
When Non-Scientists Contribute: To “Science”, or to “Paywall Science”? - pjdorrell
http://thinkinghard.com/blog/DontContributeToPaywallScience.html
======
dalke
> In some cases, members of the general public may think they are contributing
> to "Science", but actually they are contributing more specifically to
> "Paywall Science".

There are other options:

1) contributing to corporate science, which never gets published outside of
internal journals but may end up influence what the company does.

2) the not-for-profit equivalent of 'corporate science'

3) contributing to "file drawer" science, of work which isn't novel enough for
a journal to accept

For an example of all three, consider when the general public contributes
information about dietary habits, where the company/not-for-profit decides to
not promote X as a dietary aid because it doesn't seem to do anything, and
where no journal would publish it because negative results are boring.

> In all these cases, I think that those people contributing to Science would
> not be happy if they realized up-front that their contributions are actually
> supporting Paywall Science.

No, I don't think that's the case. Plenty of people do exactly that. Look at
all the people who send their DNA samples in to for-profit sequence companies,
who publish some of the results but who also turn around and sell aggregated
information to others.

Look at those who contribute their body to science, where it might be used to
train doctors rather than produce publishable papers.

Look at those who volunteer for drug trials for for-profit industries.

> Are donations to scientific charities tax-deductible if those donations are
> used to support the creation of Paywall Science?

Some scientific organizations have a mailing list or a publication for members
only. One is 'Chemical & Engineering News'. These publications can include
scientifically useful information. I can point to papers which cite C&EN, for
example, even though it's not a traditional peer reviewed source.

Do these sort of newsletters count as 'Paywall Science'? If so, should they be
eliminated? If not, why not?

