7 ms·

A lot of people assume that making all research that included federal grant money free to the public would be unilaterally good. I like the idea in general beca

by orbenn 14y ago

A lot of people assume that making all research that included federal grant money free to the public would be unilaterally good. I like the idea in general because I actually like to read scientific papers sometimes, but my primary interest is to maximize the amount of research that happens. Or more precisely to maximize the speed at which we acquire knowledge/technology. Are there any existing examples of places where this has been put into practice that we can compare to see which state of affairs is better? I'm unsure it would be beneficial because most of the public wouldn't read/understand the actual journal articles anyway, and I expect most of the scientists who do work in the field already have subscriptions. I'm worried there might be harm because government mandates of all kinds very often have negative unintended consequences and I'm curious what those might be for this area.

slowpoke 14y ago
>Or more precisely to maximize the speed at which we acquire knowledge/technology. Who do you mean by "we"? Because you certainly can not be referring to "we" as in mankind. Locking away knowledge behind walls of bureaucracy and artificial monopolies will certainly not speed up progress, but instead slowly grind it to a halt. Just look at the state of the patent wars. Everyone is suing each other, or claiming to just collect patents to be able to counter-sue. Microsoft, Google, Apple, and all the other big players probably each have patents on all technologies all of them use, a good amount of those more than once and worded as ridiculously over-general claims. So if by "we" you are referring to the few dozen mega-corps that pretty much control our shared heritage of knowledge, then yes, you are quite likely correct. If, on the other hand, you want to maximize the rate of technological advancement for the "we" as in all of humanity, then embrace Open Access, get rid of patents and all that other nonsense, and realize that incremental, cooperative development will speed up progress by magnitudes.
MikeTaylor 14y ago
orbenn, please take a look at the Who Needs Access? website at http://whoneedsaccess.org/ http://whoneedsaccess.org/ -- it contains many case-studies of many different classes of people who need access to published research for reasons to do with health, education, commerce, third-world development and more. We definitely do need open access, and for many more reasons than just to improve the speed of basic research.

by orbenn 14y ago

slowpoke 14y ago

>Or more precisely to maximize the speed at which we acquire knowledge/technology. Who do you mean by "we"? Because you certainly can not be referring to "we" as in mankind. Locking away knowledge behind walls of bureaucracy and artificial monopolies will certainly not speed up progress, but instead slowly grind it to a halt. Just look at the state of the patent wars. Everyone is suing each other, or claiming to just collect patents to be able to counter-sue. Microsoft, Google, Apple, and all the other big players probably each have patents on all technologies all of them use, a good amount of those more than once and worded as ridiculously over-general claims. So if by "we" you are referring to the few dozen mega-corps that pretty much control our shared heritage of knowledge, then yes, you are quite likely correct. If, on the other hand, you want to maximize the rate of technological advancement for the "we" as in all of humanity, then embrace Open Access, get rid of patents and all that other nonsense, and realize that incremental, cooperative development will speed up progress by magnitudes.

MikeTaylor 14y ago

orbenn, please take a look at the Who Needs Access? website at http://whoneedsaccess.org/ http://whoneedsaccess.org/ -- it contains many case-studies of many different classes of people who need access to published research for reasons to do with health, education, commerce, third-world development and more. We definitely do need open access, and for many more reasons than just to improve the speed of basic research.