FOI essay contest winner: Federally funded research should be freely available
The latest winner of the Sunshine Week FOI essay contest is John McDevitt, a retired architect, who writes about the need to make federally funded research more readily available to the public. Too much research that we all pay for is hidden in expensive journals or kept secret under the cover of "trade secrets" or other reasoning. That doesn't even include a lot of research that is done at public universities, paid by taxpayers through researchers' taxpayer-funded salaries and university facilities. With the ability of the Internet to foster knowledge and spread new discoveries it's a shame private companies want to lock it up for their own profits and federal agencies control it for their own political purposes.
Journalists should request to see not only the published results of research but also the expenses and benefits of producing such research (not to mention the high facilities and administration fees a lot of universities charge to grants, sometimes 50 percent or higher, essentially gouging federal taxpayers to supplement decreasing state funding).
For September, the topic for the Sunshine Week Citizen Journalism Award will be on access as a basic human right, tied to International Right to Know Day (Sept. 28). The contest is open to amateur and professional writers (e.g., journalists!), so check it out at the Helium Sunshine Week site. Winners from each month will qualify for the grand prize, to be presented during Sunshine Week, March 15-21, 2009. Essays are 1,000 words or less.