 You know, you missed it. You missed it last night. It was Debbie Zimmerman's special LA at the convention center. It was fabulous. People came down by the collar. They came down from the science community, University of Hawaii. They came down from industry. They came down from the hotels and tourism and the HTA. You missed it. I'm sorry for you. And one of the guys who was there was Rocky Calvo. And he is the executive director. I get this right at the Electrochemical Society, which is a society that is the center of this whole thing lately last night. Welcome to our show, Rocky. Thank you very much. It's great to be here. Great to have you. I didn't meet you in person, but I saw you on this huge, big screen. And there you are, 10 by 10. That's right, a front man for the great city of Honolulu and Hawaii. Well, you have a very local style of that, so that's a compliment. So electrochemistry, when this thing first came up, when Debbie announced it in last year's Ailey meeting, it struck me. I didn't realize that electricity and chemistry, they're bonded at the hip. And one feeds the other. It's the movement of the electrons and the electrons move in a matter of chemistry. And you're at the center. Tell us what electrochemistry is. Well, you just defined it pretty well. It's electrical energy and chemical change and the interaction between those two things. And that leads to a lot of very interesting processes. We're in, it's a multidisciplinary science, obviously. So you see the chemistry piece. There's a big physics piece, electrical engineering, chem engineering, material science are all part of it. You're naming a lot of things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's good. It means confluence. It means collaboration. It means different disciplines coming together to find new frontiers they didn't find before. That's right. That's our job. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's fabulous. You must be in a very state of constant excitement, being the executive director of all that. Well, that's right. Those, a lot of electrons firing around all the time will do that to you. So how many members do you have? And what do they do around the world? We have 9,000 members. But our constituency is much larger than that because of all the different disciplines. So some people like to be a card-carrying member. Others publish with us, come to our meetings, and affiliate maybe more closely with some of the other professional societies that are out there in chemistry. And so, as I said, we have 9,000 members. And they're global. They're everywhere. They find them in every continent in the world. Mostly non-US, very heavy concentration in Europe and in Asia. It's one of the reasons we do regular meetings here in Hawaii. Perfect place. Perfect place. So there's a lot of activity here. And I just wonder if you could give us a handle on what the areas of research are that are at the frontier that we should all be excited about. Well, so the area now that we're, which is most active, which in our case usually means most well-funded in the research community, is energy conversion and storage. So we have people, certainly commercially successful, doing research in batteries. In fact, we just celebrated the 25th anniversary of the lithium ion battery. No kidding. You've never seen that before. Yeah, well, commercially when it first came out. And now we're all carrying it in our pocket in our phones. Even when they explode. Yeah, well, that's only the Samsung version. But there's a reason for that. They're trying to make them smaller and more powerful and longer-lasting. And there's a threshold that they've crossed. So they need to find maybe a new material to make it work better. Well, let's talk about graphene. I mentioned it to you before the show, because I'm fascinated with graphene. It's that one carbon atom thick membrane, so to speak. And it holds a charge. This is a tremendous prospect way beyond lithium ion. Right, right. I mean, a new material like that, my understanding of it is all kinds of applications. It's been likened to silicon. And so there's a huge upside potential in all of the different kinds of fields. Yeah, I always said, I'm seriously now, for the past five years anyway, I've always said that the guy who figures out storage, and that means electricity storage, is going to make Bill Gates look like a piker. He's going to be so rich. Well, that's right. And it's happening on your watch. You see those researchers out there working on that very issue, trying to make that work. Yeah, for me, I've been with the organization a long time. And some of the things that are happening now, in renewable energy and other places, should mention water sanitation. It's just a very special time period for the importance of the science in an area that I've been working on a long time. I mentioned the water, too, because we were recently funded by the Gates Foundation. OK, it's a pre-association here. Well, so we involved one of their program directors in a symposium, which is what we do. We ran a symposium on a topic related to water hygiene, specifically human waste, because there's electrochemical processes that can really help with that. And they tapped us on the shoulder and said, symposium was great, but help us find some people that can solve these problems. And so they funded a program that basically was designed to help them find solutions to human waste, create