[open-science] FW: Finding data on funded research

[Cameron Neylon]

In the UK (and I think in the US as well) most funders will publish an
abstract of funded research proposals. Often this is the abstract referred
to as a "public understanding" or similar rather than the detailed
scientific abstract. The exact milestones or intended outcomes are never
published. 

This actually came up in a recent US case where there were two examples of
someone trying to get information on funded grant applications via an FOI
request. In one case the intent was (allegedly) slightly dodgy but in the
other it was to provide information on a range of funded proposals for a
research project.

Absolutely agree with the attitude you're expressing here but this would be
fought tooth and nail by the vast majority of academic researchers.

When it comes to outcomes the situation is slightly better in the UK because
we are supposed to submit papers to UKPMC and to link those to funded
grants. How much this happens in practice is anyone's guess - finger in the
wind I would guess around 5% compliance - which is what was seen in the US
when the NIH requested submission to PMC. When Wellcome/Nature offer to do
the leg work that rises to about 40% but I'm not sure how much metadata
about grants that gets tied to.

So overall - very little information on this is actually made public. My
opinion is that we are sleep walking into a public relations disaster with
this.

Cheers

Cameron

------ Forwarded Message
From: Gavin Baker <gavin at gavinbaker.com>
Date: Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:17:11 -0400
To: open-science <open-science at lists.okfn.org>
Subject: [open-science] Finding data on funded research

This is outside my expertise, so I thought I'd ask here:

How easy is it to find information on funded research projects (e.g. by
research agencies and foundations)?

It seems to me that taxpayers (or foundations' donors) have a right to
easily find out what research they're funding, from award through
research outputs. This also seems like useful information for other
researchers, especially prior to publication -- e.g. to minimize
duplication, facilitate potential collaboration, etc.

How good -- or how bad -- is current transparency in this area? What
could be improved? What (if any) are the obstacles to openness?

I'm reminded of the issue because of recent announcements by two U.S.
research funders of new tools to search their grants:

http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/09/new-transparency-tool-on-nih-fund
ed.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/09/new-database-of-neh-funded-projec
ts.html

But I have little context about how novel these tools are or their
strengths/weaknesses. What do you think?

-- 
Gavin Baker
http://www.gavinbaker.com/
gavin at gavinbaker.com

You gotta give 'em hope.
    Harvey Milk

_______________________________________________
open-science mailing list
open-science at lists.okfn.org
http://lists.okfn.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/open-science

------ End of Forwarded Message

-- 
Scanned by iCritical.