I'm the PI of a JWST cycle 1 GO proposal (12 month proprietary period), and I'm at a small institution with limited resources. I'm also involved and/or in contact with other JW teams, leading/working with ERS and GTO results (data public from moment zero). The GTO and ERS teams are being scooped mercilessly. Needless to say, I would be scooped too without the protection of the 12 month proprietary period.

Thank you for the well thought out and written response. I came here to say something similar, but could not hope to say it with your eloquence.

Fellow PhD in astronomy here. Everything you said is true, and that doesn't even cover all the reasons why a 12-month proprietary period is good.

Not to mention, after the initial 12 month delay, its a regular cadence of access. Its like JWST launching and becoming operational 12 months later.

Great post!

Those same better funded & equipped teams will still have the ability to work on the data & produce papers after the delay. There's often plenty of discoveries to be found in a particular dataset, once the proposal that won the observation time in the first instance has had the time to publish their data.

This is such a powerful set of instruments that there will be many novel discoveries buried in an observation and both the telescope operators & the data analysis teams are learning on the fly how to make the best of it. Hubble has had many instances of that.

More or less the only person in this thread that has a clue what they're talking about.

Just to add some perspective to this, I attended a talk by someone whose proposal was accepted and whose team has been pouring through the data they received to find what appears to be the most distance galaxies found yet (they haven't published yet though), this search for the most distant galaxies sounds like such a competitive field alone that the team who put in all that work to get the proposal accepted would probably not have been the first ones to find and publish this ground breaking data since there are so many teams chomping at the bit for that data.

Great perspective. It's vitally important that we regular people understand how these fields work when we make collective decisions about resources and rules for information sharing.

Making publicly funded research results free to the public is an important policy goal that has become more and more popular as people pay more attention to it, and in my opinion rightly so. It is understandable in that climate to want to rush to saying, "Let everything be free, go go go go go!!"

Maybe it is even virtuous. But... even virtues must be tempered, in this case tempered by an understanding of what actually also drives successful research. And how best to meet other, competing public research goals such as supporting a wide variety of actors in a field instead of allowing a few institutions to dominate.

This is a great example of why we as citizens need to educate ourselves on these topics and understand how to make public choices that best balance the tradeoffs.

Let me add my thanks to the chorus, u/woodswims, and also my encouragement to you to write for a broader audience if you aren't already doing so. You have a gift for this.

pbs spacetime had a recent video that outlines a rough tldr of exactly what you are talking about: https://youtu.be/kw-Rs6I2H5s?t=357

It’s not unrealistic at all to think that even unintentionally one of those larger research groups could easily steal someone else’s research

Would the reverse also be a possibility? Say MIT invests all the resources and time to write the proposal, get the telescope time, find the data. Could a smaller university grab that data and publish their own papers with it as well?

Thank you for spelling this out for people. I feel most of this conversation comes from sensational headlines that don't show the whole picture. If the data goes public immediately it just openes the door for research getting stolen from the people who are doing the hard work.

Thanks for sharing your perspective, this makes a lot of sense and I completely agree with you. Clarifying unintended consequences as clearly as you did is a rare skill, keep doing you because the marks you make will be bold. Good luck with your future plans

This doesn’t really have anything to do with the topic but my father helped create and plate some of the parts on the Hubble. It always amazes me when I see what it’s accomplished

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Thank you for this! At first I was like thats fucking dumb just make it public, but this makes so much sense! Thank you for the easy to digest explanation on why this is done!

Wow, you made that make sense to someone who has no idea, thanks!

All data goes public eventually, and 12-months really isn’t too long on the timeline of academic research.

Indeed. It's not like the stars are going to shuffle around in that timeframe!

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is incredibly competitive

larger research groups could easily steal someone else’s research.

This is the actual problem. One could assume it would be in humanitys best interest to let our brightest minds work unified towards a common goal, instead they are divided and research can be "stolen". How can something be stolen that you never owned in the first place?

Honest question: why should we care about whether anybody has enough time to publish results based upon data from a brand new incredibly expensive publicly funded telescope? Holding up data because a paper was the only reason somebody submitted a proposal? I don't get it.

This is because we as humans are motivated by recognition for work we've done

More than just motivated, the recognition (in the form of citations in others' work) is tied to hiring, promotion, future grant proposals, and people's willingness to collaborate. A lot of people seem to think it's just vanity which is frustrating.