the electrochemical toilet, which actually exists. There's a group at Caltech that won an award for the electrochemical toilet. It's a fascinating thing. So is it physical, or chemical, or how does it work? Well, there's a lot of different solutions. The one that was most interesting to me, I'll give you an example of one, was a group. So they funded five different groups. The Gates Foundation is very interesting the way they operate. Very direct, very focused. They came to one of our meetings. They said, we want to do a workshop. We got some problems. We're going to show them to these folks. We're going to have them give us a short summary of what their solution is. Then we're going to bring them into the Shark Tank and see who's got one. And that's exactly what we did. You know, you have about three or four days. They had to look at the problem, come up with solution, and sell that to our panel. Yeah, a very, very uncommon thing to do at a professional meeting like ours. But we had the money and the Gates name behind it, and it worked very well. And anyway, they funded five groups. And all of them came up with something very interesting. And the one example that I'll give you is we have a lot of people working on fuel cells. And so they basically created a fuel cell to take the human waste with two byproducts, basically grow water and then a power source that you can create from the waste. And that's it, no waterless plumbing necessary. Now, you can't take that to the masses. Yeah, yeah. I'm inspired by what they do. They brought up a few of us to their headquarters and said, this is how we want to run this program. And this is why 2.5 billion people around the world do not have sanitary conditions. This will save their lives. Yeah, it's life changing. And then here are our folks, they have solutions. And as I said, it's hard to take that technology to the masses, but it's there. It's incredible. And it's great to have foundations like Gates pushing on that direction. Well, you know, Rocky, I've always felt at least the past 10, 20 years, since Bill Gates did the internet, actually, that science was accelerated by the ability to collaborate. And that means collaborate on the web. Before that, there were various efforts in the scientific community to collaborate. But it was slow, it was sluggish, it was hard, and you couldn't find things. Now, with Google and the web, you can find things. And if you publish something on the web, you can immediately have feedback, resonance, collaboration anywhere in the world. It's unbelievable the time we live in. And the greatest beneficiary of that is science, where you move it ahead at the frontier, pushing at the frontier. So this has changed things. I mean, it seems to me that science moves faster now than it ever did before in our lifetime in the world. And the question is, how can we make it move yet faster? And one of the points that we've talked about before the show is you need to publish if you're in science, just like in any other academic pursuit. And the question is whether the publishing process facilitates, appropriately facilitates, the science. You want to talk about that? Sure. Well, I couldn't have said it better. We have the greatest opportunity we've ever had to really just satisfy our mission. Mission is very simple. Disseminate research to advance the science. And we've always done that, very focused on how we do it and why is through our publications and our meetings, which is a personal dissemination. Sure, sure. Well, that's another way to facilitate communication. Right. And so all of a sudden, as you described, the digital revolution takes over. And then you have Google, and everything becomes incredibly discoverable. And we can disseminate research better than we ever have, except the model that's been set up to do it is essentially broken. It doesn't really facilitate taking advantage of the new technologies. And the reason is because dissemination of the highest end research, the peer review stuff that gets in all the elite journals, all the journals period, is redistributed through a subscription model. And that's the piece that's broken because a subscription model requires the scientist to submit to a journal, get accepted, and then published. And once that publication is available, it's part of a subscription, which are very, very expensive. And that breaks down the system because now people who can't afford it, and it's worse and worse, can't have access to very important research in medical science, at engineering disciplines, and world changing, life changing disciplines. Why don't they just spend the money? Because they don't have it. And the prices are getting higher and higher. There's a commercial element that's also evolved. So the majority of science publishing and medical publishing is really done through a handful of small commercial publishers that dominate the market and basically set the pricing. And so only very high-end universities can afford a lot of these subscriptions, and which means only the people at their universities have access to it. What I get is it stands in the way. And I'll give you my own professional experience. I'm an attorney by training and by, I say it to say, 50 years of practice. But in the beginning there were these, it was early on and it was sluggish, but you could do research online. And there were two or three publishing houses that would sell you subscriptions. And