The chemists among the readers here have probably already all heard this, but there is a bit of a flap in the American Chemical Society over Open Access publishing. It seems some within the ACS have been protesting Open Access; unsurprisingly, it seems that many of them have connections to the scientific publishing industry. I was deeply amused by the fellow who scorned open access because is it is “socialized science,” as if government support of science were bad, and as if we weren’t all dependent on the largesse of state and federal government support. Oh, if only we could return to the days when all scientists were either wealthy men of leisure who could afford to be gentlemen scholars, or they were captains of industry using the fruits of their laboratories to immediately produce commerce-generating applications!
I’ve put the full text of letters I’ve received about this below the fold. Have fun plumbing the practical sociology of science!
Dear Colleague and Friend,
Several of you contacted me about a memo from Judith L. Benham which claimed that the American Chemical Society is not protesting Open Access in order to preserve profits and bonuses for the Society’s executives. You can find that memo attached to this email. Before addressing several misleading statements in the memo that some of you already pointed out, note that this National Chemistry Week. Please celebrate accordingly.
Let me assure that I was not involved with last week’s memo which is riddled with multiple misdirections typical of a slick political commercial. The most obvious falsehood is this passage: “Our Society’s position is also represented by the Association of American Publishers, a non-profit organization whose membership encompasses the major commercial and non-profit scholarly publishers, including ourselves. ACS is not alone among scholarly publishers in reaching out to….”
The statement comes apart once you know the names of the players involved. The position of the AAP was developed by Brian Crawford, who is chairman of their scholarly division . Brian Crawford is also head of publishing at ACS. Big surprise.
So what we have are two organizations speaking from the same mouth.
This allows for clever gamesmanship by ACS executives.. Just last year, Rudy Baum wrote his second editorial in Chemical & Engineering News where he called Open Access “socialized science.”[1] To buttress his argument, Rudy cited–who would have ever guessed!?–the Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers, which “has taken a strong stand” against the Open Access bill.
Rudy also wrote that the AAP’s scholarly division had written letters to senators opposing the bill.. What Rudy forgot to disclose to his readers is that the letters were signed by the chairman of the AAP’s scholarly division, who is Brian Crawford, also head of publishing at ACS.[2] Crawford is now apparently Rudy’s boss.
Yes, Baum is that ridiculous. But it must be hard for a man to fully inform readers when his wallet tugs at his conscience. Oh…it gets better.
Brian Crawford holds up his end of the bargain by penning letters against Open Access on behalf of the AAP, such as the letter last year to the Los Angeles Times. Brian wrote, “government bureaucracy continues to impede participation and undermines the successful expansion of information access.” Crawford’s byline was credited: “The writer chairs the executive council of the professional and scholarly publishing division of the Assn. of American Publishers..[3]
I guess that Brian forgot to mention to the Los Angeles Times that he is also a publishing executive at the American Chemical Society. He might also have troubled editors with the minor fact that his bonuses will plummet if ACS publishing profits drop.
So now you see how their political campaign against Open Access works. First, Crawford creates the policy position at AAP’s scholarly division; ACS executives then point to AAP policy for cover with their members. But it is all a shell game that quickly falls apart once anyone spends five minutes on Google. Links to the appropriate information can be found below. Look for yourself and have a giggle.
I hope everyone has a smashing week! Please keep sending in your emails with links and other bits of information that you find on the internet. And see the wiki for further information. It is only by demanding that ACS leadership becomes more accountable to members that we will see change.
Sincerely,
ACS InsiderLinks
1. Rudy Baum editorial in C&EN citing the AAP
2. Brian Crawford to head ACS publishing, also Chairman of Scholarly Publishing at AAP
And here is the memo from Judith Benham to which the above note referred.
Dear Colleague:
Recently, a number of us received an email raising issues concerning the ACS and its position on Open Access, and singling out some of its employees by name. The anonymous author makes erroneous and misleading claims about the compensation of these employees and alleges that the compensation is somehow related to the Society’s position on open access. As Chair of the Society’s Board of Directors, I would like to share a few facts with you:
1. The ACS’s position on Open Access has been developed carefully over many years, in consultation with scientists and publishing experts from a wide range of scientific disciplines and interests. It is measured and seeks to balance the legitimate needs of all stakeholders in scientific publishing. That position has been fully reviewed and approved by the appropriate levels of ACS Governance, including Board Committees and the Board of Directors, and is not a “staff decision” alone.
The Society supports initiatives to ensure broad information access. The ACS Publications Division has, in recent years, introduced a range of offerings intended to provide flexible, sustainable approaches to information access (including most recently the ACS Author Choice option that allows authors or their funding agencies to sponsor the immediate online availability of journal articles open to all upon publication on the web; see http://pubs.acs.org/4authors/cycle.html). At the same time, ACS also has been engaged in communicating to policymakers the Society’s concern that government mandates regarding information access are inappropriate interference with the independent publishing activities of the private sector.