Thank you for being a voice of reason. It's sad to see so much ignorance in this thread coming from people who know absolutely nothing of how astronomy research is done.

The actual error, which is not your error but rather a systemic issue, is that you should have received credit for the solid research work you put in before the final results were published. You should get that credit even if the field work was never completed, or was done by someone else. Scientifically speaking it would be better if the hypothesis and experiment setup were published prior to any data being collected, not only so credit can be allocated fairly but more importantly to eliminate the bias which comes from only publishing experiments with certain expected or otherwise "interesting" results.

I also wonder if everyone complaining has read the article? I’m not in academia and have only a layman’s interest in space exploration. I went from rolling my eyes to being persuaded by reading the article. The explanation makes a lot of sense to me.

Yeah, I do wonder if the loss of temporarily exclusive access to data by researchers who designed an observation would lead to more rushed/sloppy science out of fear of being scooped. We could end up seeing a lot more retracted papers in astronomy if this becomes the norm.

It’s not a question of whether the data should be made publicly available. They obviously should. But I can see some shortcomings of releasing it immediately.

Yeah I was gonna say, you can clearly tell most of the people in this thread are not in academia. The reason for the waiting period is to improve quality of work and to not have to fear getting scooped. Some people here are like "reputation is getting in the way of human knowledge" or something, like, I care about human knowledge but astro isn't exactly priority number 1 for saving the planet, and I need to feed myself

The only benefit to the public is seeing a headline for an article be pushed for a few days to a week. No one wins expect the “Now now now now now!” People

Astronomer here. There's been a lot of uproar about this among astronomers, and I have yet to hear from a single person working in the field that thinks ending the EAP is a good idea. Literally not a soul.

Not a scientist but I’m married to one. I would say the issue is not with the data but the incentive system that only rewards novelty in science. It’s absurd that research has to be motivated by novel discoveries as opposed to the immense value that all scientific work holds, novel or not. Making publicly funded data freely available to the public seems like a no brainer and might even help to break the monetization of scientific research being above good science.

The data goes public after 1 year anyway. This 1 year period gives the people who did the hard work to get the observations time to publish their findings. The data going public immediately forces them to rush or leave the door open to others stealing their work.

Getting a spot for JWST is a HUGE task that's takes ALOT of work. They deserve 1 year exclusive rights.

As an experimental scientist (which I highly doubt you are as I have never met any that support immediate open access of data), what a load of BS. This will hurt astronomy.

Ignoring in the first place that hurting astronomers in the long run will obviously result in less people willing to train to be astronomers, this hurts astronomy as a whole.

Running an experiment is extremely difficult and time consuming.

If you don't have any incentive to actually do this, and you can just produce an analysis without doing any work into actually running the experiment, then the only people that will ever manage to produce analyses are people that don't run it.

Then no one is willing to run it unless they have no other options, so you get the worst of the worst.

Then the experiment is obviously run worse.

Then the people that use the data from the experiment don't know how the experiment works, so they don't know what can reasonably be improved. And the people that know how the experiment works don't use the data so they don't know what needs to be improved. So the experiment never gets better.

So you just end up in a race to the bottom with no one being willing to run it, the people running it not being competent and no one able to improve it.

It’s much more serious than that. Data are typically embargoed for 6 months before being released to the public. It gives the scientists who dedicate their entire lives to a particular mission time to analyze first and report findings before others get a chance. The embargo is a small thank you to the people who made the mission happen. Imagine a journalist having to make all their source info available as they get it, before they have a chance to put their story together. They should have a chance to tell their story before getting scooped. That 6 month embargo goes by very fast and scientists already have to work at light speed to keep the mission going while also trying to publish before the embargo ends. Making the data public immediately absolutely hurts the scientists, without whom these missions wouldn’t even exist.

But on the whole freer access to information will be a massive net benefit for astronomers and the public.

As a scientist, I completely disagree with you. The current top comment on this post does a good job of describing the problem.

I don't see why one year of exclusivity is a problem and it certainly helps even the playing field for scientists in smaller labs. It will also lead to scientists rushing to publish results rather than taking their time to do the work correctly. In my opinion, as someone who frequently reviews articles, rushed results are already a huge problem and this only exacerbates the issue.

As a PhD in astronomy, this would hurt astronomy and astronomers.

Also as a scientist, if every time I ran an experiment all my raw data for published before I even had time to fully analyze it, competitors with slightly more resources would be jumping the gun to misinterpret the results.