they were breathtakingly expensive. And all you're looking for is the statutes in your state, federal statutes, you're looking for cases hithering you on, you want it on precedent, whatnot. And it was really expensive. It still is if you use these subscriptions. Very expensive to get this information. So you could write your brief or do your research. Come the internet. See, it's different with the law and the science, I think. Interested in exploring that difference with you. So come the internet. Now you want to find a case. It's a lot easier. You go on Google, you see the news, you see the scientific rather than legal community is talking about a case. You can get the citation pretty easily. Nobody cares if you published in a fancy journal or not. Nobody cares where you got it. You got it and you got the citation and it's verifiable. So all of a sudden, the business of legal research has changed dramatically. The field has been leveled. It has been democratized. Even the one lawyer's shop now can get this legal research at free or cheap. And that has been a remarkable change. There are other changes in legal practice also, but that one is notable. So when I come to you and you tell me about these expensive journals that everybody has all this respect for, I say as a guy who has been in a democratized area of practice, I say, well, let me take a walk because you can put it on the web and who cares where it came from, who cares where it public. There's gonna be entrepreneurs out there who will develop credibility in the same fashion that these older model publishing companies have done and they will, see if you agree, they will ultimately rule the field, don't you think? And that's why we're calling this show Free the Science right here on Think Tech Energy. Well, we hope so. That's the strategy. It's not that easy in science. There are some obstacles because the community, you know, the high-end, the accomplished scientists, well, not just them, but the accomplished scientists have grown up in a system where they've provided their research to these publishers who've sold it through the subscription model and to get them to change and understand the importance of democratizing the science so that others can have it is an obstacle. And you know, which is why we've gone all the way out in a limb and with this whole idea of Free the Science, this mantra. So people understand at a deeper level that it's not that way. And there's a lot of people that are excluded from this conversation. And that is stifling the importance, or the advancement of important science in the renewable energies. We're already benefiting the world in humanity in general. Okay, now we've been talking to Rocky Calvo. He's the executive director of the Electrochemical Society, which plays a big role in energy. And we'll take a short break. We'll come back when we find out whether this is limited to matters of electrochemical research whether it's in all research and all countries whether it affects the global process of scientific research. We'll be right back. Hello, I'm Dean Nelson, host of Planet of the Courages. From a Tibetan point of view, we chose to be on this planet because we enrolled in a sort of graduate school for courage. Just that we may have chosen this adventure is a leap of logic. The question is, how do we spend and make sense of this precious human life? We are as a species extraordinarily successful dominating the planet and now with planetary-sized problems that our existence itself has created. It takes courage to face not only the uncertainty of life, but also the challenge of sustaining the gift of life for future generation. Join us every other Monday at 3 p.m. on Think Tech, Hawaii. Aloha. We're here with Rocky Calvo. He is the executive director of the Electrochemical Society, which was just fed yesterday, last night at the convention center at the, what is it, the LA meeting that was run by Debbie Zimmerman with 500 people in attendance was quite something. There you were on the screen. I remember that well. I love that meeting. I love the show. So it's not limited to electrochemical research, is it? No, it's not. And the grounds for support that started changing the game actually, it was started really through government initiatives in the U.S., Japan and England were some of the starters. And I want to say, oh, half a dozen years ago, I can't remember exactly, there was some mandates that were put in place to get us this point. And they were basically saying government research is not going to be sold this way. And we're going to start, the mandates are going to start having effect on all the different agencies. And this year is actually, they take place where? 2017. 