Biden really is trying to make me vote for him in the next election.
BREAKING: White House issues new policy that will require, by 2026, all federally-funded research results to be freely available to public without delay, ending longstanding ability of journals to paywall results for up to 1 year. Coverage coming on @ScienceInsider. pic.twitter.com/HijntoZFDN
— ScienceInsider (@ScienceInsider) August 25, 2022
This is big. Really big. Open up all that science, we paid for it! From the White House:
This research, which changes our lives and transforms our world, is made possible by American tax dollars. And yet, these advancements are behind a paywall and out of reach for too many Americans. In too many cases, discrimination and structural inequalities – such as funding disadvantages experienced by minority-serving colleges and institutions – prevent some communities from reaping the rewards of the scientific and technological advancements they have helped to fund. Factors including race, age, disability status, geography, economic background, and gender have historically and systemically excluded some Americans from the accessing the full benefits of scientific research.
To tackle this injustice, and building on the Biden-Harris Administration’s efforts to advance policy that benefits all of America, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released new policy guidance today to ensure more equitable access to federally funded research. All members of the American public should be able to take part in every part of the scientific enterprise—leading, participating in, accessing, and benefitting from taxpayer-funded scientific research. That is, all communities should be able to take part in America’s scientific possibilities.
What’s Crazy Joe going to do next? Legalize marijuana, create a Universal Basic Income, strip the broadcasting license from Fox News, free university, declare the Age of Aquarius? I like it.
Yes, fuck Elsevier. And this (open access) is cool
In an increasingly polluted information ecosystem, understanding the factors underlying the generation and spread of misinformation is becoming a pressing scientific and societal challenge3
. Here, we studied the global spread of (mis-)information on spiders using a high-resolution global database of online newspaper articles on spider–human interactions, covering stories of spider–human encounters and biting events published from 2010–20204
. We found that 47% of articles contained errors and 43% were sensationalist. Moreover, we show that the flow of spider-related news occurs within a highly interconnected global network and provide evidence that sensationalism is a key factor underlying the spread of misinformation.:
I mean, this is nice and all (in the “this one thing isn’t quite so insane now” sense), but didn’t you plan to do that anyway, assuming he’s running again?
Fundamentally change nothing, not make public schools tuition-free probably for decades to come, not raise the minimum wage, not undo the Trump tax cuts, not build tons of public housing, not pass meaningful election reform or DC/PR statehood or abolition of the electoral college, give more money to cops, maintain sanctions on Cuba, not give Afghanistan its own money back, send even more weapons to prolong the war in Ukraine and supply a black market, get covid a few more times, not ban gain of function research, stay on friendly terms with Israel and Saudi Arabia, etc., etc., etc.
The schedule probably has snack time and a nap here or there too. Then before you know it, it will be Casual Friday.
Right, you’re blaming Biden for failure to amend the constitution, take control of state budgets, or Green Lantern the congress into doing stuff he has in fact asked them to do. That makes total sense. I won’t bother to discuss the Ukraine war or gain of function research — the latter a weird interjection. There is an international panel of infectious disease specialists that issues guidelines on that. And no, it was not happening in Wuhan.
This is going to totally gut the business model of the fake journals. Those pay-to-publish journals that Wakefield and his ilk abuse. I can’t wait to see their heads exploding over all that lost profit.
@consciousnes razor, giving weapons to Ukraine is not “prolonging the war”, it is the only way the West can help to stave off the genocide of the Ukrainian people without getting directly involved (i.e. sending troops). You have said this nonsense several times and it is just as daft now as it was the first time some pro-Russian fascist apologist wrote it somewhere on the internet.
@consciousnes razor
The Ukrainian people seem to be quite consistent in their request for weapons and since they are the ones under Russian artillery, they are the ones that stand to lose, they are the ones affected, they are also the ones that decide.
Their lives, their choice.
Show us that they don’t want to fight, and we can talk.
It needs to be mentioned in discussions like this just how much this throws small non-profit publishers under the bus.
Sure, publicly-funded research should be available to the public, and per-article and subscription prices are often absurdly high. And I’d like to stick it to Elsevier as much as the next scientist.
Many publications have switched to an all open-access model over the last decade, and for those who are able to do so, that’s great. High-volume publishers in particular may be able to support this through publication fees charged to researchers. But for smaller publishers, that just isn’t enough to cover costs.
