Science- The Business of

Open Access Petition (to scientific information derived from taxpayer- funded research)

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In my endless, and some may say quixotic, quest for “Things We Can All Agree On” I offer a link to David Bruggeman’s blog Pasco Phronesis) post on the Open Access Petition. Below is a quote, and here is a link to David’s post. I recommend David’s blog to all interested in science policy.

I’m still mildly bemused that the expansion of open access seems to have found some traction, or at least many more vocal proponents, over the last few months. Such enthusiasm has been met by actions in the U.K., internationally, and by many universities and funding groups to increase the incentives to publish scientific research under various forms of open access publishing.

Now we have a petition on the We The People portion of the White House website. The full text (there’s a limit of 800 characters, vagueness of goals and realism of promises is not necessarily an indication of intent):

“Require free access over the Internet to scientific journal articles arising from taxpayer-funded research.

“We believe in the power of the Internet to foster innovation, research, and education. Requiring the published results of taxpayer-funded research to be posted on the Internet in human and machine readable form would provide access to patients and caregivers, students and their teachers, researchers, entrepreneurs, and other taxpayers who paid for the research. Expanding access would speed the research process and increase the return on our investment in scientific research.

“The highly successful Public Access Policy of the National Institutes of Health proves that this can be done without disrupting the research process, and we urge President Obama to act now to implement open access policies for all federal agencies that fund scientific research.”

Uploaded to the petition site on May 13, the petition hit the publicly searchable threshold this past weekend, and thanks to a concerted effort to publicize the petition, there are now over 17,000 signatures as of late on May 25. The petition will need 25,000 signatures by June 19 in order to get a response from the Administration. If the publicity keeps up, I suspect the goal will be met.

The petition was started by Access2Research, a personal campaign of a few open access advocates that has the support of many organizations sympathetic, if not outright supportive of the cause. The publicity campaign has been global, and there is no requirement that signers of We The People petitions be U.S. citizens (they do have to set up an account – no fair signing twice).

Conservation in the Real World: Suckling responds to Kareiva

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Thanks to Sharon for posting the article about Peter Kareiva’s research and thoughts, which recently appeared on Greenwire, as well as linking to Conservation in the Anthropocene, written by Kareiva, together with Robert Lalasz and Michelle Marvier.   The comments section quickly filled up with some great perspectives.  Regular commenter “TreeC123” highlighted the fact that the Breakthrough Journal invited Kierán Suckling, with the Center for Biological Diversity, to provide a response to the piece by Kareiva et al titled Conservation in the Real World.  Below are snips:

Had the article been published a century ago, the author’s decision to frame the environmental movement through a critique of Emerson (1803-1882), Hawthorne (1804-1864), Thoreau (1817-1862) and Muir (1838-1914) might have made sense. But alleged weaknesses of these dead white men is an entirely inadequate anchor for an essay that bills itself as a rethinking of contemporary environmentalism. Indeed, the only 20th century environmentalist mentioned in the essay is the novelist and essayist Ed Abbey. It is frankly bizarre that Kareiva et al.’s depiction of environmentalists is not based on NRDC, the Audubon Society, National Wildlife Federation, Trout Unlimited, Environment America, 350.org, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, or indeed, any environmental group at all.

Bizarre, but necessary: Kareiva et al.’s “conservationist” straw man would have fallen to pieces had they attempted to base it on the ongoing work of actual conservation groups.

Consider their take on wilderness. The straw man is constructed by telling us (without reference to an actual conservation group, of course) that “the wilderness ideal presupposes that there are parts of the world untouched by humankind.” Then the authors smugly knock it down with the shocking revelation that “The wilderness so beloved by conservationists — places ‘untrammeled by man’ — never existed.”

Do Kareiva et al. expect readers to believe that conservation groups are unaware that American Indians and native Alaskans lived in huge swaths of what are now designated wilderness areas? Or that they mysteriously failed to see the cows, sheep, bridges, fences, fire towers, fire suppression and/or mining claims within the majority of the proposed wilderness areas they have so painstakingly walked, mapped, camped in, photographed, and advocated for? It is not environmentalists who are naïve about wilderness; it is Kareiva et al. who are naïve about environmentalists. Environmental groups have little interest in the “wilderness ideal” because it has no legal, political or biological relevance when it comes to creating or managing wilderness areas. They simply want to bring the greatest protections possible to the lands which have been the least degraded….

