April 2020 - 30

APRE and Potatoes USA move to bring
research further into public view
Rarely do tales
POTATOES USA
Ben Harris
Research Associate
Manager
from the Dark Ages
shed light on modern
trends in health and
science, but the
(entirely true) legend
of the Potato King is
a notable exception
to this rule.
Back in the days
of the Bubonic
Plague, potatoes
were woefully
misunderstood by
the general populace. People suspected
they were agents of horrific ailments like
leprosy, and fear spread like wildfire. Fueling
this paranoia was, as is often the case, a
pervasive atmosphere of secrecy and hearsay.
Then along came Frederick the Great, ruler
of Prussia, who devised an elaborate ruse
to trick his royal subjects into embracing the
spud. He planted a potato crop and installed
sentries to pretend to keep watch over the
fields around the clock. In reality, the guards
had been instructed to let the townspeople
sneak past them and make off with tubers.
The monarch's masterful use of reverse
psychology enhanced the appeal of potatoes,
removed barriers to accessing them and
encouraged their widespread adoption in the
nation's agricultural ecosystem.
In 1744, Frederick ordered potato seed to
be distributed to every corner of his kingdom -
another wise move, as scholars have attributed
Prussia's ability to ride out the Seven Years War
to its ample stores of spuds.1
Had rulers like Frederick elected, instead,
INDUSTRY NEWS
EPA ADDRESSING ENDANGERED SPECIES-PESTICIDE
METHODOLOGY
The Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) announced in March a new method
for conducting biological evaluations (BEs)
under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said the
method will bring " pesticide assessment
into the 21st century. "
" EPA's improved methodology will
30
Spudman.com
better protect and promote the recovery
of endangered species while ensuring
pesticide registration review decisions are
conducted in a timely, transparent manner
and are based on the best available
science, " he added.
Visit epa.gov/pesticides for more
information.
3
to wall off potatoes and their wonderous
benefits from the wider world, there's no
telling how much darker those ages might
have been.
Today, paywalls have taken the place of
castle walls, and the diffusion of data in
the cloud has become just as important
as the flow of physical commodities across
geographic space, yet the moral of the story
remains much the same: good things come
from open access.
This is why Potatoes USA is funding the
decision by the Alliance for Potato Research
and Education (APRE) to make its repository
of information on potato nutrition available
for public " consumption " (figuratively and
literally speaking), beginning in 2020.
Aside from the obvious advantages of
open access (OA), general readers gain
an unrestricted view to the full breadth of
analysis on potato nutrition, enabling more
evidence-based dietary decisions - there
are knock-off effects as well. Reproducibility
improves under an OA system because
researchers can readily read and build
upon one another's results, breaking down
needless siloes and fostering collaboration,
constructive feedback and innovation.
If free-to-read articles in the Agricultural
Sciences receive up to 600% more
citations than subscription-only pieces -
and success in academic scholarship is
measured in the number of eyes reached
and engaged - it doesn't seem to pay
much at all to put up a wall.2
This is particularly true in the era of social
media, when keeping an article confined to a
single journal amounts to lost opportunities
for significant visibility.
As far as the concern that cracking open
the enclaves of research will cheapen
scholarship by lessening incentives and
creating lower quality standards, the
evidence points to the contrary: heightened
transparency - the knowledge that their
studies will be in broader circulation -
prompts researchers to adhere to greater
rigor and documentation in their methods.
There are strong signals that the world
continues to move away from a guarded
publishing model, one that gives far too
much credence to the concept of an " Ivory
Tower. " In February 2019, The University of
California system announced intention to
cancel the $11 million annual subscription
to Elsevier, the world's largest publisher of
academic journals (with an ownership of
around 3,000 journals).
The media outlet Vox, reporting on this
development, declared it a gesture that could
" herald a revolution in the way science is
shared around the world. " 3
But perhaps it's not
so much a revolution as a return to our roots:
the days of the past when, like the Potato King,
we freely sowed the seeds of knowledge.
Visit APRE.org for more information.
SOURCES:
1
Niemann, C. (2012). The Legend of
the Potato King. The New York Times.
Retrieved from https://niemann.blogs.
nytimes.com/2012/10/11/the-legend-ofthe-potato-king/.
2
Tennant,
J. P., Waldner, F., & Jacques,
D. C. et al (2016). The academic,
economic and societal impacts of Open
Access: an evidence-based review. The
Academic, Economic and Societal Impacts
of Open Access: an Evidence-Based
Review, F1000 Research(5). Retrieved
from https://f1000research.com/
articles/5-632/v3.
Resnick, B., & Belluz, J. (2019). The war
to free science: how librarians, pirates,
and funders are liberating the world's
academic research from paywalls. Vox.
Retrieved from https://www.vox.com/
the-highlight/2019/6/3/18271538/
open-access-elsevier-california-sci-hubacademic-paywalls
http://www.APRE.org https://www.niemann.blogs http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/11/the-legend-of https://www.f1000research.com/ https://www.vox.com/ http://www.epa.gov/pesticides http://www.Spudman.com
April 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of April 2020