This also means that for a lot of publishers, publication fees will be rising. That’s going to be especially difficult for early-career researchers, or researchers at historically underfunded institutions such as tribal colleges and universities, who don’t have the resources to cover those costs.
There are a lot of ways to increase access to science that wouldn’t undermine small non-profit publishers. This isn’t one.
Ray Ceeya @4, this is going to have almost no impact on fake journals whatsoever. Those journals get almost all of their revenue through researchers paying for publication, not through subscriptions.
(These opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer or any agency with which I am affiliated.)
Physical Review would be nice.
invivo – Some open access publishers give discounts to authors from low and middle income countries. Most investigators pay the publication fees out of their grants — we just need to remember to put them in our budgets from now on. There still can be problems for unfunded research, or grants that generate more publications than expected. Open access publishers should consider policy responses to these situations. But I don’t think the problem distinguishes between early and later stage investigators, you should have that line in your K award or whatever funding you have.
Cervantes @9, if the OSTP policy came out with a concomitant increase in the NIH and NSF budgets (and all the other research-funding agencies) so that researchers could have the additional funding needed to support open access publication fees, then this policy wouldn’t be a problem for researchers.
And if all publishers were able to transition smoothly from a revenue model that relies on subscription and access fees to relying 100% on article processing charges, without ending up with unbalanced APCs (e.g., a smaller publisher in a niche field needing to charge higher APCs than the impact factor is “worth”), then it wouldn’t be a problem for publishers.
Neither of the above are likely true.
I mention early career researchers specifically because when you are establishing your career, the pressure to publish is much higher – both in terms of quality and quantity of publication. You also have access to fewer resources, and you may be spending more of your grant money on new equipment. There is less flexibility in an early career researcher’s budget to pay for APCs, and they will need to balance paying more money for a higher-impact publication against spending that money to do the science.
For non-profit publishers, the money has to come from somewhere, and I don’t think OSTP’s report adequately answered that question.
This in the NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/25/science/spiders-misinformation-rumors.html
starts: ”
We live in a world filled with spiders. And fear of spiders. They crawl around our minds as much as they crawl around our closets, reducing the population of insects that would otherwise bug us. Is that one in the corner, unassumingly spinning its web, venomous? Will it attack me? Should I kill it? Could it be — no, it can’t be — but, maybe it is — a black widow?
Catherine Scott, an arachnologist at McGill University, is familiar with the bad rap spiders get. When she tells people what she does, she is often presented with a story about “that one time a spider bit me.” The thing is, she says, if you don’t see a crushed up spider near you, or see one on your body, it’s likely that the bite mark on your skin came from something else. There are more than 50,000 known species of spiders in the world, and only a few can harm humans.
“Even medical professionals don’t always have the best information, and they very often misdiagnose bites,” Dr. Scott said.
It turns out that these fears and misunderstandings of our eight-legged friends are reflected in the news. Recently, more than 60 researchers from around the world, including Dr. Scott, collected 5,348 news stories about spider bites, published online from 2010 through 2020 from 81 countries in 40 languages. They read through each story, noting whether any had factual errors or emotionally fraught language. The percentage of articles they rated sensationalistic: 43 percent. The percentage of articles that had factual errors: 47 percent.
These findings, published on Monday in the journal Current Biology, revealed a vast and interconnected web of misinformation.
…
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(22)01127-7
the cell paper is available onlne without paywall.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!!! I haven’t updated my blog for a few months (I’m working on it, ok!) and it drives me nuts that when I go to Google Scholar only a small number of articles are available for me to actually read. Part of my hesitation on putting something new out (the subject is urban development and carbon dioxide) is that I simply don’t feel like I have enough research to make it well-considered. Plus, yeah, you professors pay the journals to publish your research while hoping that it will be seen by the general public and be useful to us. It damn well should be freely available!
Ray Ceeya–
I wish knocking down paywalls would hurt the sham journal industry, but they don’t make their money from people paying to read the terrible papers they publish, they make money from authors’ vanity and/or dishonesty. (I will be very happy if I turn out to be wrong on this!)
Also, Wakefield’s infamous paper was published in The Lancet, to the enduring discredit of a certain editor.
Don’t get your hopes up for the future.
Soylent Green is set in 2022, so things will go downhill fast after the midterms.
Oh, yes, it’s the other Democrats this time. I’m sure he has nothing to do with that. It feels much better already. Certainly an important “correction.”
The Age of Aquarius thing is still a joke, though, right? Pretty sure the theme here is one unexpected good thing, even though Biden’s mostly a piece of shit. But we definitely could talk about how other people are pieces of shit too. I’m okay with that, personally.
