[Open-access] The Best Way to Enforce Open Access

Coyo coyo at darkdna.net
Fri Jan 24 15:36:41 UTC 2014


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This is what happens when you centralize science to a few select
universities and associated institutions, centralize the power
associated with this knowledge to a tiny community so small everyone
knows everyone else by name and the way they write, and on top of
this, have a highly centralized government fund the entire mess. This
is what happens.

The public school and university system has completely and utterly
failed. People still think that IQ tests measure something genetic or
at least probabilistic. People still think math is hard, and that
science is bad. This is not their fault, it is your fault.

It is the fault of the scientific community that a majority of people
consider science to be irrelevant to their lives, and that it is a
complete waste of taxpayer money to fund government-controlled
educational institutions.

It is a failure on the part of the scientific community to connect
their arcana to the uninitiated. It is a failure. If scientists think
that they are entitled to their research and the money that funds it,
they are wrong in many ways, not just one. Science serves the people,
especially if it's paid with the people's money. It does not work the
other way around. The people do not serve science.

Science is not a religion, it is not a cult, it is not supposed to be
yet another tool of control and domination at the hands of the
government. So why do scientists act like it's a cult, excluding the
people who paid for it all? Is this some kind of club? No, it is not.

It behooves any scientist or researcher to keep in mind where the
money for all their shiny toys came from, and I'll give you a hint, it
isnt the government. A government by definition is funded with
pillage-money, money gained by raping, pillaging and burning, it was
that way since the dawn of civilization. It is not from any
mega-corporation, corporations are the same as the government. Any
sufficiently large organization behaves like a single organism, but it
is not, it is a group of individuals covering their own posteriors
from the crimes they commit every day against those that cannot defend
themselves.

This is reality. Regardless of the many fictions of society and the
scientific community, the truth is that many scientists and
researchers resent having to ask for money, and they think their
research should be funded with no strings attached. They forget the
purpose of science. The whole point of science is bettering the lives
of human beings, you know, those hairless apes everyone likes to make
fun of, the unwashed masses, yeah, that's where the money is coming
from, and the point of the enlightenment and the scientific method
that sprang from it is to enlighten homo sapiens.

Every researcher must keep that at the forefront of any proposed
research project. If you resent having to worry about funding your
science, kill yourself.

On 1/24/2014 9:03 AM, Coyo wrote:
> I have no idea if this came up before, but I've found that funding
> is quite the lever for enforcing certain policies. In order to
> eliminate paywalls and the dominance of scientific and academic
> journals that charge ridiculous amounts of money to access at all,
> much less own a copy, one should eliminate government grants for
> research, and substitute a system of funding that is not limited as
> government grants can be, but is predicated on the assumption that
> the fruits of research and academia is actually public, rather
> than government-controlled.
> 
> When people refer to things like public transit, public libraries, 
> public universities, what people really mean is
> government-controlled transit, government-controlled libraries,
> government-controlled universities. From what I have begun to
> understand, governments tend to feel entitled to tax money, and
> expect to get it, one way or another. This means that you cannot
> use tax money directly as a lever to ensure people actually have
> access to what their tax money has already paid for -- research and
> knowledge.
> 
> In the public university model, one's tax money is used, without 
> asking first, to fund certain research and scientific progress,
> then it is hidden away, inaccessible except for the privileged and
> the initiated. A perfect example of this is the Human Genome
> Project, which was paid for with tax money, public money, but only
> accessible to a tiny minority of scientists and corporations. I
> have never seen a single line of any of that, because paywalls
> demanded I pay 400 or something like that for a single paper, when
> there were quite a few.
> 
> So tax money, hundreds of thousands of dollars of tax money, has 
> already paid for government grants and the research financed that
> way, then as a university stupid, I pay hundreds of thousands of
> dollars out of pocket, which also goes to the same research, then
> to access the fruits of my money, I have to pay an additional few
> thousand dollars once the research has already been completed. Are
> you starting to see where I'm going with this?
> 
> The answer is the elimination of public universities and public 
> grants. Without public universities at all, with destroying the
> public university system, professors and academia will no longer
> feel entitled to my money, but would instead assume that if they
> did not release it, the cash flow would dry up instantly, and he
> would be without a job for the remainder of his short miserable
> life. "Public" research belongs to the people, and was already paid
> for with public grants. There should be no more money necessary for
> access to the results of such research, nor should any student be
> forced to pay again just to see a few stupid textbooks.
> 
> The public university system is a total failure. Education under
> the public school system is a sick joke. This idea that anyone will
> be able to talk faculty and academia into permitting more open
> access to the research they have already completed is also a sick
> joke.
> 
> You will never talk academia into actually bothering to make
> education possible, much less bother to educate anyone, by simply
> asking. If it were, educators might actually, you know, educate,
> rather than charge a few thousand dollars per credit hour. It's
> ridiculous. The entire scientific community, because of their
> anti-scientific approach to "peer review and open access," may as
> well not exist at all. It is simply yet another waste of tax money
> that could go to useful things like roads, bridges and tunnels. The
> power grid, at least here in the United States, is 400 years out of
> date, and falling apart on top of that. We have much better things
> to waste tax money on besides an anti-scientific community.
> 
> One of the basic tenets of science is Data Sharing. To ensure that 
> science is conducted properly, should not only be accessible to
> other scientists, but the public as well. What does "Nullus in
> Verba" do for anyone if only a tiny population of buddies are the
> only ones who can even access your one's research, much less have
> the means and education to review it. This is not science. This is
> pseudo-science at best, and anti-science at worst.
> 
> The only meaningful or effective way to enforce accessibility to
> the public and the people is to withhold funds permanently unless
> public access is not only permitted, but enforced. All
> publically-funded research is for the public, not for some
> researcher to durp around and play with his toys at the expense of
> the tax-payer. If you are running on government tax money, you are
> a servant of the people, at least in theory. To ensure that it
> isn't just in theory, government grants for research and science
> should be abolished.
> 
> As an alternative, a specialized hybrid crowdfunding system can be 
> used to provide research based on how useful that research may
> prove to be. This may be seen as a regression, but the old 
> science-by-commission system worked, and it kept researchers in
> check. All other science, if it not accessibly, should be ignored
> and treated like it never existed. Any research that cannot be
> accessed, even if it is linked as a reference, is an invalid
> reference, and is referencing a document that does not exist, and
> cannot be used as a supporting argument for anything, because an
> argument that relies on a research paper behind a paywall does not
> exist, either.
> 
> In addition to the crowdfunding system, a peer-2-peer loaning
> system to fund research on credit can be used, however such a
> system is only theoretical at this point, it has not been tested.
> The theory is sound, however, and software projects implementing
> such a system are already underway. If one can finance cars, get
> mortgages and business loans via a peer-2-peer loan system, and
> then combine that with a crowdfunding system, we can fund science
> with it, real science that actually contributes meaningfully to
> society, not just a tiny minority of scientists.
> 
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