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Bill Gates and Open Access

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It is finally becoming clear why our state’s universities are being forced into the open-access model:

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a major supporter of health and development research, is to introduce an open access policy next month for the studies it funds that goes further than most other research funders. From the start of 2017, researchers funded by the foundation will be required to publish their scientific papers and underlying data in publications that allow immediate free access without subscription or payment. The material must also be reusable without permission or fee.

Bill Gates and his offensively stupid foundation must have bribed somebody (or everybody) in our state legislature. The foundation has long been striving to destroy research in this country, and this is simply another step in that direction.

 

9 responses to “Bill Gates and Open Access”

  1. aglaonika Avatar
    aglaonika

    I don’t completely get the reasons of Gates. Does he want to use the researches for free? It doesn’t make too much sense for me. I can hardly believe he can’t afford to subscribe his company to the research magazines / databases they need.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      The way this whole thing works at my university is as follows: you are given a very short (and very incomprehensible) statement to sign. The statement transfers the rights to your work to the institution. That’s it. There is no time frame, no explanation when this begins and ends, which research is included, what happens if you leave the institution, retire, die, etc. People sign this small, legalistic blurb without even stopping to think what the effects might be. And I have no doubt that the institution has a million and one inventive ways of reading the blurb.

      And like stupid sheep, scholars are signing and even lauding this as something progressive.

      In a year, you try to quote your own research some place else and the institution will slap an enormous fine on you.

      This is making me extraordinarily angry. Academics are such stupid, brainless sheep. Nobody even has an opinion on this daylight robbery. They are just sitting there passively, staring at the wall.

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      1. matt Avatar
        matt

        Right or wrong, aren’t they primarily saying if “I give you a grant for you and 2 other member of $500k. As a result, you must publish the papers open source and let anyone in the world view the data for free”? I think that is what is going on, no? If that is the wrong general explanation, then I certainly don’t understand the issue at hand. But if the are providing you all the funding, then shouldn’t they determine how the data is handled? And you still certainly would be funded. Now, you can argue it would be more complex if they only fund say 20% of a study or related studies, then how fair is it that they dictate results are public. The biggest losers by far are the paid professional magazines. The best critique I have seen is that what mainly isbeing paid for is the expensive process of peer review. That I have some sympathy for, but there can be solutions to be derived. I guess I don’t really understand the huge outrage? You (professors in general) don’t get paid to sell your work typically do you? Instead you normally get funding up front? Or do you typically license your content?

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          matt: we discussed this all here: https://clarissasblog.com/2014/12/04/why-professors-should-stop-doing-research/

          The biggest loser here is me, the person who doesn’t get and doesn’t want to get a dime from Gates or anybody of the kind. My entire career as a scholar is at risk.

          “You (professors in general) don’t get paid to sell your work typically do you? Instead you normally get funding up front? ”

          • I don’t get nor ask for any “funding.” All I ask for is to be left alone to do my work as I see fit.

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          1. matt Avatar
            matt

            So for the most part I think my description was accurate. The issue was / is funding for journals primarily. This can be addressed. Many different solutions to this. Journals take in small amounts of money (I am sure less than 5% of all research dollars but likely closer to 1% or so?). So public institutions and all colleges really can “fund” these open access resources just like libraries are funded. Advocate for that funding if you really wwant to make a difference. I get that fundamentally one difference a business person like I will / does have vs academics is how much impact the “market” or financial interests should play, but ultimately you are a smart woman and you understand financial realities exist. Feel free to fight this trend (almost certainly futile), or advocate passionately for the importance of public university and even state policy to fund these open access journals so that peer review can continue. I do get that this issue hits close to home, but you are a big advocate of not making emotional arguments and trying to get results and be powerful, and I really think there are completely viable ways to do this. Hell,petition the gates foundation to put some money into these open journals.

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            1. Clarissa Avatar
              Clarissa

              Matt: I find it enormously obnoxious that you would dispense condescending advice on issues you know nothing about. This was an extraordinarily rude and aggressive comment on your part. Please control your outbursts.

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  2. Jones Avatar
    Jones

    This is also somewhat like the “moral rights” of authors …

    United States copyright law doesn’t recognise the moral rights of authors except in very narrowly defined ways that are required by treaty.

    It does not surprise me at all that the Gates Foundation behaves like you have described.

    Plenty of American publishers behave in a similar way as well.

    This is why electronic self-publishing has become attractive to many, especially through custom publication houses that focus on specific genres and markets. The authors involved with these publishing houses have in effect reclaimed their moral rights of publication from the Dark Satanic Publishing Pulp Mills of America.

    When you’re doing anything involving writing as a “work-for-hire” in the United States, however, you essentially don’t have any moral rights of publication.

    Apparently Mr Gates believes his “brains for hire” should work for his foundation in a manner we might recognise as similar to a previous venture of his, with no moral rights to the fruits of their labour …

    Of course, as a manifestation of the thing we know as “entitlement”, I’m sure he has several facile explanations for why his organisation behaves this way.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      “Apparently Mr Gates believes his “brains for hire” should work for his foundation in a manner we might recognise as similar to a previous venture of his, with no moral rights to the fruits of their labour …Of course, as a manifestation of the thing we know as “entitlement”, I’m sure he has several facile explanations for why his organisation behaves this way.”

      • Exactly. He wants to treat scholars like conveyor-belt workers who produce in silence and then just buzz off after getting their $7 per hour. What a sick fuck. And every brainless chirper ho is celebrating this is a sick fuck, too.

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