Flacks Hired in Controversy Over Open Content Scientific Results

Read "Research-Result Battle Now Pits PR 'Pit Bull' Against Barbie Blenders" by Rick Weiss in The Washington Post, February 9, 2007.

Advocates of "public access" to scientific information want government rules to require that the results of federally funded research be posted on the Internet within six or 12 months after they are published. Since the public has paid for the research with taxpayers money, they feel they have a right to see the results.

A coalition of scientific publishers, say such a policy would amount to a government taking of their copyrighted material and would undermine their paid subscriber base, making it impossible for them to continue the valuable public service of screening and publishing the very best science.

The Association of American Publishers has apparently hired a well known public relations specialist, Eric Dezenhall, to help make their case. Public access proponents have linked up with FreeCulture.org to help make theirs.

Comment: This would be fun to watch, were it not so dangerous. The Internet is changing the dissemination of scientific results. One hopes the changes will be for the better. That may not be the result.

I would note that scientists write up their results for journal publication without remuneration from the journals. So too do peer reviewers usually do their work without pay. The Internet distributes materials almost without cost. So what is the problem?

Publishers get a lot of money from subscriptions and advertising. They don't want to lose the revenues. On the other hand, resources are needed for aspects of the dissemination, and they have not been institutionalized. Until they are, we can't depend on systems that need the resources they will eventually generate.

But public relations types and take-no-prisoner true believers are unlikely to advance the public debate. JAD

Fighting tech transfer - and winning

Read the full article by Ed Silverman in The Scientist (Volume 21 | Issue 1 | Page 43).

"'The tech transfer office saw inventions as a way to augment the shrinking university budget and [was] overly aggressive in trying to make money,' says (Chris) Johnson. 'For us, the better research opportunity was to make it open-source, but they didn't want to do that. It was all very frustrating. My philosophy was that, yes, I could make money, but I wanted to do it in a way that benefited more than just me, but also my research and my lab, and allow the software to get into real-world situations. Money wasn't the primary motivation. The whole process was so onerous. Since then, in the last year or so, the tech transfer office has been completely reformulated. Thankfully.'"

Read the "article extra": "THE TROUBLE WITH TECH TRANSFER" by Ed Silverman.

The hardball approach (taken by greedy U.S. university tech transfer offices), however, may be prompting more companies to consider trolling for inventions (or investing in university research?) overseas, simply because some foreign universities are perceived as more willing to agree to industry terms. For instance, a university in Europe or Asia may be willing to assign ownership of the patent to the company sponsoring research, whereas a university in the United States is more likely to offer only an option to negotiate a royalty-bearing license, says Susan Butts, senior director of external science and technology programs at Dow Chemical in Midland, Mich. "There can be an enormous difference," she says, "and there were times where we've walked away from deals." (Parenthetical comments added.)