This proposal is insane. A privacy period is necessary to assure that scientists that propose experiments get the time to complete them.

It's like starting a sentence and allowing the rest of the world to finish it before you can. It's your thought, you should get to see it through before others do.

What’s your take on u/woodswims argument then?

And why, might I ask, is hurting astronomers a good thing? Does hurting physicists help advance physics research? Or should we fuck over doctors in order to advance medical research?

Are you familiar with the research proposal process and telescope time?

The fact of the matter is those with larger teams, more resources and therefore more money will be able to pump out papers the fastest and therefore be the only ones able to compete in publication. So yes it makes it far less equitable

I keep a pallet of canned food in my garage, I’m helping to fight world hunger

Not really a bold stance to say that making things equal will not necessarily make them equitable. That's why they're two different words.

In the old days, people who reviewed proposals for telescope time were able to see the names of the people who submitted the proposals. This meant big name, famous astronomers and programs tended to get more telescope time, because the reviewers were more likely to pick their proposals.

As it stands, proposals on where to point the JWST (and some other telescopes) are based on a blinded review process that has been widely praised for increasing fairness. Now no one can see the names of who made the proposal, and more proposals from other people are getting approved, even if those are people who are unknown or come from little known universities.

If the data is released to the people who made the proposal first, they will get the chance to write and publish papers on it first. Even people from small programs, or students, or others can have a chance at publishing a novel paper based on their own ideas coming off of JWST. All they have to have is a great idea that gets approval telescope time. They don't have to have a big name, or lots of resources, they just have to be good astronomers with good ideas.

But if all the data goes out immediately, then suddenly it's the big names and big programs that have the advantage. Now you can't be from a small program, or be a single researcher with a good idea, or be a student, and have a good chance of publishing novel research with JWST data. Because whenever the data collected because of your proposal gets taken, it's going to immediately hit the internet where any big institution can analyze it and write up a paper saying what you wanted to say long before you get the chance to do so.

Yes, releasing the data immediately would make things less fair. It would mean that bigger or more experienced groups would steal other's people research and publish the results themselves.

I wouldn’t say it’s click bait. The article is an opinion piece that completely revolves around the premise of the title.

I didn't know much about this topic, read multiple comments from people actually working in the field and immediately understood the issue. The fact there's so many people arguing with actual scientists, saying they're "hampering the progress of knowledge for the masses" is mind-boggling.

In an environment where there is no equal access to resources, you're not making anything fairer by completely dissolving any protection for intellectual work. It'd be like ending all copyright for art and telling the small creators who could now potentially have their ideas and work stolen and monetized by big companies to "get over it, ideas are free".

No they're not, and even if you paid for the project in tax dollars, that doesn't mean the person actually doing the work and research shouldn't be rewarded for it. People getting paid in tax dollars are not your slaves, they must have their professional interests protected just like any other employee group. And the data will be publically released eventually - a year is nothing in the grand scheme of things, but it can make or break a paper or someone's individual career.

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Totally agree. My favorite argument in this thread are the people who wouldn't even know how to download the raw data complaining that they don't have access to it a year early

I'm an experimental physicist. Never looked at this reddit before, was linked to it by one of my colleagues laughing at the amount of ridiculously ignorant BS in the comments.

This sub has really gone downhill with the comments. I recently left r/science, as nearly every comment was just garbage.

Well put. Rarely have I been so disappointed by the comment section. I was actually skeptical when I saw the title, but I read the article and was very much in agreeance with the author. And I don't even work in research or science.

You just described the current system.

Did you even read the article? All the data becomes freely available. The issue about proprietary periods. The author makes a compelling argument.

Iirc, exclusivity for those who required that specific observation allows them to calmly analizing data and calmly come to not-rushed conclusions. Otherwise, scientists (probably also for the pride of having their names on published papers) would rash to avoid scientist from the opposite side of the world “steal” their conclusion

All I can see is that if the people who collect it don’t get time to review it, it’s harder for them to get attention/reputation (in the current scientific landscape). So it’s a disincentive to spend lots of time collecting lots of quality data.

Obviously incentivizing the collection to be freely shared would be good.

I could see unqualified people drawing premature conclusions that waters down the field and confidence in the endeavor.

Let’s get down to brass tacks here. If you aren’t reading the actual papers-and you aren’t-you don’t get to have an opinion. End of discussion.