It sure as fuck doesn’t shorten it.
How about this? We try to make a peace deal happen. That’s a thing he (and many others) won’t even attempt. There. Are we done now?
My country’s weapons and money and imperialism, not my choice. It’s true enough that I didn’t chose it, and I wouldn’t have chosen it if they had ever asked or had allowed this stuff to be up for debate. I can’t argue with that.
2026? 2026?
I have been sampling the Foxsphere, and Sean Hannity and the others (I mix up their names, they all do the same schtick) are going crazy over the student debt cancellation.
(really, who is that other prominent liar that works at Fox? My brain has ejected the name like a Vogon poem)
As a cable channel, Fox News neither has nor requires a broadcast license.
The best way to attack them is probably via private defamation lawsuits, like the Dominion case.
@ 15
Why do suspect you’ve got a shrine to Caleb Maupin in your closet? You’re coming off really Tankie here.
@1 cool link! and an excellent article. :)
@2 Do you even know how the US government works?
-public schools are already tuition-free. Quality of public schools varies widely because they are supported through property taxes, mostly, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are free.You pay tuition for private schools.
-Congress raises the minimum wage (or doesn’t), not the president. The president can sign or not sign the bill to make it a law, but the president doesn’t make the laws, Congress does.
-that also goes for election reform, the Cuban embargo, electoral college abolition and “give Afghanistan its money back” (care to define that?)–all up to Congress, not the president.
-the Trump tax cuts are already set to expire in 2025. And again, Congress writes the tax laws and the federal budget, not the president.
https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-did-tax-cuts-and-jobs-act-change-personal-taxes
https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/tax-cuts-and-jobs-act-a-comparison-for-businesses
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/05/05/congress-corporate-tax-incentive/
But Biden–the same President Biden you are calling Crazy Joe–did push for and sign ARPA, which, in addition to creating the third round of stimulus payments (Economic Impact Payments) did increase the Child Tax Credit from 2,000/kid to 3600.00/kid under 6 and 3,000/kid under 18. Previously, the Child Tax Credit was for dependent kids 16 and under.
-Puerto Rico is a US territory. Puerto Rico can vote on statehood any time it wants to. If Puerto Rico decides it wants to become the 51st state, they can then petition CONGRESS to join the union & Congress will vote on it.
Right now, all Puerto Ricans are US citizens. If they want to vote in federal elections, they can establish residence in a state and vote in that state’s elections, including the presidential ones. They will also have to pay state taxes and federal taxes. Right now, Puerto Ricans have a choice–stay in Puerto Rico and don’t pay income tax or move to the states and pay income tax and vote. Or successfully petition to join the Union, in which case no one has to move.
-building public housing and police budgets are the purview of the state and local municipalities, not the federal government. The federal government gives block grants for public housing, sheltering/care of the indigent, etc., but it’s the state and local governments that actually have authority over both.
-“ban gain of function research”–so you’re an anti-vaxxer? You’re against improved vaccination and vaccination research? In the middle of a pandemic?
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/gain-function
“The difference between gain of function research and research that would be expected to yield results showing gain of function in some cases is a subtle one.”
A subtlety that clearly went right over your head.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02903-x
“In 2015, virologists led by Ralph Baric at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill reported the creation of their own chimaera. They took a version of the coronavirus responsible for the deadly outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in the early 2000s — now known as SARS-CoV — and adorned it with surface proteins from a different coronavirus taken from Chinese horseshoe bats. In the laboratory, this particular mash-up was able to break into human cells and also make mice ill1. This chimaera came with a message: other coronaviruses have the potential to spark a human pandemic. In just a few years’ time, that warning would prove prescient, as a distant cousin of SARS-CoV has now killed more than 4.9 million people worldwide.”
Because knowing stuff in advance is pointless and a waste of time. /s
-“prolong the war in Ukraine”–you’d prefer a short genocidal putsch and Russian annexation, I suppose? US military aid is literally the only reason that Ukraine still exists. And Ukrainians are begging for more US military aid, not less. Oh wait, I forgot, the guy who wants to give Puerto Rico a voice that they already largely have thinks that Ukraine shouldn’t have a choice in their future.
Do you ever actually think about the things you write before you hit “post”?
silvrhalide–
Minor clarification: people in Puerto Rico do pay income tax, but they don’t pay federal US income tax. (This doesn’t affect your argument.)
