During the COVID-19 pandemic, this became particularly apparent. Someone close to response efforts told me that policymakers frequently had to ask academic secondees to access research articles for them. This created delays and inefficiencies during a crisis where speed was essential.
I wonder if this is why major governments pushed mandatory open access around 2022-2023. In the UK, all public-funded research is now required to be open access. I think the coverage is different in the US.
How big of this is an issue in practice? For AI in particular, considering that so much contemporary research is published on arxiv, it must be relatively accessible?
How big of this is an issue in practice? For AI in particular, considering that so much contemporary research is published on arxiv, it must be relatively accessible?
I think this is less of an issue for technical AI papers. But I’m finding more governance researchers (especially people moving from other academic communities) seem intent on journal publishing in places that policymakers can’t read their stuff! I have also been blocked sometimes from sharing papers with governance friends easily because they are behind paywalls. I might see this more because at BlueDot we get a lot of people who are early on in their career transition, and producing projects they want to publish in places.
I wonder if this is why major governments pushed mandatory open access around 2022-2023. In the UK, all public-funded research is now required to be open access. I think the coverage is different in the US.
How big of this is an issue in practice? For AI in particular, considering that so much contemporary research is published on arxiv, it must be relatively accessible?
I think this is less of an issue for technical AI papers. But I’m finding more governance researchers (especially people moving from other academic communities) seem intent on journal publishing in places that policymakers can’t read their stuff! I have also been blocked sometimes from sharing papers with governance friends easily because they are behind paywalls. I might see this more because at BlueDot we get a lot of people who are early on in their career transition, and producing projects they want to publish in places.