Reward Rights
We propose a system where scientists, their investors, their universities, and others who meaningfully contribute retain a form of intellectual property over their published articles, similar in spirit to patents or copyrights but with none of the monopolization or litigation. We can call this intellectual property a Reward Right, the term used in the accompanying draft legislation. Once it is in place, governments and foundations can reward the scientific impact of articles directly, leaving the funding of science production to a free market that springs up to compete for those rewards, in the manner of Advance Market Commitments and funding through prizes.
A Reward Right would differ from a conventional patent in crucial ways. It pays royalties rather than granting a monopoly: articles are valuable because supporters of science pay rewards based on measured impact, but no one needs the owners' permission to use or reproduce the work. Articles published under it can be distributed, copied, built upon, and used for free without restriction. Unlike patents, they give owners no legal right to monopolize their ideas or sue anyone. The Right is purely a contract for distributing the monetary rewards that governments and foundations give to impactful science.
It would also be indefinite. As long as an article continues to generate valuable citations, it would remain a source of income for its owners, which strongly incentivizes foundational, paradigm-shifting research.
The rest follows from treating it as ordinary property. Ownership could be held in fractional shares, split by contract among the authors and everyone who backed them. It could be bought and sold like any patent or copyright, so a scientist who wants cash now can sell future rewards to someone willing to wait. And like a patent, it would require full disclosure of methods and data to be valid: you cannot collect on science you will not show, which quietly rewards the data collection that Part I found so badly neglected.
Next: Measuring Impact