General Discussion

[fenian]

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ProjectVRD wrote:
I'm so confused by all of this, I thought our Government put a department in place to make sure our Universities got financial reward from any company that used it's research when Labour was in power. How on earth did the Government not make it work?

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Maybe they do get a reward, but the cost of buying the papers has shot up as a result.

I assume thats what happened anyway, that universities nearly always consume more research than they produce, but produce high quality research. As far as I know cambridge is losing so much money that despite being among the richest universities in the world might not be able to afford to keep buying research like they are.

[WJB1]

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ProjectVRD wrote:

Well I meant the research conducted by the research arms of institutions like NASA, where they patent those discoveries to make loads of money off them, and heavily bias American firms to use the research.

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Places that are fully funded by the government frequently do patent their research (eg HPA, DSTL). Patenting the results of research that is funded by charities is generally seen as inethical, not only because you can profit from it but also because it makes further research into related areas difficult, which goes against the reason for the charity existing. I'm not sure if it's illegal, but if someone funded by a charity was to patent the results of their research, they would never get funded again.

[Pin-Pin-Ire]

I think releasing information is a good idea and is a step forward. Just look at MIT, all their publications can be downloaded for free.

[TITANIUSX]

But how is the Uk suppose to generate any GDP if we give all our science research away? We generate something like a fifth of GDP from science. Also China doesn't share any of its resources or research it takes everyone elses and then uses it to destroy competition in all areas and I doubt they ever will as that is not exactly their style as they don't even allow people in China to access information about their new leader at all!

[WJB1]

Through patents from privately funded or fully government funded research.

[fenian]

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TITANIUSX wrote:

But how is the Uk suppose to generate any GDP if we give all our science research away? We generate something like a fifth of GDP from science. Also China doesn't share any of its resources or research it takes everyone elses and then uses it to destroy competition in all areas and I doubt they ever will as that is not exactly their style as they don't even allow people in China to access information about their new leader at all!

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firstly, all they are doing is making it free to read research, thats like being free to open an ipad to see how it works, if you want to use research comercially you pay.

Universities can normally use research for free, meaning they can take someones research and improve it for free and use it for free, but again any commercial company will have to pay.

All it will do is give british universities the best research to use, meaning if anything the UK could become a hotbed of innovation even more than it is these days.

As for the chinese, forget about them, it will be years before they are able to innovate at our level and if they ever reach that level it probably wont be while they are communist.

[That_Soton]

50 mill?  sounds a bit much 

[Pin-Pin-Ire]

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fenian wrote:

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TITANIUSX wrote:

But how is the Uk suppose to generate any GDP if we give all our science research away? We generate something like a fifth of GDP from science. Also China doesn't share any of its resources or research it takes everyone elses and then uses it to destroy competition in all areas and I doubt they ever will as that is not exactly their style as they don't even allow people in China to access information about their new leader at all!

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firstly, all they are doing is making it free to read research, thats like being free to open an ipad to see how it works, if you want to use research comercially you pay.

Universities can normally use research for free, meaning they can take someones research and improve it for free and use it for free, but again any commercial company will have to pay.

All it will do is give british universities the best research to use, meaning if anything the UK could become a hotbed of innovation even more than it is these days.

As for the chinese, forget about them, it will be years before they are able to innovate at our level and if they ever reach that level it probably wont be while they are communist.

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Yup I agree with fen. A few months ago I read a piece on researchers boycotting publications that had a paywall as it was having a negative effect on their own work and research. They were annoyed as often they would have to pay extortionate amounts of money to access research that would help their own. If anything, blocking access to current knowledge will in the long run harm future efforts to obtain more knowledge.

[fenian]

also, no one complained when a British Uni in Northern Ireland said it would build research labs for the Chinese to UK spec, which I think is worse than letting them read research that they were already reading anyway.