American Sociological Association, in absentia but not silent on open science – Family Inequality

"The American Sociological Association (ASA) remains in absentia with regard to public access to federally funded research.

Alondra Nelson has had a storied career in American social science. After joining the Yale sociology faculty in 2009, she wrote, among many other works, two crucial books: Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination (2013), and The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation after the Genome (2016). After moving to Columbia, she became Dean of Social Science in 2014, and then, in 2017, President of the Social Science Research Council.

Needless to say, ASA was delighted to report it when, in 2021, she was named by President Biden to be Principal Deputy Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) for Science and Society. OSTP plays an outsized role in setting science policy for the entire federal government. Her career was truly groundbreaking already, but the OSTP appointment was historic in many ways. Then, in 2022, she was named acting head of OSTP, “the first African American and first woman of color to lead US science and technology policy.” At which point — ASA said nothing. (I checked a few times to be sure, and find no announcement of this, not even in “Member News & Notes.”)

What happened? Long story short: ASA is fundamentally, strongly, consistently, organizationally, opposed to the crowning achievement of Nelson’s work at OSTP, known around the world as the “Nelson Memo.” It’s subject: “Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research.” Which is exactly what ASA does not want....

How much does ASA not want this? The association’s dogged lobbying on this issue reached its zenith with what I call the 2019 “Dear President Trump” letter. This letter, signed by ASA (no individual named) and many other paywall-dependent academic societies, urged Trump not to open science. At the time, there was a rumor that OSTP would require agencies to make public the results of research funded by the federal government without a 12-month delay — the cherished “embargo” that allowed these associations to profit from delaying access to public knowledge, which Nelson eventually lifted....

Despite a petition signed by many ASA members, and a resolution from its own Committee on Publications “to express opposition to the decision by the ASA to sign the December 18, 2019 letter” — which the ASA leadership never even publicly acknowledged — ASA has not uttered a word to alter its anachronistic and unpopular position. While public-minded leaders throughout the scientific community sing the praises of this policy, ASA remains obnoxiously silent. The organization proudly lists more than 200 public statements on matters of public policy — from same-sex marriage to affirmative action, Ukraine to the NSF budget — but when it comes to public access to science, dead silence...."