I'm not so sure about allowing for private research repos. As a former scientist, incentivising siloization seems to be the wrong direction; if they want it, they should pay for it. A normal micro plan is cheap enough that it won't break the wallet of a researcher.
As long as society continues to reward individuals for generating new research, individuals will, out of necessity, keep their research materials private until they have finished extracting personal gain from it. Otherwise they would go through all the pain of working on a problem only to have someone swoop in 10% before it's complete and cross the finish line holding a borrowed baton.
If it's done in the open, it's pretty trivial to figure that out and the person who swooped in runs the risk of being shamed. The few egregious cases of this I can think of (Leo paquette and Armando Cordova) only were able to operate because of siloed work and secrecy; and still they got exposed.
Open access to your scratch work while you're working is a ticket to getting scooped or to having people form misinformed and incomplete perspectives of what you're working on.
Private repos are the only way that my group is willing to use GitHub. Upcoming federal requirements may force us to divulge all of our code in the future. That's a very hard sell to the professors.
There's a big difference between publishing a paper, where, in some cases, every character has been vetted multiple times by every author, and opening your entire codebase and raw data to the world. Fully documenting and characterizing everything for external consumption adds a large burden to the task of publishing. It may be worthwhile, and perhaps even essential, but it requires a lot of effort that could be directed toward further research.
From a social perspective, opening up your data gives lots of angles of attack for others. (See the difference in interpretation of gamma rays from the galactic center from Fermi/LAT between the telescope collaboration and outsiders, for a topical example). Again, it may be healthy to open everything, but if you've spent 5-10 years trying to build an unassailable measurement, handing out every last bit of dirty laundry to your critics can be daunting. Science ultimately reaches the truth, but it's a lot easier to get tenure if your measurement isn't controversial.
Im not sure I agree with this, especially when you want to get your lab to switch at first. The fact that its free is a huge bonus to get my lab to "just try it"
As a current scientist, I have mixed feelings. I'm a neutron scatterer and at an increasing number of facilities, our raw data is available to the public as we take it (or after an embargo period) unless it's proprietary (that is, someone like GM is paying to use the facility). Personally, I think this is a good thing if someone needs to check a result later. It's also convenient for accessing data after an experiment (we have a model where scientists go to different facilities to perform experiments).
I do try to put code out in public repositories, but I will say that often what stops me isn't a question of a competitive edge, but rather the fact that my code is ugly. For example, I have developed a small code (relatively slow) that calculates an instrument resolution. I wrote it back when I was first learning python and it is truly ugly and there are a number of things I would do differently today if I had more time. Recently, someone from another facility asked for it and I had some reluctance because of that ugliness. Eventually, I just made a git repository and pointed them at it (along with an offer to help if they got stuck) because I realized that otherwise it would never get out.
However, I have met people who refuse to share their code and figure that it's an easy way for them to get added to a paper...
BUT--I will say that while I'm working on a paper, it's an entirely different story. I wouldn't want to put code that's being used to reduce a specific set of data (along with the data) out in the wild before the paper was accepted. I would say the same thing for drafts of the actual paper, grant applications, etc. That would seem like asking to get scooped.
As for the question of it breaking the bank--I do pay for private repos, but if you want to change the practice of people just swapping files back and forth, then the barrier to entry needs to be extremely low....
On a final note, I will say that my facility does develop code for general use and we do put it out on github/googlecode, but that's different than "adhoc" code...
Why are you so afraid of getting scooped? You put your data out there on a repository. A third party has managed time stamps on your data. Jerkface 'scoops' you. Then you complain, prove that you didn't steal it from me. They don't have their data in a public repository. They lose.
While keeping everything public is probably good for bioinformatics projects that focus just on building tools, it would be disastrous for other areas of research where revealing a particular gene under investigation or specific genomic locus may result in loss of credit. This problem must be fixed at the publication, CV, and tenure committee level, not by GitHub.
well, I'm not a bioinformaticist (as a matter of fact my personal intent is to develop pharmaceuticals in the public), but I do see it as a chicken and egg problem, in other words, it's possible for github to become an instrument for that change.
I applied for the discount and they asked for my graduation date. I presume that they will remove the discount after the given year. Not sure about the permanent positions, though.
Edit: Github approved my discount and gave me a coupon for 2 years (even though I will graduate later than that).
