Opening science to public
On April 7, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) put a new rule into action. According to this rule, the reports of all NIH funded research must be made available to public within one year in PubMed, a free-access digital library of biomedical research. This is a great step towards increasing the public accessibility of scientific research. After all, if public pays for the research, the work should be accessible to public.
But why one year? Why is the arbitrary limitation? Because, otherwise the business of scientific journals would be threatened. Apparently, some of these journals have hired an aggressive PR firm to work on this “issue” of open access. Funny how scientific journals are dealing with this similar to how the oil companies dealt with global warming, or how cigarette companies lobby to influence policies.
In spite of all the business shadiness, it is quite exciting to think what open access would enable. This is an infrastructural step for open accessibility. Next step is to make it more user-friendly. For example, Public Library of Science (PLoS) already requires a more user-friendly abstract in research submissions, to make the submission easier to understand for people outside of the field. Ultimately, advanced science may find interfaces for capturing larger audiences. This is particularly hopeful for new generations who would grow up with such access.
On the other hand, having an expert community is still instrumental, just like in any other field. However, an expert community can co-exist with public access. On a similar note, the expert reactions and reviews on scientific research can be also open, which makes me think about the traditional peer-review systems. The journal editor-expert review cycle is already being re-considered, maybe this news will be of inspiration to those who is in the process of re-shaping the peer-review systems.
NPR’s Science Friday has a nice program on this issue, you can listen to it here.
