@Draug,

That isn't really true. Scientific American is not going to accept the same time of article as Nature will (despite being owned by the same company) because they are intended for different audiences. Those types of magazines simply aren't relevant to this discussion.

Also, as has been pointed out, a researchers success in academia is very closely linked to their publishing. Maybe they could get paid a couple hundred dollars to publish in some no-name journal instead of Nature, but if that means they lose grants and a shot at tenure, it's not really much of a "choice" is it?

@ful

I agree that overall it would be cheaper, but different people would be footing the bill, which makes a big difference. If Universities want to attract researchers, they *have* to pay such subscriptions, regardless of the cost. Researchers who include cost of Open Access in grants, on the other hand, could be put at a disadvantage compared to ones who don't.

I'm not saying Open Access is bad, that's not my point at all. I just don't see how from where we are how we can make the transition.

Some academic publications will waive the publication fee if the author can show that he is unable to pay. They don't like to mention it since they really do like to collect the fees.

Years ago before online versions, an author would get printed copies of his paper from the journal and a discounted price for more so he could send them to peers and people that requested them.

"Years ago before online versions, an author would get printed copies of his paper from the journal and a discounted price for more so he could send them to peers and people that requested them."

Yeah, to be completely honest, I'm not even sure if I'm allowed to hand out articles that I co-authored...

@ Abge, my point is not that researchers should arbitarily include the cost of publication in their application, but rather the grant providers automatically allocate a set amount to this cost. It would actually be quite a minor proportion, if open access were to be widely implemented.

@ful

Yeah, I agree that would be amazing and solve a lot of problems. But is it ever going to happen?

I think that things are moving in that direction e.g., biomed and the publication by institutions of their employees work. It can only help if those of us who publish stay positive and get behind it.

I don't think even the publicly funded case is ALL that clear. In cases where everything is paid for by the government? Sure. But what if they only cover some of the costs? What if a lot of it is an individual scientist, slaving away late into the night, much harder than he has to or is required to, to get the knowledge? How can you divide the amount that was put in by the scientist versus the public?

One option of course would be to just make it a condition of public funding, and then he could reject the funding if he felt it was too big a burden. But I don't think it's _completely_ clear that's a good idea.

Anyway, I realize the conversation has moved on now. I just wanted to throw that out.

"How can you divide the amount that was put in by the scientist versus the public?"

But, is this really an issue since authors aren't being directly paid for their publications anyway? I'm not getting any royalties from anything I submitted to academic journals, so I'm not losing out (only the journal is) by making the articles available.

True, but I guess I was thinking, what if he came up with something amazing and wanted to publish it himself and charge for it (for example)?

@semck

I suppose that's possible, but does that happen often. As far as I know, most important breakthroughs in science are published in academic journals. I guess it would depend on the particular situation. If I funded my own work and wanted to then monetize my discoveries, that's my choice. If someone at CERN can figure out how to send data via neutrinos and wants to patent it, go for it. But, the whitepapers on neutrinos themselves should still be available to the public.

abge,

Fair enough. I think there's still interesting territory to explore here, but it's all so hypothetical that I can't work up much enthusiasm for doing it right now. Your points are not bad ones. I'm just not sure they would convince me in every case.

Another interesting case, of course, is if somebody, publicly funded, hypothetically discovered (accidentally) a physics or biology fact that had obvious and extremely powerful weapons applications. Potentially the government would not only allow, but would insist on nonpublication, despite the fact that furthering public knowlege was the original point.

I'm not sure what's hypothetical about it.

Piracy is a real thing, the ethics of which should be addressed. Furthermore, as people have pointed out, there is already movement towards more Open Access publication.

Again, I think you're picking out very specific and nuanced cases. It's not unimportant to address these issues, but I'm not sure how constructive it is to do so before we even agree on the general cases.

To reiterate, I do agree that Journals such as Nature provide real benefits to both researchers and readers. The problem is at how high of a cost those benefits come at.

I didn't mean that your cases were hypothetical. I meant that my "nuanced and specific" ones (to quote you) were. Yours, you're correct, are quite common, even the norm. And while I think it's important to consider the hypothetical, nuanced ones while developing the general rule, my interest for actually thinking through a lot of hypothetical science publishing cases is pretty thin right now. I don't at all mean that y'all shouldn't continue to do so. I was just explaining why I'm kind of drifting out of the thread again.

