... Opening research proposals: This seems to be an aspect of research which is relatively secretive. Few funding bodies seem to post the proposals for projects they fund, let alone proposals they rejected. But wouldn’t researchers (and students) benefit from seeing the methods proposed by other researchers? Wouldn’t the full details of a project, not just a summary, improve current awareness and reduce unnecessary duplication? Wouldn’t better access to proposals increase the transparency both of funders (so anyone can see the details of what was funded as well as what was turned down) and of researchers (so anyone can compare the methodology of the published results to the methodology proposed earlier)? There may be some cases where researchers want to keep their methodology secret until they’re done working on it, but those should be the exception rather than the rule. We can start working on the low-hanging fruit now, while thinking about how to deal with the cases where researchers don’t want disclosure: there’s no reason in principle that we shouldn’t campaign for open access to research proposals alongside research data and published results. ...
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 12/29/2008 07:31:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
