Publicly-Funded Research Data is Public? 85
Elektroschock asks: "Public data belongs to the public, some advocates believe. BSD Unix is one of the most striking business examples of that 'public data' rule. Gauss and Google made patent data available. But what about classical research results? Should free access to knowledge get regulated? A new petition supported by Open Society Institute wants free public access to research: 'Evidence is accumulating to indicate that research that is openly accessible is read more and used more and that open access to research findings would bring economic advantage'. How do scientists feel about it? Does public funding really turn their results into public property?"
The vaccine-research enthusiasts may like it (Score:1, Interesting)
Public research is not public (Score:3, Interesting)
Dec. 30: When requested, scientific information ''prepared by government researchers and scientists shall be transmitted [to Congress] uncensored and without delay." Bush's signing statement: The president can tell researchers to withhold any information from Congress if he decides its disclosure could impair foreign relations, national security, or the workings of the executive branch. Link [boston.com]
Although I am sensative to the free information argument, I can see witholding things like weapons research, nuke material transportation and gathering, etc. There are just some things the sick people who have a need for such things should have to do on their own. What bothers me is any research that could impair the workings of the executive branch. Lets say the executive branch is working on promoting revised environmental policy loosened emmissions to save money. This would seem to say they could withold any public research that would hurt their goal.
So public research is not required to be given to the public, or even anyone besides the president. Should it be? I'd say in a vast majority of cases, yes. But I do think it is best we withold info that would make creating advanced weaponry easy for others.
Another bit of pro-business, anti-public law (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:yes (Score:3, Interesting)
Many academic publications are available online at the local state university.
The publications are available, to anyone living close enough to a university to use the library. But the data is most definitely not. Open access data, at least in biology, is still the exception, rather than the rule. Even with journals that have online supplements, the extra material is usually more detailed analysis, not the data itself.
The exception in my field relates to gene sequences, which must be submitted to an open access repository like Genbank. This enables two important avenues for research. First, we can verify that the sequences used in a study were correct - if they don't match independently produced sequences for the same species then the results of the study will need to be reconsidered. Second, the time and effort that went into producing those sequences need not be duplicated by other researchers. Both are important in moving the science forward.
The whole scientific process is finally starting to take full advantage of the benefits of the internet. At this point there is no reason for all studies and their data to be publicly available for no additional fee beyond the tax money that was invested in their creation. The only thing preventing this is the inertia associated with the current publishing/funding system. It will take some time to develop a new working model, but it will happen.
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Ethical positions (Score:3, Interesting)
Under a theory of rights, it is hard to see how the public is not entitled to data that it paid for. If the public is deprived of the data, then the taxation used to pay for the data becomes theft.
Under a theory of utility, the question becomes whether the public benefits more from privatising public data or from putting it in the public domain. This has to be judged on a case by case basis. It is possible that medical research might need to be privatised in order to get commercial distribution of otherwise unprofitable treatments. The geographic data in question is so immediately useful that the public does not need a third party to "commercialize" it.
Under theories of virtue, the question is whether the public character is enhanced most by open exchange of data, or by privatising data. I think there is plenty of opportunity for private enterprise to add value to data, so on the whole openness is better.
Of course, what is going on here is that public agencies want to do more with less funding. Usually this is a good thing, but in this case they are ignoring the overall public good. What they are doing is reducing the amount of taxation (good), but turning a portion of that taxation into theft (bad).
It's worse than that,really (Score:2, Interesting)
But it's not just the public money that is spent on research that is misappropiated, it is
in fact the entire infrastructure that private corporations get use of for next to
nothing.
Most university departments "cooperate" in research with private corporations in that
those corporations put the professors in charge of the dept on their payrolls. They in turn
"align their research" with what the corps want and put the university infrastructure
(labs, equipment, students and employees) to work for them.