

NSF announces plan for comprehensive public access to research results - basilgohar
https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=134478&org=NSF

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paulsutter
Buggywhips.

This plan is for articles to be widely available like two years after being
written. One year after publication [1], which can be a year after the article
is written [2].

Imagine a blogging platform that took two years between pressing "publish" and
the article appearing online. It sounds like a Kafkaesque nightmare, but here
it is, hailed as a breakthrough. The scientific community is as much to blame
as the publishers.

[1] "NSF will require that articles ... be available for download ... within
one year of publication." (linked article)

[2] [http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-duration-of-peer-reviews-
fo...](http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-duration-of-peer-reviews-for-various-
disciplines)

EDIT: The tepid reaction surprises me. We are on the verge of big advances in
artificial intelligence, anti-aging, space travel, and we direly need new
energy sources. Yet people are pleased with a two year delay disseminating the
most important research? The heartbeat of progress is the time it takes to
disseminate information. The status quo is absurd and we should be angry about
it.

~~~
wsxcde
> _Yet people are pleased with a two year delay disseminating the most
> important research? The heartbeat of progress is the time it takes to
> disseminate information._

This is a bit of a strawman, don't you think? Researchers, the vast majority
of whom are located in corporate R&D labs and universities, already have the
subscriptions to big digital libraries so they can download papers as soon as
they are published.

The move towards open access mostly affects practising engineers outside this
environment, and I think a delay of a year or two is acceptable in this
scenario.

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jph
What is most exciting about this announcement, to me, is that it provides the
starting point for researchers to publish data and code.

I frequently hear scientists say that they would like to publish their data
sets and source code, but don't know how to do it, or don't have a public
place to put it. This NSF announcement streamlines solutions for these items.

~~~
dtlawhon
I wonder if this presents an opportunity for someone to set up an app just for
this?

Like GitHub but for publishing scientific data and code.

~~~
Joe8Bit
Figshare[0] has already gotten quite a lot of traction in this space. Full
disclosure was started by a friend, but people say very good things.

[0] [https://figshare.com](https://figshare.com)

~~~
dtlawhon
Thanks for the heads up!

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batbomb
This is nice gesture, but in my experience, especially for medium/large
experiments, it almost definitely won't be applicable to analysis software,
_private_ datasets/raw data/metadata, and more specifically middleware. It
doesn't really help with reproducible results in the cases which might be most
interesting. For medium to big data experiments, most source code is often
useless without the (often custom or proprietary) middleware used for
processing the data. For very large experiments, there is likely no canonical
dataset and all "datasets" are actually generated on-demand (at least those
might be covered under this).

For software, and especially middleware, some universities will be very
reluctant to give that up, especially because many times the majority of the
software/middleware isn't actually funded through the NSF, but maybe through a
computing division, foreign institution, or international collaboration, for
example. At the very least, they'll likely want to assert a restrictive
copyright on the license and likely even attempt to patent some of the methods
(a la Google). Researchers themselves may be reluctant to give up code: Some
(maybe most?) universities have profit sharing too.

At the very least, however, it is a policy researchers can point to.

~~~
lordnacho
I always wondered when reading papers how anybody could reproduce the
conclusions (p-values, that sort) from the data.

One simple solution would be every time you have some data analysis, you set
up a VM or Docker type thing with your dataset and your code. That way other
people can download it and run it, see your results, and tinker.

~~~
pedrosorio
[http://nucleotid.es/about/](http://nucleotid.es/about/)

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fluidcruft
Is this essentially the NIH policy, now also applied to the NSF? If so this is
great news!

(Actually, I didn't realize the NSF wasn't on board with this already)

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basilgohar
I just saw this announced at work and it was just too good not to share. It's
my first submission.

~~~
jacquesm
Keep them coming!

~~~
basilgohar
Thanks. I was pleasantly surprised that I was the first to note it. I figured
it was appropriate for our community, but I got nervous when there was little
uptake at first. Thankfully, after a few hours, it was on the front page,
which restored my confidence. I'll keep an eye out for more useful stuff.

Incidentally, I realized that my GP statement might make people think I work
at the NSF, and I don't. I work at Ohio Supercomputer Center and this was
announced to us via an internal mailing list.

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charliefg
That's good news. I'm hearing more and more good things for open access to
journals and research. Now a country's governmental organisation is opening
it's doors. Let the information flow!

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ebauch
As founder of openrev.org, a platform to share and discuss research papers
openly (or privately), I am very pleased with this announcement. It is more
than just baby steps towards an open, scientific communication system.

In physics we do already have that with the arxiv.org (though there are no
public discussions) but it works darn well in my sub-field and others. We
cannot wait for most other disciplines to have an epiphany. So grant agencies
forcing publishers AND authors to open access their material will bring us a
huge step forward towards solving the most challenging problems of our time.

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jostmey
About time!

~~~
wlamont
Agreed. The tax paying public now gets to share in the scientific results it
has paid for.

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legel
problem solved: arxiv.org

~~~
afandian
Problem not solved. This is primarily policy problem, not a technical one. See
also: [http://blog.wellcome.ac.uk/2015/03/03/the-reckoning-an-
analy...](http://blog.wellcome.ac.uk/2015/03/03/the-reckoning-an-analysis-of-
wellcome-trust-open-access-spend-2013-14/)

