by Stephanie Sublett

Created on: July 16, 2008

The public has a right to scientific results. If any federal agency funds non-classified studies, they are legally public domain*. It is the duty of the scientists who produced the results to present them. The public may need help interpreting the results. The governments role should be providing a concise, comprehensible, and accurate summary of results.

The National Academies Press (NAP) publishes many scientific studies, and makes them freely available to the public. In 2004, NAP published a book "Open Access and the Public Domain in Digital Data and Information for Science: Proceedings of an International Symposium" that elucidates a number of pertinent issues.

This is an issue of information science. Sorting and making scientific results accessible to the public is the duty of the government. On whom specifically does the responsibility for scientific communication fall? The agency which funded the scientific study, the scientists themselves as part of grant fulfillment, librarians dedicated to such data archiving? I think the mandate to provide results for the public should be a condition for the funding of these studies.

This is also an issue of interpretation. Who decides how the results should be interpreted? What is the consequence of presenting a misleading interpretation? Academic articles are typically peer reviewed and professionally abstracted. The press has to avoid libel. The results of federally funded science should meet the same requirements. Scientists must not be made to feel threatened if they disagree with the interpretation of results.

There are legal and economic implications of open access to public domain, both nationally and internationally, especially in this digital age. Not every country has the same policies on scientific communication and public policy. There are also inherent security risks in allowing public access to information databases. Developing nations must be encouraged to adopt open-access policies similar to existing ones.

The public has the right to results of federally funded scientific studies. As long as security risks are mitigated, no filter should be necessary for non-classified data. The government still has a role in overseeing the release of results: the mandate of release, the interpretation of results for the public, or securing the accessible data.

*U.S. Code collection, Chapter 1, Subject matter and scope of copyright

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