There's something very
special about all the awesome research funded by NASA - it's accessible, for
free, to everyone. It was a particularly special moment when NASA announced
this shift to open access back in 2016. Not only would all published research
funded by the space agency be available at no cost, the agency also launched a
public web portal to make it easy for anybody to gain access.
The free online archive
arrived in response to a key policy update, which requires any NASA-funded
research articles in peer-reviewed journals be publicly accessible within one
year of publication.
"At NASA, we are
celebrating this opportunity to extend access to our extensive portfolio of
scientific and technical publications," said NASA Deputy Administrator
Dava Newman. "Through open access and innovation we invite the global
community to join us in exploring Earth, air, and space."
The database is called
PubSpace, and the public can access NASA-funded research articles in it by
searching for whatever they're interested in, or by just browsing all the
NASA-funded papers. "Making our research data easier to access will
greatly magnify the impact of our research," said NASA Chief Scientist
Ellen Stofan. "As scientists and engineers, we work by building upon a
foundation laid by others."
There are over 1,000
research articles in the database, and that number rises steadily as new
NASA-funded research is released.
As you'd expect, there's an
enormous spread of research on offer, ranging from exercise routines to
maintain health during long-duration space missions, to the prospects for life
on Titan, and the risk of miscarriage for flight attendants exposed to cosmic
radiation. All of this is now free for researchers or anybody with an interest
in science to check out and download – a welcome change from when much of the
content was locked behind a paywall.
But not all NASA-funded
research can be found in the archive. As the space agency indicates, patents
and material governed by personal privacy, proprietary, or security laws are
exempt from having to be included in PubSpace.
This was all thanks to a
2013 request from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy,
which directed major science-funding agencies to come up with ways of
increasing access to the results of publicly funded research.
It also follows a growing
general trend towards more openness in science research and academia more
broadly. A fight that sadly continues to be a big struggle to this day across
both public and private research institutions and journals.
With frustration stemming
over the commercial control wielded by the companies who own most academic
publishing, some researchers are bypassing established journals altogether by
uploading their work directly to the internet. Others are illegally sharing
scientific papers online in a dramatic bid to spread knowledge. At the same
time, there are calls in Europe to make all published science funded by the
public free.
The same logic is what's
behind NASA's access portal – but even the space agency itself could benefit
from the initiative, which will help it keep track of all the research it's
funding more easily.
"This'll be the first
time that NASA's had all of their publications in one place, so we estimate
what our publication rate is for the agency, but this will actually be able to
tell us what it is," NASA Deputy Chief Scientist Gale Allen told Samantha
Ehlinger at FedScoop.
"And we'll be able to
show even further what we're doing with taxpayer dollars." An earlier
version of this story was published in August 2016.
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