We’ve waited too long and were paying too much, there are even in Luxembourg public or semi-public institutions developing software, gathering data and more which was paid partially or completely by public funding. In this article I will give some examples of data gathered and of software developed and will provide the proof that we would all benefit from open access to these elements.
From a science point of view there is a strong research community in Luxembourg which develops strongly mostly because of public funding and the ability to use public infrastructures, these researchers are developing new applications, researching new solutions to old problems or only gathering new evidence or other data to sustain their theses. All these research results are paid for partially by the public. We as the pirate party, and I personally think that, if we pay for something it should be available to us. How can a government use public money, our money, to finance projects with no direct results for the citizens, if a researcher thinks that he doesn’t want to share his results because they might earn him money, than he will be able to find funding on the open market, but if the research will yield no financial benefit, than where is the harm to allow everyone access for only the reproduction costs?
I do think that every research being done with public funding should have as precondition to provide free access to their results and if this is not possible, to render access possible for the only cost of reproduction.
If we are speaking about software development done by public or semi-public entities, I’m wondering why they almost never release software as open source back to their “employers”, the collectivity pays for a certain piece of software, but has almost nothing to get from it. Why does a “SIGI” not releases its software under open licenses is a mystery to me, they specifically target public entities as clients, they are therefore paid by the public, they don’t “sell” their software on the open market, thus could not argue that they would loose sales (a wrong argument as shown by researchers), so that they are in a position to open up their software, this could decrease cost for the municipalities involved in SIGI and allow private companies to adapt the models developed by SIGI to their own means. SIGI is only an example, there are many more public companies able to do the same thing, but simply not doing it.
But to come back to my original open access in science topic, we have to realize, that we are paying up to 3 times for a scientific result found and consumed in Luxembourg, first we (co-)finance the original researcher, then we might (co-)finance a second researcher to evaluate the original research in a “peer-review” to finally pay for a third time the same result by having to buy the magazine where the article was published to render it accessible to students at the university or in other institutions for consultation. Unacceptable!
We need a change, the sooner, the better!