@ ^ silvrhalide & #5. Charly & #6. F.O.
Plus :
&
Quoting for truth.
Putin decided to invade Ukraine and attempt to re-establish the old Russian empire. The length of the War as wellas its existance at all is on him.
@ 15. consciousness razor : Peace talks? Yeah, that’d be good but what exactly do you expect Ukraine to do when it is being invaded and parts of it are being occupied and Russians are committing war crimes on a daily basis here?
@ 18. Nemo : FWIW Crikey (publisher) is doing that here in Oz. See :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-24/lachlan-murdoch-versus-crikey-test-defamation-law-changes/101367904
@7, 10 Not arguing against the impact to smaller publishers, but in a time of budget cuts, inflation and mergers, how many of the smaller publishers are likely to survive, regardless of whether there is free access or not? I am old enough to remember (and mourn the loss of) local newspapers and publications but part of what you are saying feels an awful lot like taking extra-special care of the last passenger pigeon.
Long before the local newspapers folded and closed up shop, many of them made the switch to “canned” news articles from subscription services. This allowed the newspapers to still print, but what they were printing was 1) not local or unique and 2) could literally be gotten almost anywhere.
While the loss of smaller publishers represents a narrowing of viewpoints and avenues of scientific research & publication, how many of them are going to survive? How many of them will still serve their readership in a meaningful way, ie., if you are a niche market and start publishing the same articles that can be found in other journals or else expand your area of interest to the point that you are no longer a niche publication, how many subscribers will still be willing to pay subscription fees?
The other aspect is that yes, the American public and the American taxpayer paid for that research. They are entitled to see what they paid for. And part of me says that wider access to actual science can be a boon to actual science. Right now there is a vacuum and it’s being filled by Facebook, Faux News and conspiracy theorists.
@21 Yes, they pay income tax to the territory, not the US federal government. It’s my understanding that the Puerto Rico income tax is a pittance compared to the US federal income tax.
My argument was that Puerto Rico has choices, and so far, this is what they chose, which is to be a US territory, not a US state. (Although the last vote on the matter was pretty close, IIRC.) It’s not as if they’re agitating to become a Spanish colony again.
silvrhalide @23, there is a whole world of non-profit scientific society publications that isn’t being considered.
Just about every scientific society publishes one or more scientific journals, and there are over a hundred scientific societies based in the US alone. This represents a significant array of widely-read journals publishing important and impactful research. While I was in grad school (in the 2010s) these were hugely important in my field. I just checked my paper published in mBio (published by the American Society for Microbiology), and 31 out of 50 publications I cited were in non-profit society journals.
These scientific societies are worth preserving, and here’s a very good argument why:
https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2018/12/06/why-society-and-not-for-profit-journals-are-worth-preserving-better-economic-and-continuing-value-for-the-community/
While publication is generally the primary revenue stream for these societies, they provide a wide array of benefits for the scientific workforce. They provide an access point for networking and they help connect scientists. They host meetings, conferences, and workshops. They help address issues for the scientific workforce at large, such as gender and racial inequity, sexual harassment, or scientific policies around complex topics such as patent issues or the ethics of animal research. They also represent the interests of scientists to Congress and to government agencies. If scientific societies went away, no one would be telling Congress during appropriations season that they should keep funding the NIH. If that had happened a few decades ago, we wouldn’t have gotten a safe and effective COVID vaccine in less than a year.
These are all benefits that can’t be easily monetized. Scientific societies need to be supported, and if they are not allowed to collect revenue through subscription fees, then they will need to collect them through other means. I think that’s something that most scientists (blog host PZ Myers unfortunately included) probably haven’t considered, and I think a lot of them are going to be surprised when publication fees go up in 2026.
That’s my prediction. I could be wrong.
Nemo @ 18
I read the case by Dominion against Fox News is heating up.
Depositions for the big names at Fox are scheduled for next week. It will be hilarious to have them answering questions under oath, knowing that lies will have consequences 😊
@consciousnes razor, it’s good of you to let us know that you are OK with genocide as long as Russia is doing it.
Putin’s Russia has already reneged on several peace deals over several years now. Russians shelled agreed-upon humanitarian corridors, they only allow civilians to flee to their own territory, where they then disappear. Russian diplomats lie as a matter of course even when faced with irrefutable evidence in the form of their own words a few weeks/days/hours prior. Putin has made it more than enough clear that the only peace deal that he agrees to is “give me what I want or else”. He has clearly stated that in his opinion, the Ukrainian nation does not exist and the Ukrainian people have no right to decide their own fates outside of Russian hegemony. He has clearly stated that to him only subjugation or destruction of the Ukrainian nation are outcomes acceptable to him. In short, this has nothing to do with USA imperialism this is all about Russian imperialism.