2017, in October of this year, the scientists that are being funded by most of the agencies in the United States, their research will be required to be published in journals that provide open access to the research. And so that got the ball roll. Open access means free. Free, right, open access. So we, as a publisher of our science, we initiated this free to science campaign and one of the first things we did was we created this open access option for authors to start to. That's a great idea. So here's the problem. So we're doing it in our mainstream journals. But and so about 40 to 50% of our current submissions are coming from authors or open access. But we'll ultimately run into a problem with our subscribers because we still require the subscription revenue. And our subscribers are going to say, well, you're given half of it away for free. So eventually there may be some questions about that. But our subscribing institutions are very much in favor of this whole movement as well. And the movement has taken on partners. Some major foundations have funded an organization that we're partnering with called the Center for Open Science, who is eventually going to provide for us the platform for this discoverability and dissemination. So right now we have to pay a third party vendor to provide that for us. So there's an organization out there called Research for Life, who we've also partnered with. You mentioned democratizing this, right? They exist to do that because they have a foundation funding that says, you know, we're going to find these institutions that can't afford the subscriptions and we're going to help them get them. So by help, they're going to either pay for them or cut a deal with the publisher, whatever. In our case, there's 121 universities now that we hadn't been able to reach before that we're simply saying, here, here's our library. You can have our entire library. Well, that's great. That's great. Of course, you want it to be across the board, ideally, rather than on a selected basis or a need to know, a need to have basis where there's a subjective judgment being made on whether this individual university or organization needs it. That's right. You'd like to have everybody there. That's right. But let me ask you a contrary question for a minute, Rocky, and that is this. We have seen in that 20 years of the internet, we have seen all kinds of garbage on the internet where you don't know if it's true or not. And our friend, Mr. Trump, has capitalized on that by classifying things as fake. And if you're talking about science, you have a lot of people in the science community that want to have peer review, that want to be sure that their peers and everybody's peers have looked at this and can validate that, yes, it's good science. It's good process. These are serious people. They're not just fooling us. Now, if you take away the peer review or if you take away the money aspect here, arguably, and I want you to argue with me, arguably, you're removing that kind of validation process that where you can feel comfortable as to what's coming down the pike. Right. Yeah, so I will argue with you, although I think you're making a good point. You know, ultimately, I don't know where it goes, but having been part of the system in watching how it works, I think for us as a nonprofit publisher, the peer review process is still important for our constituents, because we're providing that filter that's saying, you know, when you see our brand and our name, it's through our journal, then you can have confidence that other scientists have looked at it. In fact, so you're providing both peer review and hopefully democratization. We are, but the issue is that peer review is slower and is an expensive process, still is, and whether ultimately this is something that, you know, the market won't need eventually is, I think, still in debate. I don't know where it goes. Yeah, that and every other validation that we found on the internet, we don't know where it's gonna go. Yeah, but I mean, can you, for example, turn around to the peers who review this and say, look, you know, we know you like to be paid, but can we pay you a little less this time? Can you do this as a matter of contribution, volunteer contribution or partial volunteer contribution to the common good of science? Free the science, would that work? It does. So we have an editorial board of very committed, very underpaid editors, and some of them have already made that commitment that you just described. Well, I'm very impressed and I think that it sounds to me that you're at the head of the game on this, that what you're doing, the electrochemical industry, is something that could be picked up by other such research organizations around the country and the world, and it's a movement that, in my view, is irresistible if you care about science, you'd wanna do this, you'd wanna change things so that it's more easily available. And that means we're in a movement that is probably gathering speed. Do you have indication, do you have indicators that suggest to you that it is gathering speed? Oh, there's no question. The model's changing. We've taken a fairly extreme position because we just felt it was our best option, almost as if we can't do it this way, not publishing in this peer-review system that exists is maybe something we can't do anymore. But there's all kinds of different intermediate steps, and another one that's had a lot of success, who is also a partner with us from the standpoint their publisher is on our advisory board for this whole initiative is the Public Library of Science. They started with a grant, a significant one, from the Gordon Moore Foundation. Gordon Moore is a famous member of the Electrochemical Society. Right, okay, all right. I hope you're writing this down. This is going to be on the final exam, I'm sure. And he lives in Hawaii, just, you know. But he seated them, his foundation seated them with some money around 2004, to publish an open access journal, which is of all the science disciplines, the Public Library of Science. And now they are the largest publisher of open access publications, journals in