NIH Disrupts OA — Now What?
The funders have had it — where does that leave OA and independent review of science?
On the heels of oversharing procurement decisions around certain scientific journal subscriptions, yesterday NIH Director Jay Battacharya removed any lingering doubts that the HHS wants to disrupt science in America with his announcement “NIH to crack down on excessive publisher fees for publicly funded research.”
Battacharya lazily appropriated language concocted by OA propaganda careerists to portray their petty financial bully tactics as heroic stewardship of public funds when the opposite is true.
By slashing research funding, dictating research topics, limiting research information tools, and restricting authors’ ability to participate in the free market global scholarly publishing industry, they are putting America’s future on cinderblocks on the front lawn.
The notion that research funding provisioned by taxpayers entitles unrestricted free services and goods related to the findings of that research, and that that is even something that is of any societal benefit whatsoever, is bullshit and always has been. It was selectively applied to the field of biomedical research in the late 1990s by a few scientists in positions of influence at the NIH who had a particular disdain for publishers and wanted to get in on the Silicon Valley startup scene. But instead of getting their funding from Sand Hill Road, they got it from the federal budget.
This startup should have folded along with the rest of the nincompoops in the dot com crash, but because they were accountable to no one but themselves and had access to taxpayer money and science-washing philanthropists, they carried on, gaining momentum, and warping attitudes along the way. Commercial and non-profit publishers who were under no obligation to participate bought into it philosophically or financially or both.
So here we find ourselves in quite the pickle.
The most obnoxious people in the room shouted long enough and got what they asked for — less science-based evidence for policy making, and no private industry checks and balances to organize, vet, polish, package, and preserve the information so scientists and manufacturers can produce things that benefit society.
Now what?