Understood.

"Another way could be to limit the copyrights on articles to 2 years or so. This would lift the load on many mid-class universities and small scale research institutions as well provide some compensation to the "evaluators" for their work. In consequence, much money could be saved at institutional level that could be reinvested into more research (or grants, etc.), while preserving up to date research access."

This was exactly my thought. Though having read more of this thread. And thought about the issue a little more. I'm leaning towards the POV that all published articles should be open access. Journals provide two important services, which is quality control, and organization/dissemination of information. And I think there is room for both services to flourish. All articles could be published to an open database, while the journals would continue to run much as they have now. The net result being if you don't want to sort through the piles of new research coming in you subscribe to journals, which sort, and filter the information. If you dont mind spending a bit more time looking for things, you just use the open access format.

Regarding comercial research, I think a two year grace period/head start to capitalize on finished research is reasonable. After which the research should be made open, to encourage innovation and competition.

Along that same line, I think patents should last 2 years, with 5 years serving as an absolute maximum, for fields with low ROI. After which point competitors should have access to your methods/research which they can then improve one. Once again to demand innovation.

If however patent law cannot be controlled (limited to that extremely limited span, and we cannot prevent copyright trolling, I would argue it is better to abolish it.)

If you eliminate patents, you will vastly ramp up trade secrets, which would be a much worse outcome than what we have.

...worse? I would disagree. Nobody can sue you if your method of production happens to be the same as their trade secret.

Additionally many fields don't really lend themselves to trade secrets.

But things like pharmacy would, and trade secrets never expire.

My point was that the current abuse of the system is more harmful, than abolishing the system would be.

For obvious reasons I would prefer the set up I detailed, with short patents. (And reasonable restrictions on WHAT you can patent. )

My point was that I disagree that the abuse is worse than abolishing would be.

I too would prefer some reforms to the system, though I don't think shortening would be as helpful as trying to come up with a way to prevent trolling.

Short patents would never work for medical research.

(I'll admit, I'm not a pharmacist.) But pharmacy isn't really one of those fields. There are some things which can remain trade secrets easily. Eg. methods of production. But in terms of formulation, its a few chemical reactions away from discovering what a drug is made from. (Though with some it is more complicated than that. )

" But pharmacy isn't really one of those fields. There are some things which can remain trade secrets easily. Eg. methods of production. But in terms of formulation, its a few chemical reactions away from discovering what a drug is made from."

No, this is very bad. Medicine is very, very hard to make. If patents weren't forced to expire we might never have generic brands of very important drugs. It is *not* trivial to reverse engineer drugs.

Abge: While you have more experience with medical research then I have (I assume). So I will for the sake of argument likely concede the point. However the company which produced the pharmaceutical, could still make money off the chemical, and they would have a five year advantage in terms of branding-and working on ways to decrease cost.

"No, this is very bad. Medicine is very, very hard to make. If patents weren't forced to expire we might never have generic brands of very important drugs. It is *not* trivial to reverse engineer drugs."

I don't disagree. It isn't trivial. But neither is it impossible.

But why don't companies just not patent their stuff now, and leave it all trade secrets? Clearly patents offer something. Short patents wouldn't necessarily result in everything shifting to trade secrets

@damian

Trade secrets are not ideal for companies nor consumers. If a company relies on trade secrets, they have no recourse if another company reverse engineers their product, or if a disgruntled employee sells it. Patents offer companies protection for a limited time. This benefits consumers as well, because eventually patents expire and companies can easily compete. Now, if the patents are too limited, then companies can't make a profit and it isn't worth it. If it's too long, by the time they expire, the product is worthless.

I suspected much of that to be the case.

Why do you consider five years to be too short? (I will grant that I was thinking of five years from the time the product is brought to market. As opposed to a strict five years from the patent filling.)

Pharmaceuticals have weird patent/exclusivity laws that I don't fully understand. But, they basically last for around 20 years. Pharmaceuticals can take over a decade and 10s or 100s of millions of dollars to produce. No one is going to put the time and money into it if they only have a patent/exclusivity for 5 years.