How "Public" Should Webb Telescope Data Be?
As reported in the November 2, 2022 issue of Science by Daniel Clery in Should Webb telescope’s data be open to all? there is currently some controversy surrounding access to data from the Webb space telescope.
Those who designed the telescope’s experiments are being provided temporary exclusive access to the data so they can be the first to publish results from analyzing the data. That only seems fair, right? They developed the experiments over many years; shouldn’t they be the first to reap the professional and scientific rewards from analyzing the data it’s sending back?
Not so fast, some are saying. Won’t continuing a temporary embargo on access to Webb telescope data mean that researchers employed by smaller or less funded institutions will not be able to quickly analyze and publish findings of research that has benefitted from millions of dollars of public funds?
While I tend to come down on the side of “public access“ one can’t really appreciate the nuances of this debate without understanding that public access to taxpayer supported research has always been the stuff of controversy given the traditional involvement of for-profit publishers in disseminating scholarly research supported by public funds. For example, major efforts have been made to bypass for-profit scholarly publishing through establishment in recent decades of “open access“ journals. Even there, though, there is concern that open access journals, which tend to be more dependent on author-paid publication fees than expensive subscription prices, may be more advantageous to well-funded researchers, as I discussed in Maybe "Open Access" Isn't So Open After All.
Back to the Webb space telescope data. The context to understand there is that the Biden Administration in the U.S., God bless ‘em, has been pushing for quicker public access to taxpayer funded research of all types. My guess is that any “embargo“ limiting “public“ access to telescope data will be short term. Still, the larger question of scientific data access by less well-funded researchers will still have to be addressed.
Copyright 2022 by Dennis, D. McDonald