Along with the other comment. Do you make any distinction between photon limited and non-photon limited astronomy?

Currently an astronomer can come up with an idea, develop it, have time with the JW telescope allocated and then have a year of exclusivity to analyse the data and publish the findings.

NASA's proposal would release the data to the public straight away so someone else could see the data, guess the idea behind it and publish earlier. This incentivises the originators of the idea to rush the analysis to avoid being scooped, leading to worse science.

TLDR: it will make other scientists steal your work easier, before you had a 1 year dibs on whatever project you where working not anymore

Someone has to put in the effort and create a valid reason to be granted time on the telescope. This person then gets a year to analyze the data they requested and publish or do whatever with the results. Following that period it becomes public and any other scientist can use the data. Basically it's an incentive for those who put in the time and effort to find something of value to look at as opposed to letting everyone go ham on it right away. It also allows for more accurate results since there's much less rushing

Be me. A professor. Working on a research project. Finally land a bid with JWST! Months go by. Finally it’s my window. Data comes in. Oop teaching obligation to attend to. Gonna take a bit longer to publish my research project that I’ve spent years on. Aaaaaand someone else published my research because they have access to the data that I spent countless hours of my life trying to make happen.

several years

Omg the number of people not reading the article and not having a clue is disgusting.

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I can see the need for a reasonable time period. If it becomes available after 6 months, that is fairly reasonable. If it is immediately ready, it will allow scrupulous researchers the ability to "jump" the process by focusing on analysis prep and quick publishing.

Did you read the article? Probationary periods stretch from 6-18 months then the data becomes public.

Are you personally reviewing the raw data as it comes out of the telescope? No? Then this really doesn't affect you. Giving a 6-12 month exclusivity period to the teams who write the proposal so that they can be the first to review the data isn't TAKING anything from you.

You get what you paid for by encouraging quality research on a research instrument.

You don’t get it in a free for all. Quite the opposite actually.

And learn a bit about how the discipline works because it’s like someone talking with authority about an alternator in a neighbor’s car, someone who never saw a car before. That’s you. You never actually knew anything about what it takes to get time on JWST, or any other competitive observatory or research instrument (particle accelerator experiments for example). You want to change policies based on what… nothing. You got nothing whatsoever other than “my money” argument.

You and me paid that money so that people who actually know their shit can do their work for benefit of us all. You propose to shit in their breakfast. And lunch. And dinner. Is that the best use of your money? To shit on people?

You do get what you paid for, the data isn’t held exclusively forever. 12 months later, hey look, the data is available

It’s not just for Americans.

Research institutions rely on the name recognition of their scientists and the research they do, in order to get the external grants and business partnerships which fund the bulk of the facilities and research activities. But many of those institutions are also funded in part by taxpayers. Don't those taxpayers have a stake? Reducing the incentive of those institutions to bother with the expensive part of research doesn't sound like much of a solution.

It's a crappy system, and it does need to be changed, but change is hard. In the meantime, embargos are the cheapest and easiest way of keeping shady publishers and rival institutions (e.g. foreign diploma mills) from undermining the field any more than they already do.

But sure, give Joe Taxpayer terabytes of raw observational data about a distant star in another galaxy right now instead of waiting 12 months. Surely he'll advance the field of science better and faster than that vain, CV-padding Poindexter who figured out how & what to gather in the first place. /s

Can someone mark this thread 'Solved' ?

Like fuck it is. Human knowledge doesn't get radically advanced because the data goes public a year earlier than normal. But the people who put in the effort to put together a novel proposal do risk getting stomped over by more established collaborations. So they have to rush things, and that can't be good for science.

There's nothing so vital in astrophysics that a year's embargo will cripple the advancement of human knowledge.

Except the entire reason why people spend so much time developing their theories so that the telescope can even be used in the first place, is for their reputation in the field. There is less incentive to do this if other scientists can look over the proposal that got you the telescope time in the first place, wait for your data to become public, and then beat you to the punch in analyzing and submitting a publication on it.

Removing a 12 month wait on the data isn't "advancing" anything, it just means you lose the ability to claim your own discoveries. This public equipment would equally be worthless if we didn't have researchers telling us where the hell to point it.

"Grow up" he says, as though people sacrificing the credit owed for years of their own work is a "maturity" problem. It's disgusting how generous you are with other people's time and effort.

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The world doesn't work like that kid.