Currently, in the US, any research conducted with public grant funds must be made available to the public. That means data, and also any papers written by the lead researchers. This is a good rule and a good law. There are some exceptions, but they are very rare. Academic institution or principal investigators can no longer sell their research papers through those third-party scholarly article companies. Still, often colleges and university research centers that are funded by an endowment or foundation can retain those research findings and papers for a fee or perhaps just hide them entirely as intellectual property.

Still, if it’s a publicly funded university, I think I still have a problem with that, to the extent that the principal investigators are on the payroll of the institution and that institution is partially publicly funded. This debate has been going on for a while and has been in the news often when someone unlocks that research and sends it online to the world. Interestingly, the Russians, Chinese, and others often spy on these college and university research centers, so they already have the information, while our own innovators, entrepreneurs, scientists, and corporations don’t. Think about that for a moment as I continue this dialogue.

There was an interesting article recently in the New York Times (Sunday Review) titled; “Should all research papers be free?” by Kate Murphy, published on March 12, 2016, which questioned the blocking of research papers and the charging of high fees for journal articles.

Many years ago there was a breach in the MIT system where all research papers, normally for sale, were put on the web for all to see. Some applauded this kind of “moral hacking,” while others condemned it as theft. Whether this was an act of the Robin Hood of the modern electronic age or not is hard to say in hindsight with all the new laws requiring publicly funded research to be free to citizens (unless it involves national security). . However, the Electronic Freedom Foundation is happy to report that unlocking research papers is fairer than ever, even as they admit there is still work to be done and warn that the situation will require continued monitoring.

If universities keep data under lock and key and we, the taxpayers, pay other universities to do the same research, when you already know, we’re wasting money on duplicating research: how does this help our nation, drive progress? or to advance technology for our future? . It’s up to you.