I’m a bit late with this, but it’s still worth spreading the word.

Through Google Book Search, earlier this month the National Academies released approximately 9,000 of their reports online.  The reports, which run from 1863-1997, join several already available online through the National Academies Press.  It includes the earliest issues of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.  The full complement of National Academies report should be available sometime in 2011.

You can read more about it through the Academies’ press release, and access the reports through Google Book Search.  Unfortunately, the indexing on Google Book Search makes the National Academies Press search engine look sane by comparison.

Washington State (or at least the Democrats in its Senate) is using an online tool similar to those used by the Obama transition and the Administration to take questions from the public.  The Evergreen State’s version of Open for Questions is focused on the state’s budget (H/T Internet Innovation Alliance), and works with Google Moderator.  If trends with these tools hold to past practice, expect some attempt to raise money through legalized marijuana to show up on the board (No, I am not making that up).

It would not surprise me if other states are at least trying similar online tools to engage with constituents.  The Washington example is the first one similar to national efforts that crossed my screen.  A useful policy question would be whether or not such efforts can comply with state public records laws.  Such concerns at the federal level have complicated the push (both now and before the Obama Administration made it a priority) to move more government information and activity online.

While reviewing the Twitter streams of members of Congress typically does them no favors, there are politically oriented uses that have some traction and value.  Scientific American’s 60 Second Science Blog indicates that Twitter has joined texting (which is pretty much what Twitter based itself on) and other social networking sites as means for organizing political protest. This adds to the use of Twitter for early warning and the distractions of Twitter in the courts, among other (likely) unintended consequences of the service.

The specific example here relates to recent political protests in Moldova over parliamentary elections that some believe were fixed.  While this is reminiscent of other recent political movements in former Soviet republics and their use of technology to organize, there’s no reason to believe the use of these technologies would be limited to that part of the world.  For me the main question is whether or not the technology would remain viable long enough to become a target of oppression.  Some networking sites have a short shelf life, which might make it harder for groups to be found and caught.  It could also provide a leading indicator of unrest in societies – is the government blocking a particular service.  For instance, you can check on the various countries that have blocked YouTube at one time or another (some of these are due to intellectual property rights issues).  As you will read if you peruse the list, it can be difficult for countries to truly clamp down on internet sites, particularly those with global reach.  It doesn’t mean some nation won’t try.

From The Scientist (registration required), we have a few examples of universities trying to increase the accessibility of their research.  There are many positions between a traditional subscription based journal and the open access models like PLoS Science, and they all have a place.  Brief outlines of some of the alternatives after the jump.

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The Scientist reports on a recent study (registration required) that suggests that open access journal articles will receive more citations than articles not available through open access.  Before you consign this to the dustbin of the obvious, not all studies have indicated such a correlation.  But the study at the focus of this article covered 26 million articles from 8 thousand journals over the course of seven years.  This comprehensive study noted an overall increase in citations of 8 percent, but significant variation across fields and countries.  Open access leads to much higher increases in citations in poorer countries, and fields with a culture of pre-print databases and personal archives did not show as high an increase in citations compared to fields like the biomedical sciences.  Expect this study to show up in future fights over the NIH open access requirements.

ScienceInsider writes about the encouragement of PLoS Medicine to require conflict of interest disclosures from its editors as well as its writers.  In an editorial, the journal describes possible sources of bias, which go beyond considerations of financial interest, to include things such as “publication bias, outcome reporting bias, financial and non-financial competing interests, sponsors’ control of study data and publication, and restrictions on access to data and materials.”  Not only are editors challenged with determine possible bias in the articles they deal with, but whether or not their own biases may influence the choices of the journal.  The ScienceInsider piece makes a great point in noting that PLoS Medicine hasn’t cornered the market on assertive conflict of interest policies, and other journals are dealing with the issue, or at least in discussions to do so.

Worth noting in the editorial is the inclusion of research from advocacy organizations.

“Robust journal policies regarding non-commercial competing interests…will at least require declaration of any interests that might influence reporting or review, and that would be influenced—negatively or positively—by publication. Such interests might include personal relationships or professional interactions with authors, editors, or reviewers, and strongly held political or religious views that relate to the work under consideration.”

The editors give an example about their death penalty views when dealing with an article about lethal injection.  While it’s important to investigate sources to ferret out possible bias, with journals this is not always that easy to do.  Policies that address biases beyond financial considerations help address this challenge.

It is being reported that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will stop using some of the accounting measures that keep various federal expenses off the budget books.  That is, certain things, such as the costs for wars, the Medicare prescription drug benefit, relief of the alternative minimum tax (AMT), and disaster relief, have not been counted as part of budget deficit projections by the OMB.  As far as I can tell, however, this does not extend to other accounting measures, such as the treatment of the Social Secuirty trust fund, that also mask the nature of the federal budget.

Aside from a reminder that economics is, or at least seeks to be considered as, a science, these steps demonstrate the importance of measurement in policy.  How we measure, and what measurements we use, reflect what we value (and vice versa).  This is true whether we talk about how we project our financial future, or assess innovative activity, or make determinations about scientific research.

The Obama Administration has belatedly posted the text of the stimulus package, with the President signed earlier today.  You have the opportunity to review the law and submit comments, though the timing is lousy.  As suggested by an earlier post here, the Obama Administration is likely to stumble through its efforts to make government more available and accessible to the public.  While some think this an unrealistic project, I think the effort is worthwhile and should be encouraged.

As part of the law, there is now a website, recovery.gov, intended to track the progress of the law.  It’s unclear whether the Congress will have a similar online presence for the stimulus package, but I wouldn’t rule it out just yet.  The idea behind recovery.gov reflects another website tracking government spending, USASpending.gov, established by legislation sponsored by then-Senator Obama and Senator Coburn, the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act.  The goal of USA Spending is to track the spending of federal agencies online.  For instance, you can look at the National Science Foundation’s grants from 2000 to the present.  Hopefully recovery.gov can grow into something at least as sophisticated as USA Spending.

The Feburary issue of Wired has a good analysis of the difficulty the Obama Administration is facing in converting their very Internet-savvy presidential campaign into an Internet-savvy government.  Keep in mind that this article was written prior to the Inauguration, so there is no assessment of progress so far.  But that doesn’t prevent the article from noting the particular legal and structural challenges facing the administration, and the high bar set by some of the administration’s promises.  For instance, President Obama has pledged to place bills online for public comment for five days prior to signing them into law.  That has yet to happen, including the stimulus package, which was finalized yesterday, and is expected to be signed on Tuesday.

Besides discussing the challenges and wisdom behind enabling the government with Web 2.0 technologies (the huge campaign e-mail list must be used by an outside entity, how much staff time can be spared to read thousands of comments, how do you archive all of this, etc.), the article also covers the patchwork nature of government websites and the few successful efforts to incorporate Web 2.0 technology (not happy with the No Fly List?  Go to the Transportation Security Administration’s blog and let them know).  If you’ve ever wondered why certain things aren’t happening with government and the Internet, this article is a good starting point.

Thanks to the fine folks at Wikileaks (H/T Marc Ambinder), there are now many more Congressional Research Service reports available to the public than before.  I usually find CRS reports from the Federation of American Scientists, but never at the scope of the Wikileaks release.  These reports (nearly seven thousand that date back to 1990) are legally in the public domain, but rarely see the light of day.