed central is from non-US users. In effect, current law is giving our overseas scientific competitors in China and elsewhere important information for free. We are already losing scientists due to a reduction in funding for federal research. This policy now sends our value-added research papers overseas at no cost. 

Finally, as people continue to struggle during these difficult economic times, it is important to be mindful of the impact of various industries on job creation and retention. New York State is home to more than 300 publishers that employ more than 12,000 New Yorkers, many of whom live in or around New York City in my district. New York City scientific publishers represent a significant subset of the total, and more than 20 are located in Manhattan, publishing thousands of scientific journals and employing thousands of New Yorkers. This bill saves American jobs. No industry could survive a model whereby they invest private dollars and are then required to give it to the federal government to disseminate the final product for free. 

Once again, I appreciate your taking the time to contact me. 

Sincerely,

CAROLYN B. MALONEY

Member of Congress

This response speaks for itself, particularly the last 2 sentences, which invert the logic of public access to publicly-funded science to suggest that the "final product" of our science belongs to commercial publishers.

North Korea sells people to labor in Russian Siberia

look lab christmas 2011

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

on medicare

much has been written about the failures of the current US healthcare system, with recent critiques amplified by its enormous financial cost.

the separation between the scale of these dollar amounts and the needs of individual people makes it difficult to escape ideology when discussing what and how to reform. and most people simply do not have the time or resources to investigate this issue fully. but we should.

if you care to do anything, do these 2 things:

1) look over the top 50 services, procedures and items billed to medicare. regardless of the particular ideology that's permeated your thinking, you will be surprised.

2) read jane gross' opinion about how medicare fails the elderly. this is what awaits you and your parents in the current system. 

occupy wall street: e pluribus unum?

the major media and popular consciousness are finally registering the occupy wall street movement.

i am proud that the founding (dis)organizers of the phenomenon chose to maintain an organic voice with no specific references to constituencies or policies.

this has prompted some critical responses, but i believe that the decentralized approach has a fundamental strength in allowing it to spread and generalize to a more effective majority. the threshold for transforming the currently marginalized phenomenon to a plural one remains to be defined. the critique offered by the movement, however, is neither marginal nor plural.

just look at the summaries of real lives on http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com. a few particularly jarring ones have been buzzfed. even those instinctively opposed to the movement are actually a part of it.

the challenge for all now is how to make e pluribus unum.

olog's most read posts

though the apparent pageviews should be normalized for age, this list of "most read" posts must mean something:

conversations with asher

asher: can we have some music?
me: sure
asher: i want oscar
me: we don't have the oscar cd here, how about peter and the wolf?
asher: well, that's good...very good, peter and the wolf is so much fun!