The Marketplace of Ideas Act

Draft legislation. Companion to the essay series A Marketplace of Ideas.

Section 1. Short Title

This Act may be cited as the “Marketplace of Ideas Act.”

Sec. 2. Findings and Purpose

(a) Findings. Congress finds that:

(1) Federal science funding rewards predicted impact over demonstrated impact, forcing researchers to spend a large share of their time seeking funds rather than producing discoveries.

(2) Peer review systematically penalizes novel and high-risk work, and undervalues replication and data collection, all of which are essential to scientific progress.

(3) The scientific community already identifies valuable work after the fact, through citation and recognition, more reliably than any funder predicts it beforehand.

(4) A reward tied to demonstrated impact, owned as transferable property, can draw private capital into research while leaving knowledge fully open.

(b) Purpose. To establish, alongside existing programs, a system that rewards scientific articles for their demonstrated impact; creates a property right to those rewards that carries no power to restrict knowledge; and is designed to remain resistant to manipulation as methods of gaming it evolve.

Title I: Reward Rights

Sec. 101. Definitions

(1) Corporation. The federally chartered nonprofit established under section 301.

(2) Director. The chief executive officer of the Corporation.

(3) Covered Scientific Article. A scientific article or dataset registered under section 103.

(4) Reward Right. The property right established under section 102: the right to receive Scientific Impact Rewards, and nothing more.

(5) Scientific Impact Reward. A payment made by the Corporation to the holders of a Reward Right under Title II.

(6) Owner. Any person or entity holding a Reward Right, in whole or in fractional share.

Sec. 102. Establishment of the Reward Right

(a) There is established a Reward Right in each Covered Scientific Article, consisting solely of the right to receive Scientific Impact Rewards.

(b) No monopoly. A Reward Right confers no power to restrict the use, reproduction, distribution, or extension of the article. All Covered Scientific Articles are open access for reading, citation, and reuse without permission.

(c) Transferability. A Reward Right is fully transferable and may be held in fractional shares allocated by contract among authors, institutions, and funders.

(d) Duration. A Reward Right does not expire. It continues to earn for as long as the article demonstrates impact under Title II.

Sec. 103. Registration

(a) The Director shall maintain a public registry of Covered Scientific Articles.

(b) Registration requires bibliographic information and a persistent identifier; a binding statement of fractional ownership; and public availability of the methods, data, and code underlying the work, or a justification for any restriction. A dataset may be registered as a Covered Scientific Article in its own right.

(c) An article must be registered within one year of first publication.

(d) Previously funded work. Articles published before enactment for which the National Science Foundation was a primary funder are designated Covered Scientific Articles, with the Reward Right vested in the Corporation. For such articles, only citations and allocations occurring after enactment shall count toward rewards, so that legacy work earns on continuing impact rather than on its history.

Title II: The Scientific Impact Reward Program

Sec. 201. Establishment

The Director shall carry out a Scientific Impact Reward Program to distribute appropriated funds to Owners, operating in parallel with the Corporation’s grant programs.

Sec. 202. Hybrid Impact Assessment

(a) Field pools. The Director shall divide program funds into pools by scientific field, each normalized to the citation and publication customs of its field, so that rewards are comparable across fields that differ in citation density.

(b) Impact-weighted citations. The Director shall by regulation establish a method for valuing citations under which the weight of a citation is a function of the measured impact of the citing article, so that a citation originating from an article of negligible measured impact carries negligible weight. The method shall be published in full, open to public comment, and revised not less than once every three years to counter manipulation.

(c) Confidential allocations. Not less than 40 percent of each field pool shall be distributed through an annual confidential allocation in which a representative sample of working scientists in the field assign a fixed budget, by secret ballot, to the Covered Scientific Articles that most influenced their own work.

(d) Calculation. Within each pool, an article’s reward is the sum of its weighted-citation share and its confidential-allocation share for that year.

(e) Anti-manipulation. The Director shall monitor for citation cartels, reciprocal arrangements, and coordinated allocation, and shall discount or disqualify rewards obtained through them.

Sec. 203. Replication Fund

(a) The Director shall maintain a Replication Fund, separate from the field pools, paying the authors of registered replication studies of Covered Scientific Articles on a published schedule, whether or not the replication confirms the original.

(b) The size of the Replication Fund is set by the Director within bounds set by Congress, so that the volume of replication can be adjusted directly rather than left to incidental citation.

Sec. 204. Data Contributions

Citing authors shall allocate a portion of their citation weight and confidential allocations to any Covered Dataset essential to their work, so that the producers of widely used data share in the rewards their data generates.

Sec. 205. Steering Authority

The Director may reweight the field pools to direct effort toward areas of national priority. Reweightings and their schedule shall be published in advance to the extent practicable, so that funders and investors may anticipate them.

Sec. 206. Fraud Bounties

(a) The Director shall establish a mechanism under which a person who produces evidence of fraud or misconduct sufficient to cause the retraction of a Covered Scientific Article receives a payment from the program.

(b) A payment under this section shall be charged against the Scientific Impact Rewards otherwise payable to the owners of the retracted article and, where applicable, to the editors and reviewers who approved it.

Title III: The National Science Foundation

Sec. 301. Reorganization

(a) One year after enactment, the National Science Foundation is reorganized as a federally chartered nonprofit corporation, the Corporation, governed by a Board of Directors that succeeds the National Science Board and led by a Director serving as chief executive officer.

(b) Powers. The Corporation may fund research, acquire and hold Reward Rights, receive Scientific Impact Rewards on the Rights it holds, and accept donations.

Sec. 302. Funding

(a) Because scientific knowledge is a public good, the Scientific Impact Reward Program is funded by ongoing appropriations. There are authorized to be appropriated such sums as may be necessary for each fiscal year.

(b) Where the Corporation funds research, it shall hold a Reward Right in that work proportional to its share of the cost, set by contract with the other funders.

(c) Rewards the Corporation earns on Rights it holds shall be reinvested in research and used to offset its appropriations. The Corporation competes for impact on equal terms with private funders, and its direct grantmaking is expected to recede as the private market matures. Nothing in this Act makes the Corporation independent of appropriations.

Sec. 303. Oversight

The Corporation shall report annually to the President and Congress on funds disbursed, observed effects on research trends, and detected manipulation. Its accounts are subject to audit by the Comptroller General.