the world. And it's a very, very successful model for them. Now they sustain it by charging what they call author processing charges, which means the author has to pay them a certain fee to make this happen. And it's fair to me, he wants to be published. Right, right. And it takes the control, the subscription control, pricing control of the big publishers out of the formula. And as you said, it allows the author to independently make that decision. And so we do some of that. We still think that that creates a certain hardship for the author to charge APCs, author paid charge. So we're trying to get to a model where it's both completely free to both the author and the end user. Well, you know, I worry a little because this is at the front end, it's a frontier kind of thing. And hopefully it's gaining momentum, but you know, boards of organizations like the Electrochemical Society may change. Executives will change over time. Other boards may come in and other people, you know, maybe may have a different view of things going forward. And these big publishers are probably working hard to undermine or at least modify what you're doing so that they can stay in business or public companies. I mean, are you worried about the future? Is this the kind of thing where you have to keep on working on it, keep on advocating for it, talk to other organizations, talk to the scientific community. So don't forget how important it is. Absolutely, it's why I'm sitting here talking about it. Okay. No, I mean, change of eye job too. I, you know, I came through the system, the old system and here I am and we're trying to do this. And I just, I have a great belief that the scientific and medical communities, the authors will recognize the value of it. And somehow, despite the risks and the obstacles, you know, we'll be able to succeed. Well, maybe this reflects a kind of, the popularity of it reflects a kind of new dimension of new attitude about science in general. I, you know, I suspected before when it was ruled by these big publishing houses, it was more important to the scientist to get his name on the, on the front cover of the journal. And that was a big deal and it was gonna be for his career, his big name, his fame and all that. But now maybe a new generation is coming in and new generation says, you know, I'm not, I'm, I'm concerned about the science in general. I don't have to be rewarded big time. I don't have to be famous. And all I want to do is make a good contribution, you know, to world science. And maybe you have more people like that now. I think absolutely because they can see the opportunity, you know, it's working hand in hand. I think that that's always been the case with scientists. You know, they, they do what they do to make the world a better place. You know, I know so many of them. In the end, that's what they're trying to do. There are a lot of people aren't they? Right, yeah, no, that's why I've lived for them for so long, I have so much respect for that. And you see the transitions I mentioned one, I wanted to just, another story, just to show you how things are changing. There's a twist on things. There's a woman scientist in Kazakhstan of all places, right? And she's so adamant that what's happening with these, these subscriptions behind paywalls is so wrong. They went and they stole one of the major publishers, Body of Knowledge. Wow. Right? It was some staggering number of articles that they've made available on a website. You can look up it called Psyhub, right? And it's a band of websites, they use the word pirate on the, you know, right on the Psyhub, pirate website, you know, for scientists. The interesting thing about it is they have download information, they can see it, they can show who's using it and the staggering number of scientists, and not just from underdeveloped world, from the United States, from people are saying this science should be free, and if somebody can make it available to us that way, stolen or otherwise, cause it's not ethically correct. I, you know, I can't sit here and I, I certainly don't wanna say I support that necessarily, but that's the kind of thing that's happening out there. That's it, and that's the demand of it, and that's the scientific community respond to it, and the people who are listed there, they're proud to be involved, I think. Well, they understand that, you know, maybe what they're doing isn't exactly right, but the way the system's set up isn't exactly right either. Yes. Now, question, and this is my last question for you for the show, is what about the federal government? Federal government has supported and allowed these big publishers to create this, you know, this monopoly they have on some aspects of the scientific publishing market, but can the federal government change all this? Can't, you know, an enlightened official, a president, a congress fix all this in one stroke? Well, I think... You can talk to them, they're right there, check the red light, tell them what you think they ought to do. I don't think you can do it in one stroke, I understand that, but the federal government has already put in these mandates, I mentioned them before, they can insist that research that a federal, any government is funding should be available to the public. That's the right thing to do, and again, governments have taken those steps already. Thank you, Rocky. You're welcome. Rocky Chalo, so nice to talk to you. Aloha. Aloha.