NASA’s Plan to Make JWST Data Immediately Available Will Hurt Astronomy

The White House said in August that the results of all federal research should be free. It will be a big change for scientists in many fields, but it will be a good move for democratization of research.

Many peer-reviewed papers would be free for the world to read immediately upon publication, instead of being stuck behind expensive paywalls, and the data that underlay these papers would be fully available and properly archives for anyone who wanted to analyze them. Our profession has been ahead of the curve on this, and most of the White House's recommendations are already standard in our field.

NASA is an agency that funds and conducts research. It has a plan that goes far beyond the White House's. The agency gives a proprietary period to some scientists who use certain facilities, so that they don't have to worry about their work being stolen. NASA wants to end this policy in order to make science more accessible.

Losing this exclusive status would be bad for astronomy. Without a proprietary period, an astronomer with a brilliant insight might spend years developing it, months crafting a successful proposal to execute it, and precious hours of highly competitive JWST time to actually perform the observations. This is a concern that has been done before.

Without a proprietary period during which the astronomer who proposed the observations have exclusive access to the data, they will have to work very quickly. It's important for early-career astronomer to get credit for their discoveries as they look for a permanent job. Researchers will have to cut corners under such time pressure. The entire field will be harmed by a sloppy approach.

Astronomers working long hours sacrifice their health and family time so that their result gets out before the competition, which can lead to the erosion of work life boundaries. It's bad for the culture of science and disproportionately affects those with children or other time-consuming personal circumstances. Making astronomy fair and equitable is dependent upon allowing researchers to benefit from their work.

The leaders of most observatories enforce a proprietary period within which the architects of an observation can work on their data without competition. Good science takes time, so it's usually at least six months. It's a compromise to guard against researchers indefinitely sitting on taxpayer-funded data that should be made public eventually. This makes sure the practice doesn't grant researchers complete exclusivity. Astronomers produce robust results at a good rate.

There are instances in which proprietary periods are not desirable. It is possible to use the Hubble Space Telescope for observations that cannot wait for the completion of a long proposal cycle. The trade off is that the entire community gets to work on the problem. Large surveys and other projects with community benefits are also included. Data from these programs can be used immediately. The output of the observatories that pursue it has been increased by this approach.

The value of proposals from small groups is acknowledged by most observatory. It would be a shame if the avenue of discovery was closed.

Eliminating proprietary periods will safeguard equity in astronomy by allowing under-resourced scientists the same access to data as everyone else. The only data sets the scientists would gain access to would be the ones already being worked on by other researchers. It would only be possible for them to scoop other scientists while giving up control over any data they produce. The culture of haste and competition would be created by the better-resourced scientists. This is not a good trade.

Michael New, NASA's associate administrator for research argued that if proprietary periods are eliminated, the solution is to give them more resources. Time to work with the data is the most important commodity here, and it is also the hardest thing to buy. It is an inevitably piecemeal fix to provide extra funds to free up a researcher's time. It is less expensive and simpler to use proprietary periods, which are a narrowly tailored and specific solution to a real problem.

Without proprietary periods, astronomy would have to find new ways to give credit to the people who gathered the data. There is only a loose culture of shame to prevent this, since astronomer who scoop others with their own data may be stigmatized within the community. This is not a universally accepted way to solve a problem. The whole premise behind making data sets public is that people should be encouraged to use them.

Co-authorship on any paper that uses the data should be offered to those who propose an observation but have not published it. It is not currently the cultural norm in astronomy, but it still merits exploration. The standard for assigning credit for observational work can be changed. The proposal that generated the enabling data could be cited in any paper that cites a result. Even if it wasn't the first to publish, the proposal team would still get credit for its work.

The main point is that NASA's plan to eliminate the proprietary period is bad for astronomy.

The Space Telescope Science Institute is polling astronomy on the subject. I hope that once NASA hears our opinions, it will change its stance and maintain a reasonable proprietary period on appropriate classes of data. It will be better if astronomy and astronomer are involved.

The views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those ofScientific American.