Our Society’s position is also represented by the Association of American Publishers, a non-profit organization whose membership encompasses the major commercial and non-profit scholarly publishers, including ourselves. ACS is not alone among scholarly publishers in reaching out to legislators, librarians, editors, authors, and readers to educate and advocate about the unintended consequences of unfunded government and agency mandates, in the U.S. and abroad.
2. ACS executive compensation is based on a variety of indicators related to the health and long-term well being of the Society and its members. No ACS employee’s compensation is linked to the Society’s positions on open access.
The Society’s Board of Directors has approved a compensation policy designed to ensure that Society compensation is competitive, but not leading, in the marketplace. ACS has a Special Committee on Executive Compensation (CEC) that consults and relies on independent compensation consultants who conduct competitive reviews of all ACS executive positions every two years. The Board of Directors regularly reviews the recommendations from the CEC, to assure that ACS’ compensation is competitive with and comparable to similar organizations within the marketplace.
Our most recent IRS Form 990 is accessible to all members online at http://www.acs.org. Members can log in on the home page in the upper right hand corner. Members who have never registered must first click on “new user” after logging in. Once registered, they click on the Member Information Link and click on Compensation of ACS Officers and Key Employees.
In dynamic partnership, ACS members, governance volunteers, and staff strive to create, develop, and deliver to Society members and the chemistry enterprise worldwide valuable programs, services and products that advance the ACS vision “Improving people’s lives through the transforming power of chemistry.”
Thank you for considering this additional perspective, and please do not hesitate to contact me if you have questions or comments about this message.
Sincerely,
Judith L. Benham
Chair, ACS Board of Directors
The second half of this statement seems to conflict with the first. Doesn’t the dependency on fickle government support make science vulnerable to ideologues who gain influence in government – the past seven years or so under Bush being one example?
One of the principles of government funding is that if the government doesn’t like the results, the funding gets cut off. And by ‘government’ I mean ‘the people controlling the government at any particular time’.
If the problem is fickle government support, maybe we should work on the fickleness, rather than giving up on the concept of public funding for science.You can be dependent on fickle public funding, or on fickle private funding.
Haven’t used the word “fickle” this much for ages. Fickle fickle fickle. Ooh, icky.
Never mind.
Trying to reform political systems strikes me as a particularly Herculean task, especially when fickleness seems to be a trait inherent to democracies across the world. You could get greater consistency and certainty with a dictatorship, but how do you determine the dictator’s policies?
I think it would be easier to break the addiction of science to politically-associated funding than to reform the political structure. And that will be hard enough as it is.
Yes it would be much better for science to be at the whim of a CEO rather than the government. I mean George W Bush and Dick Cheney would never be put in charge of large businesses, right?
And as we all know, private corporations are all about funding basic research that won’t necessarily provide a profit-margin-huge product within the next year or two. Why, that’s what they love to fund!
Oh, if only we could return to the days when all scientists were eithe wealthy men of leisure who could afford to be gentlemen scholars, or they wer captains of industry using the fruits of their laboratories to immediately produc commerce-generating applications.
Don’t forget the mad scientists! Some are angry, others insane… many are both!
This private v. government control of science is all very amusing considering the National Human Genome Research Institute for their annual retreat is putting together a Harry Potter adaptation with the real Francis Collins as Dumbledorf and a stand-in Craig Venter as Lord Ventemort, the evil capitalist.
Why am I not surprised that a poster named after a minor character from ‘The Tick’ is quoting Chrome Dome? Sarcastro, you just made my day.
PZ, are there any insider letters from AAAS and Science?
A CEO? As in, one? Why in the world would we do that?
And why is it that the alternative to government that immediately comes to your mind is a system that’s exactly like government, but corporate?
Each year it gets harder and harder to renew that ACS membership…especially when you relaize how many millions they’re making off of their (admittedly stellar and top tier, no snark) journals.
Mark my words, the revolution is coming. The days when publishers could secure the copyright on research that was funded by others and then charge exhorbitantly for access to that information are comming to a close. Ten years from now, I’d be surprised to see half as many comercially published journals still in business.
Isn’t the whole concept that the results of public funded science should be available to the public for free? Doesn’t sound particularly ‘socialized’ to me, but rather consistent with capitalism – if you want to keep the results for yourself, then you fund it yourself.
Please, Caledonian, before this degenerates into another of your everyone-but-me-is-an-ignorant-fool specials:
PZ’s comments said or implied two things: that government support of science is a good thing; and that publically-funded science is dependent on the largesse of governmental funding bodies. You claim that these two conflict with each other, due to the fickleness of ideologues.
