Dear Debanu,
There is indeed much at stake here.
Would I do it now, share my proposals, No.
Would I do it if funders’ rules required it. Yes.
When might funders’ rules require it eg when Tax payers insist that the
priority is achieving societal goals asap. Might that happen in the foreseeable
future? I don’t think so because we are as scientists good at thinking so far
out of the box, such as the internet, or from the 19the century electricity and
magnetism, the tax payer sees the benefit of an individual’s curiosity driven
research.
The bigger point is can we also think beyond individual nations?
We know we can: the UN, International Council for Science, IUCr……
So, it probably isn’t a one size fits all idea that James has put forward…
Best wishes,
John
Emeritus Professor John R Helliwell DSc
> On 27 Jun 2022, at 19:03, Debanu Das <debanu....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> >So, 2nd question is: would you do it? Would you upload your application
> >into the public domain for all to see? What about the reviewer comments?
> >If not, why not? Afraid people will steal your ideas? Well, once
> >something is public, its pretty clear who got the idea first.
>
> I do not think this ("upload your application into the public domain for all
> to see") is a workable or desirable idea for a variety of reasons. There are
> far greater issues that just about getting credit for your ideas. Which is
> somewhat of an academic and personal pursuit.
>
> For one, the entire R&D paradigm and programs and IP of entire nations (which
> seems primarily would be the US and potentially some EU countries under this
> case who if at all choose to sign up for this), universities, companies
> (business grants) and funding agencies will wreak havoc (~30-40% of US GDP).
> We already know there is a lopsided distribution of which countries taxpayers
> are funding major IP & innovation. So there are major economic, political,
> social and national competitiveness aspects at stake. I doubt that even NSF,
> DoD, DOE, NIH/HHS or any other government funding agency will support such
> initiatives. Transparency and openness in publishing research is a different
> ball game, even though there too there are lopsided effects at the end in
> many cases, but overall good for world progress, hopefully.
>
> Best,
> Debanu
>
>> On Wed, Jun 22, 2022 at 6:09 PM James Holton <jmhol...@lbl.gov> wrote:
>> Greetings all,
>>
>> I'd like to ask a question that I expect might generate some spirited
>> discussion.
>>
>> We have seen recently a groundswell of support for openness and
>> transparency in peer review. Not only are pre-prints popular, but we are
>> also seeing reviewer comments getting published along with the papers
>> themselves. Sometimes even signed by the reviewers, who would have
>> traditionally remained anonymous.
>>
>> My question is: why don't we also do this for grant proposals?
>>
>> I know this is not the norm. However, after thinking about it, why
>> wouldn't we want the process of how funding is awarded in science to be
>> at least as transparent as the process of publishing the results? Not
>> that the current process isn't transparent, but it could be more so.
>> What if applications, and their reviewer comments, were made public?
>> Perhaps after an embargo period? There could be great benefits here.
>> New investigators especially, would have a much clearer picture of
>> format, audience, context and convention. I expect unsuccessful
>> applications might be even more valuable than successful ones. And yet,
>> in reality, those old proposals and especially the comments almost never
>> see the light of day. Monumental amounts of work goes into them, on both
>> sides, but then get tucked away into the darkest corners of our hard drives.
>>
>> So, 2nd question is: would you do it? Would you upload your application
>> into the public domain for all to see? What about the reviewer comments?
>> If not, why not? Afraid people will steal your ideas? Well, once
>> something is public, its pretty clear who got the idea first.
>>
>> 3rd question: what if the service were semi-private? and you got to get
>> comments on your proposal before submitting it to your funding agency?
>> Would that be helpful? What if in exchange for that service you had to
>> review 2-3 other applications? Would that be worth it?
>>
>> Or, perhaps, I'm being far too naiive about all this. For all I know
>> there are some rules against doing this I'm not aware of. Either way,
>> I'm interested in what this community thinks. Please share your views!
>> On- or off-list is fine.
>>
>> -James Holton
>> MAD Scientist
>>
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