Let's say a university is going to do some research. They look around for funds and decide to do a project that the government is offering some grant money for. In that case, the government's money didn't really pay for the research, it just influenced what direction it went. I think the grant money did its intended job even if the results aren't public.
Well, does the study use tax-paid resources or not? It may not seem workable that no private results should result from research receiving tax-money in any way, but it is fair.
I guess what I mean is, sometimes the grant money is to "buy" the results of research, and sometimes it's just to encourage research along certain lines. Or anything else... Think of it this way: if the government requires all publicly-funded research results to be public, a lot less people are going to take them up on the deal.
if the government requires all publicly-funded research results to be public, a lot less people are going to take them up on the deal.
Non-sequitur, and you can bet plenty of researchers will publish publicly in order to get free money. What it will affect is private industry benefitting from publicly funded research and resources.
But if private industry profits less from the research, they will pay less for it. Pretty quickly you will see two exclusive sets appear: a little open research funded with a little public money, and lots of proprietary research funded with lots of private money.
I don't think it would be as complete as you imagine. There would be companies who would forego keeping results private to save the expense of building their own lab facilities and hiring people to run and work in them. That public resources can be used for private results is a back-door subsidy for commerce.