But why am I trying to explain things to you? I know you are not stupid, so you probably know this at some level. The problem is not your lack of knowledge or understanding, the problem is that it does not fit in your internalized need to bash anything the USA does, no matter the context. You are, in a very real sense, bemoaning that the USA is tossing a lifebuoy to a drowning because “USA bad”.
Fuck off, you despicable, immoral piece of shit. You are not progressive, you are not humanist, you are not a pacifist. You do not care about human well-being and human lives at all, you only care about your “holier than thou” image. You would do much better in the far right anti-sjw crowd, you would fit right in with them.
CR: “We try to make a peace deal happen. ”
That’s it, try to make a “peace deal” with a sociopathic kleptocrat. Do it CR. Bring us “peace in our time”.
silvrhalide:
Are you “recalling” their 2020 referendum at all? Because that was 52.52% for statehood and 47.48% against.
That doesn’t force Congress to grant statehood, since it can do whatever it wants, but that clearly is reflecting voters’ choices. It’s weird to ignore that in favor of your own arguments about taxes (which is hardly the only issue) and whatever you’re half-remembering about the vote being “pretty close.”
So when will Congress get around to passing statehood? Will that affect the federal budget, so it could be done through reconciliation? Sure it would affect the federal budget. Or they could trash the filibuster. That’s also an option, instead of pretending like they never have the power to do much of anything except compromise with the right.
consciousness razor’s counterpart in 1939-41:
“Supplying weapons to Britain and [after 22nd June 1941*] the Soviet Union is prolonging the war in Europe, and is clearly an act of US imperialism. We should try to make a peace deal happen.”
Up until 22nd June 1941, when Hitler invaded the USSR, Stalin’s admirers in the USA, and in Britain itself, took CR’s line. On 22nd June, they did a smart about-face, leaving only the fascists and their isolationist and pacifist stooges supporting Hitler while claiming to be working for peace. I wonder if there’s any country Putin could invade that wouls lead CR to make a parallel switch.
D,C.
“Who are you and what have you done with Joe Biden?”
Biden is great. Its awesome grandpa Joe who gets shit done. People dont like him because of stupid anti-establishmentarian purity politics and because hes not a great public speaker like Obama or, sigh Trump. Yea I know I know, im just saying he knows how to work a crowd.
Biden passed historic infrastructure bill, passed a quasi-UBI in the form of childhood tax credits which reduced childhood poverty by 20% (I would of benefited with this if i grew up in current times), economic stimulus greater than any other country to combat the covid recession, ended the drone war( I didn’t want to pull out of Afghanistan but most leftists did), very successful vaccine roleout. Theres probably more im missing. Hes shaping up to be a great president and he did all this with Trumps deficit thanks to this stupid tax cuts.
Also Im glad some of you are pushing back against the authoritarian leftists on here. Too bad y’all didn’t realize earlier that there are tankies here.
@2 CR
As Ive listed above Biden has done a lot of good that people like you ignore because your goal is to endlessly complain about progress while claiming to be progressive safe in your privilege because none of the positive things both Obama and Biden has done impact you because you are already privilege. Check your fucking privilege.
But one things really grates me and its whenever leftists like you bring up Cuba, a subject you know fuck all about. An end to the embargo does nothing to the Cuban people because its a communist kleptocracy. 1% of the population own 98% of the wealth. And that 1% is the Cuban government and communist officials. None of that money go towards the Cuban people outside of specially designated tourist sections that tricks gullible white people into hinking that Cuba is doing all right.
logicalcat @33:
That became obvious very shortly after Feb 24 (probably earlier to some), which you should know if you’ve been around.
logicalcat @34: Of course, anyone who ever thought that Cuba under the Castros has been a Workers Paradise is an idiot. I haven’t come across many people who think that. On the other hand, I’ve come across many (mostly Americans, it seems) who rant about the plight of the Cuban people under the evil Communists.
You have sources for that? I’d be surprised if the levels of inequality in Cuba have reached those in the USA, though I suppose it’s possible.
Re #36: “I’d be surprised if the levels of inequality in Cuba have reached those in the USA (in which the top 1% hold 27% of the wealth)”.