But there is no contradiction here. Government support of science is a good thing. A bad thing is when that support is _removed_ because of political ideology.
Yes, reforming governmental structures may take a huge amount of effort; historically, it always does. Since when did “difficult to do” equate to “not worth doing?”
Caledonian:
That’s almost the exact opposite of what you said here.
Governments that act according to this “principle” are rare.
Well then, enlighten us what alternatives there are. We might learn something.
Governments that act according to this “principle” are rare.
Well then, enlighten us what alternatives there are. We might learn something.
Anyone with experience in (for example) submitting grant applications to NIH knows that
(a) funding levels and research focus change from year to year, and
(b) they don’t change nearly as much as the elected (or appointed) ideologues might like.
The argument that “dependency on fickle government support [makes] science vulnerable to ideologues who gain influence in government” is largely unsupported by the history of publically-supported science. Yes; some programs may be targeted for political reasons, and examples may be found of egregious meddling in the direction of research. No; a new administration cannot easily turn the government’s scientific efforts completely around, if only because there is no idle army of ideologically motivated Ph.D.s just waiting for their appointments. PZ knows whereof he speaks — government-funded science has been hugely successful, and there is no obvious alternative. Now, if you really want to improve the way the Federal government deals with science, bring back the Office of Technology Assessment.
Not all government science funding is fickle. The Internet and GPS came out of defense research budgets, and nobody seems to advocate skimping on that money.
While I sympathize with the viewpoint that private money can be more reliable and more efficiently allocated toward useful results than government money, I don’t see how this could possibly lead to advocation of *less* public spending on science.
As far as I’m concerned: Public spending on science: GOOD. Private spending on science: ALSO GOOD. The relative merits of each are irrelevant unless you can fill in a pretty big blank — how would less public spending lead to more private spending on science and technology?
True, but then again talk to someone in pharma. Whole divisions get shut down overnight because some exec thinks there isn’t enough profit in the end result. On the other hand, typically with NIH grants you might lose 10 or 15% in a given year, but you’re extraordinarily unlikely to lose funding completley, short of academic fraud. At least I’ve never heard of it happening in my field.
I’m curious to hear your alternate funding model.
Just happened upon your discussion and would like to make a point or three. Government support of science has already resulted in bad science. This is especially true in the social sciences but can also be shown in the field of epidemiology where literally thousands of findings are published each year which contradict each other. This happens because of confirmation bias and confounding assessment and weighting problems. Today, government uses government-funded science to “prove” government-supported positions. Researchers design studies which support government positions thereby ensuring they will continue to received government financial support. Much of addiction science and the epidemiology of pandemics falls into this category. The same is true for much of the science of second-hand smoke. Additionally, it is easy for a researcher to muddy the distinction between causation and correlation–thereby preserving his or her research funding. In the addiction field, research-based has become a euphemism for government-funded. Both government funding and corporate funding of science needs checks and balances. This is currently difficult because our government-school-educated population is not capable of discerning the difference between good science and bad science. We need more pirates. I love the FSM. thnx.
What is up with the “socialized science” nonsense. Is Rudy Baum still reading Cold War novels, or what?
And so the great truth about society and everything emerges.
four leeeeg goood, twooo leeeeg baaad.
priiivateee goood, government baaad ( and deeeemocracy especially )
calleeeedonjan goood PZ sociaaalized.
:-D
Oh, if only we could return to the days when all scientists were either wealthy men of leisure who could afford to be gentlemen scholars, or they were captains of industry using the fruits of their laboratories to immediately produce commerce-generating applications!
I agree! In fact, I’m quite willing to help restart this trend.
Now, would anyone care to give me a big enough grant of money so that I can afford to be a wealthy man of leisure and/or a captain of industry so that I can get started?
…Interesting. I was about to try to make a point to Caledonian about the relative merits of one man one vote vs. one dollar one vote, only to discover that, with my upper-middle-class income, the ratio between my annual income and the United States GDP is actually higher than my fraction of the US population.
Of course, one dollar one vote still is a bad deal for most people. But for me, it wouldn’t work out so bad – although I’d still be screwed by the super-duper rich if it came down to me or them.
Anyway, my point is that Caledonian’s point about the corruptibility of government is irrelevant. Any human institution is corruptible. Science should be funded by the institutions that most readily lend themselves to reform for the sake of society as a whole; for my money, that’s the institution that’s specifically designed to be responsive to society as a whole, i.e. government, rather than institutions designed to serve only parts of society, i.e. corporations.
Why is that latter problem so much more acute in the USA than elsewhere in the First World?
Why is that latter problem so much more acute in the USA than elsewhere in the First World?
