NASA Is Silent on OSTP Open Access Policy
OSTP Memo to Departments and Agencies: Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research
“The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) hereby directs each Federal agency with over $100 million in annual conduct of research and development expenditures to develop a plan to support increased public access to the results of research funded by the Federal Government.”
American Astronomical Society Applauds Obama Administration’s New Open-Access Policy
“So why is the AAS supportive of open access? “Because we’re already in compliance with the administration’s new guidelines,” says AAS Executive Officer Kevin B. Marvel. “Research articles from all AAS journals are available online, without charge, 12 months after their original date of publication, and they’ve been available that way for years.”
Keith’s update: Why NASA hasn’t said anything about this? No mention at the NASA Open Government Initiative.
It looks like John Holdren is making a splash. And while part of the splash appears good, it seems to come with some collateral consequences.
Taxpayers pay their hard earned income so federally funded scientific research can be done. So it is reasonable to conclude that the research data and findings be provided to and returned to the public for its use. And while this probably makes sense in many instances, it probably doesn’t make sense in all instances.
The OSTP memo does attempt to take a good stab at solving the long-standing problem of open-access and circumstances where federally funded research can only be accessed via special, restricted or paid-for distribution channels. Many U.S. firms and researchers know what a pain it is to get a simple research finding or peer reviewed journal article.
The OSTP memo requires a plan to be submitted and other measures and of course a 12 month post-publication embargo period, which some might wonder about. Like research wine, the data needs to be aged. Or from a closer look, there are other reasons why the 12 month embargo is there. In some respects it should be a 1 month embargo, in other respects it should be a 20 year embargo.
The OSTP memo in 4.a.ii. mentions U.S. competitiveness, but smartly elaborates no further, and therein lies a fundamental value-exchange issue:
It seems “Public” is poorly defined or the scope of what “Public” means is open to interpretation. If all federally funded research must be freely and openly-accessible, broadbanded, put on the internet, and readily available to citizens and industry, then it is also accessible worldwide. Billions of dollars of U.S. research, discovery, innovation and value creation: leaking, flooding, gushing out of the U.S into the world.
Open-access to this universal “public” would mean that U.S. taxpayers are footing the bill for research, only to have it freely distributed to everyone on the planet. 300 million U.S. citizens footing the bill for 7 billion people’s access and gain. In this sense, open-access becomes a U.S. philanthropic “gifting of value” to the world – all on the backs of and from the hard labor of U.S. citizens. A philanthropy that is more a State Department activity.
Collectively, if all U.S. research produced Zero Value and was worthless, then there would be no issue here. But if U.S. research holds, say, a potential economic value of $1 Trillion or $5 Trillion dollars, then that economic value is being put on the U.S. doorstep, with a giant “open-access” gift card label, for anyone on the planet to take and develop.
The OSTP memo directs U.S. agencies to make their research available in order to promote (U.S.?) entrepreneurship, (U.S.?) innovation, to enhance (U.S.?) economic growth, and increase (U.S.?) job creation. Or does it?
Non-U.S. countries must laugh. They must look at the Americans and either humbly and kindly say “Thank you Americans for working so hard and laboring to then research and give us all of the discoveries you find and innovations you’ve made, all for free for us, so nicely written in peer reviewed and vetted instructional papers.” Or “Those stupid rich Americans, they have such egos, they blurt out their discoveries unwittingly to justify their next paycheck or to dominate their peers, so we will take their research breakthroughs and use them to build our economies into economies far greater than theirs.” Whether they think kindly or not, the result is the same.
The USG may conclude that USC 17 and 35 handles and provides for adequate protections of U.S. intellectual property and mitigate the economic and value losses suggested above, but I think many citizens and seasoned professionals will cringe at the thought of a mass distribution of U.S. research given at U.S. expense to a very highly competitive global industrialized world.
John, I think you’re a good guy and hard working public servant, but:
Recommendation: Get a high-end master architect that is skilled in public private partnership architectures, value-exchanges, public asset management and intellectual property. Your Office knows the entities that possess all of these skills. Engage them. Go back to the drawing board, modify and reconstruct this memo and issue one that acts in the best interest of the United States, while fairly interacting with those in the international community. Tighten up your deadlines too. Six month draft deadlines are for pansies.
As for NASA, for the time being, I’m glad they’ve been silent.
This is not a new problem. I can remember news shows in the 1970’s when Japanese businessmen who were asked about Japan’s rapid rise as a world economic power in the 60’s and 70’s openly admitted that one of the reasons for their rapid new-found success had to do with market research. They claimed that they had to do very little in the areas of electrical and electronics equipment and home entertainment equipment because so many of the American companies did all of the relevant market research and then, for some reason, published the results for all the world to see, including their own US competitors. The Japanese companies simply took the American results and, with their more efficient manufacturing, introduced product into the identified markets ahead of anybody else, thereby capturing and keeping major market shares. Before the US companies wised up, Taiwan and both Koreas had done the same.
However, not everything falls in to this category. Some research results have little or no economic competitive value, but are of interest to other people in the same field. Delaying reporting these results for a full year serves no purpose that I can see.
Don’t forget one of the most important factors in Japan’s postwar success was the adoption of W. Edwards Demming’s principles of quality control and statistics in manufacturing. Demming helped the US win WWII, but he was ignored in his home country when the postwar boom made quality seem unimportant to US manufacturers. Welcomed in Japan, he helped them move from a reputation for shoddy products to one of world-class quality.
It isn’t secrecy US manufacturers need, it’s the willingness to sacrifice short-term profits for quality and sustainable growth.
Why a 12-month delay? I realize that things have to be prepared, reviewed, and posted, but these days 12 months is an eternity.
There are two questions here that we should not confuse. The first is whether scientific data should be published at all or kept secret. If research is financed by a company with its own resources it can certainly keep it proprietary, but companies seldom do so for any longer than is needed to patent new drugs and submit publications. It’s virtually impossible to market a product without revealing its chemical and physical nature, and without open discussion in the scientific community it would be impossible for doctors to even know if a new drug really works; no one would trust a manufacturer’s unsubstantiated claims because they are often exaggerated. Open discussion is essential in science simply to discover the truth. Secrecy, in the long term, stops progress.
The second question is whether publications require expensive subscriptions or are available to anyone. For foriegn government or established researchers at major institutions the journals are a a minor expense; for those at smaller institutions or working independently the cost can easily be impossible, particularly when the papers one needs are all in different journals. The 12-month free access restriction is simply a sop to traditional restricted-access journals to force serious researchers to subscribe to them; anyone who is a year behind will have a hard time doing cutting-edge research. Publication in journals which are immediately and freely accessible online speeds up access and
makes research available to more colleagues who can build on your work. Anyone who doesn’t believe open access is the way of the future should take a look at PLoS One. Yes, freely accessible publication is in some respects a form of global socialism, but most scientists are not in it for the money, which is very limited, or the lifestyle, which is impossibly difficult. Without immediate access to the latest research a scientist might spend his life repeating what has already been done.
NASA already makes astronomical data freely available a year after the principal investigator first received them. The Astrophysical Journal, where many papers that use NASA data are published, already makes papers freely available a year after publication.
NASA is therefore in better shape than other federal science agencies to comply with the OSTP directive.
By not issuing a statement about the directive, NASA is missing an opportunity to brag about its leadership in freeing access to federally funded research.