At a time when conservationists need honest, hard-headed reassessment of what works and what needs changing, Kareiva et al. offer little more than exaggerations, straw-man arguments and a forced optimism that too often crosses the line into denial. There are plenty of real biodiversity recovery stories to tell, but to learn from them, we have to take off the blinders of sweeping generalizations and pay attention to the details and complexities of real-world conservation work. That’s the breakthrough we need to survive the Anthropocene.

Interior- Employee Freedom to Speak to the Press

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Department to allow employees more freedom to speak publicly
From E&E news..

Published: Thursday, March 8, 2012

The Interior Department is close to releasing a new communications policy that would give employees more freedom to speak to reporters and publish scholarly articles.

Under the new rules, employees would be able to publicly speak about departmental operations and activities as long as they follow rules that include not disclosing information protected by the Freedom of Information Act, according to a draft of the policy obtained by Greenwire. The new policy encourages scientists to publish research based on departmental projects and directs public affairs officials to be open with the news media.

The move is Interior’s latest step in complying with the White House’s order to develop policies that promote transparency and keep politics out of government research.

Interior earned praise for its overall scientific integrity policy, which it released in September 2010 (E&ENews PM, Sept. 29, 2010). But it has not updated its communications policy since 1999, and the new one has been a year in the making.

Interior spokesman Adam Fetcher said the department was in the “final stages” of revising the policy, which will apply to all the department’s agencies and bureaus.

“The new communications policy will affirm the importance of promoting the free flow of scientific, scholarly and technical information, and will emphasize openness, transparency, and accuracy,” he said in an email. “The new policy also will reflect key changes in the media landscape — including the emergence of social media tools and expanded access to online information. The policy will be available to the public once it is finalized.”

But the policy does include some restrictions for employees who publicly voice their opinions on agency work. For example, employees can speak to the news media but must notify the Office of Communications of any interviews that “may generate significant news coverage, public interest or inquiry.”

Employees also must seek guidance from a supervisor if an interview will involve information that Interior hasn’t already published or publicly released. They cannot disclose anything protected by FOIA, a notoriously nuanced law that protects some federal documents from public disclosure.

When shown the draft, advocacy groups applauded the overall policy but said it wasn’t clear enough to ensure a free exchange of ideas.

The FOIA provision, for example, reminds employees that they cannot disclose “pre-decisional and deliberative information” — a FOIA exemption that OMB Watch’s Gavin Baker said is often overused by agencies. Though employees should be following FOIA when speaking publicly, he said, Interior could give better guidance on how that might be applied in employees’ public comments.

“I think it has the risk of shutting down some valuable conversations,” said Baker, who follows scientific integrity efforts as a federal information policy analyst at OMB Watch. “I think there’s a concern that people will interpret this far too broadly, and it will really discourage information from getting out that ought to get out.”

Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, also contended that such unclear restrictions would dilute a policy that otherwise encourages more openness than at many agencies.

“Under these rules, scientists can speak out so long as they don’t say anything new or interesting,” Ruch said. “A scientist would have to consult a lawyer to know whether he or she could submit a paper for peer review, speak at a conference or answer questions from a reporter under these provisos.”

But Ruch and Gavin both commended the inclusion of a provision that prohibits public affairs officials from altering scientific information and gives internal experts a chance to review news releases for accuracy.

Overall, Interior’s draft policy is more lenient than those of many other agencies, such as U.S. EPA, which lacks specific communications rules. It would expand the opportunity for scientists to “take off their government hat” and give their opinions on their research, said Francesca Grifo, director of the scientific integrity program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“This is a terrific step forward for protecting the public good,” Grifo said. “We want and need to hear from federal scientists, and this policy makes that easier than it has been in the past.”

Note from Sharon: This seems very broad, but perhaps I am reading too much into it. Am I a federal scientist because of my job (not) or my background (yes). What if others in the agency think that the federal scientist has overstated the applicability of the researcher’s results? Can those employees also talk to “the press”?

I think posting whatever federal scientists want to say on a public blog where their interpretations can be openly debated would be far better for transparency and science education. We need to move some of these discussions “beyond traditional media,” in my opinion.

Would that give me free rein to give my opinion on my observations if they are not “research”? I like to share my opinion, as y’all know, so maybe I should start applying for jobs in Interior.