This isn’t about who is funding the research. Much research is funded by the government, some by private interests. But when the government does fund research, they shouldn’t force the copyrights to be given for free to for-profit entities under the illusion that this is the best way to ensure the effective transmisison of the information. It’s like building a bridge and then GIVING IT FOR FREE to an entity with the right to charge whatever tolls the market will bear just to make sure that lane striping is maintained.
Okay, just this once I will admit that I was wrong.
To David M: I don’t know that it is “so much more acute in the USA than elsewhere…” Confirmation bias, study selection bias (why I chose tobacco research rather than prostate cancer..) and problems evaluating and weighting confounders seems to be rampant in the USA. Both the CDC and NIH regularly get lost somewhere between correlation and causation. I think Jung gives us a quick glimpse into the reasons why these things are happening in his book, “The Undisclosed Self.” (1957, I think) I may be analyzing this too much though. It may be that our reasoning hasn’t yet caught up with our mathematics. I don’t know about the rest of the world. I do know (anecdotally) that today’s masters-trained researchers often don’t seem to be able to write as well as eighth-grade graduates from about 75 years ago. I blame government schools for this. I do agree with jim a. concerning paying to look at research I, as a taxpayer, already paid for. This aggravates me on a regular basis.
This is no suprise. A few years back we had companies complaining that access to the National Weather Service’s forecasts was undercutting their business model. They wanted the feds to require us to pay *them* to see the forecasts our tax money is generating.
But my point is that “government schools” — public schools — are the norm everywhere. In many countries homeschooling is even forbidden, and private schools (religious or not) are only allowed to add something to the national education plan, not take anything away. And yet the USA are unique among halfway rich countries in having a politically relevant number of creationists, for example. Do you really have too much “government”?
It seems to me that, while the universities (at least the bigger ones) are spectacularly well funded in the USA, the schools are not (even before the No Child’s Behind Left Act). Result: by far the longest list of Nobel laureates, but tens of % of cre_ti_nists and people who believe their country was founded on Christian values and stuff. Elsewhere it’s the other way around: university funding is rather pitiful, but the schools don’t fall apart, and the general ignorance level of the population is lower.
But my point is that “government schools” — public schools — are the norm everywhere. In many countries homeschooling is even forbidden, and private schools (religious or not) are only allowed to add something to the national education plan, not take anything away. And yet the USA are unique among halfway rich countries in having a politically relevant number of creationists, for example. Do you really have too much “government”?
It seems to me that, while the universities (at least the bigger ones) are spectacularly well funded in the USA, the schools are not (even before the No Child’s Behind Left Act). Result: by far the longest list of Nobel laureates, but tens of % of cre_ti_nists and people who believe their country was founded on Christian values and stuff. Elsewhere it’s the other way around: university funding is rather pitiful, but the schools don’t fall apart, and the general ignorance level of the population is lower.
Yes, but some human institutions are more corruptible than others. More to the point, we’ve had a demonstration of the ongoing corruption of our government, as the Bush administration tries to silence the science on global climate change.
David Marjanović:
Maybe they are. But it’s how this government functions. It was one of the key methods the Federal government used when dealing with the South’s unwillingness to end its de facto apartheid – either the state governments were compliant with federal laws, or the funding for the maintenance for the interstate highway system would be cut off.
Here, educational and research facilities are obligated to abide by federal standards if they accept federal money, and state standards if they accept state money.
Is it different where you are?
Interesting thesis. Weren’t most American eighth grade graduates from 75 years ago also the product of public schools? I’m not disagreeing with the idea that standards have slipped badly, but every other country that academically out-performs the US at the primary and secondary levels is doing so with “goverment schools”. Handing over the responsibility of education to religious charities (rather than fixing the system we have) doesn’t seem like a way to ensure our status as a first-world nation. I think there are a lot of things that could be done to make the system work better, but scapegoating doesn’t get us there.
True, scapegoating doesn’t help. If it sounds as if that’s where I am headed, I am sorry. I call myself a pragmatic anarchist with a social conscience. This leads me to be hyper critical when it comes to anything to do with government, and this is even truer (if that is possible) when it comes to discussing government schools. Your point that most of the world does it this way and it works, is relevant and true (I believe). However, there are major differences in how they do it, and somewhere within these differences is important information (which I think was one of your points.) The idea that we would turn education over to “religious charities” is confusing. I don’t want to turn anything over to the religious–to include religion. I would add though that, generally speaking, the Catholics seem to be able to run schools cheaper (much cheaper) and achieve better test scores than the government. While we are on the subject, I would supply two (unsupported) hypotheses concerning American education: If we can somehow turn government and school bureaucracies into meritocracies, our education problems will quickly begin to fix themselves, and understanding and utilizing discipline and motivation principles (research-tested principles)are keys to fixing our schools. I would also add that, when it comes to discussing public education, I am a fan of Milton Friedman .