Dreaming of open knowledge, settling for access to publicly funded science | Tim McCormick

"I posted this reply to Peter Suber’s post about recent U.S. Federal proposed legistation (the FASTR bill) and White House policy directive calling for Open Access to the results of most Federally-funded 'scientific research'. Today’s Open Access policy directive from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy is great news. However, I’m struck by the pervasive conflation of 'scientific research' with 'all publicly funded research' or of open access generally, in almost all reporting or discussion of the OSTP memo and the related FASTR bill recently submitted by Sen. Wyden. The bill and memo explicitly refer only to scientific research, and their terms seem to leave it unclear if or how their policies would apply to key humanities funders such as NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities, $150M budget) and IMLS (Institute of Museum and Library Studies, $240M budget), and perhaps to social sciences work, or to “research” outside of the obvious cases of peer-reviewed research literature and data. Many science advocates or open access advocates may find other fields marginal to irrelevant, often basing that on funding figures — a view I’ve often heard. Of course, the NIH’s $30B dwarfs the NEH’s budget, but scientific research is also vastly more expensive than humanities work. In the big picture, most research/scholarly funding is in the form of employee compensation and facilities, an amount much larger than the sums explicitly accounted as 'research' funds, and this pays for vast areas of non-STEM [Scientific, Technical, Engineering, Medical] output. Also, funds and policies from agencies like NEH, IMLS, and the Smithsonian catalyze and shape much larger funding flows at state and local level, and academic and foundation sectors. In general I find it unfortunate that so much open access advocacy seems willing to narrow its scope to the limited and politic case of “science” and “research,” and to foreground such parochial rationales as 'citizens deserve easy access to the results of scientific research their tax dollars have paid for,' in the words of today’s OSTP announcement. Such tax-protester, consumer-entitlement language of 'my' tax dollars may be effective in some contexts, but it’s a rather strained expression of the more foundational, universal ideals of enlightenment and global scientific culture, Jeffersonian public knowledge, and the public sphere, which have the power to drive more global, long-term action. After all, do we want people to have access only to science their own nation funded? ..."