Published by
Zane Selvans on
March 2nd, 2009 in
journal, letters and public.
Tags: copyright, HR801, NIH, open access, plos, politics, PubMed, science, transparency.
Dear Congressman Schiff,
I note that you are on the House Judiciary Committee, which is currently considering H.R. 801, sponsored by John Conyers (D, MI), and entitled the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act. I also notice, courtesy of MAPLight.org, that you received $6,000 from the publishing industry in the most recent election cycle, which is actually more than the average received by those representatives who co-sponsored the bill.
Continue reading ‘Letter to Adam Schiff on Open Access Publishing’
A bill duplicitously entitled the “Fair Copyright in Research Works Act” (HR 6845) has been introduced in congress with the goal of prohibiting federal science funding agencies such as the NIH, NSF, NASA, etc. from making their grants contingent upon open access to the published results. Currently, a large proportion of federally funded biomedical research comes with a requirement that the results be listed in the Open Access PubMed database. Proponents of Open Access journals have seen this policy as an example of the way things should work – publicly funded research should have publicly accessible results – but now this system, and progress in that direction, is in jeopardy. HR 6845 would prohibit any federal funding agency from making their funds contingent on public access to the results.
The bill has been referred to the House judicial committee. Our representative, Adam Schiff, is on the committee. If you support open access to scientific publications – especially publicly funded scientific research, please contact him and tell him to oppose the bill. Senator Feinstein is on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and should also be contacted.
More information including background on the NIH open access policy can be found at the Alliance for Taxpayer Access. You can track the bill’s progress at OpenCongress.org. If you do call, write, fax, or e-mail your representative or senator, please e-mail Jennifer McLennan (jennifer [at] arl [dot] org) and let her know.
