Transferring taxpayer money to private companies
The GOP seems to be on a mission to divert as much taxpayer money as possible to private companies through various devices—the open-ended, no-bid, cost-plus contracts that Cheney loved to give to the company in which he held large amounts of stock, for example. Or the enormous numbers of X-ray machines being put in our airports regardless of the threat to public health simply in order to make a manufacturer wealthy.
The trick Bob Grant reports in The Scientist is cute: the taxpayer pays for research, but then the findings cannot be published except by private companies, who charge for access. The GOP loves this idea: giving money to big companies, that’s what the GOP is all about. The story:
US Representatives Darrel Issa (R-CA) and Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) introduced a bill into the House of Representatives in mid-December that would roll back the National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy, which mandates that any published research that was funded by the federal science agency be submitted to the publically accessible digital archive PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication in journals. The bill, H.R. 3699, would also make it illegal for other federal agencies to adopt similar open-access policies.
The legislation, referred to as the Research Works Act, is being applauded by the Association of American Publishers, a book publishing industry trade organization that claims the NIH policy and others like it undercut the scientific publishing business, which seldom receives federal funds. “At a time when job retention, US exports, scholarly excellence, scientific integrity, and digital copyright protection are all priorities, the Research Works Act ensures the sustainability of this industry,” said Tom Allen, president and CEO of the Association of American Publishers in a statement.
But taxpayer advocacy groups, such as the Alliance for Taxpayer Access, oppose the bill and are encouraging members of the public to do the same. “Supporters of public access need to speak out against this proposed legislation,” the Alliance wrote in a statement urging opposition of the bill. “Your support for public access to the published results of the research we pay for is critical – and appreciated!”
The Research Works Act is the latest push in a series of efforts to reverse the NIH’s open-access policy that started soon after the agency enacted it in 2008. The Fair Copyright in Research Works Act (H.R. 6845)—introduced by Issa and Representatives John Conyers (D-MI), Tom Feeney (R-FL), and Robert Wexler (D-FL) in September 2008—languished in legislative purgatory in the House. Conyers resurrected the act (this time called H.R. 801), along with Issa, Wexler, Maloney, and Representatives Steve Cohen (D-TN), Chaka Fattah (D-PA), and Trent Franks (R-AZ) in February 2009, but that bill, an exact replica of its predecessor, still lingers in committee, according to Congressional records.
The current incarnation, referred to the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, of which Issa is chair.
See:
“Research Works Act H.R.3699:
The Private Publishing Tail Trying To Wag The Public Research Dog, Yet Again”
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/867-guid.html
EXCERPT:
The US Research Works Act (H.R.3699): “No Federal agency may adopt, implement, maintain, continue, or otherwise engage in any policy, program, or other activity that — (1) causes, permits, or authorizes network dissemination of any private-sector research work without the prior consent of the publisher of such work; or (2) requires that any actual or prospective author, or the employer of such an actual or prospective author, assent to network dissemination of a private-sector research work.”
Translation and Comments:
“If public tax money is used to fund research, that research becomes “private research” once a publisher “adds value” to it by managing the peer review.”
[Comment: Researchers do the peer review for the publisher for free, just as researchers give their papers to the publisher for free, together with the exclusive right to sell subscriptions to it, on-paper and online, seeking and receiving no fee or royalty in return].
“Since that public research has thereby been transformed into “private research,” and the publisher’s property, the government that funded it with public tax money should not be allowed to require the funded author to make it accessible for free online for those users who cannot afford subscription access.”
[Comment: The author's sole purpose in doing and publishing the research, without seeking any fee or royalties, is so that all potential users can access, use and build upon it, in further research and applications, to the benefit of the public that funded it; this is also the sole purpose for which public tax money is used to fund research.]”
H.R. 3699 misunderstands the secondary, service role that peer-reviewed research journal publishing plays in US research and development and its (public) funding.
It is a huge miscalculation to weigh the potential gains or losses from providing or not providing open access to publicly funded research in terms of gains or losses to the publishing industry: Lost or delayed research progress mean losses to the growth and productivity of both basic research and the vast R&D industry in all fields, and hence losses to the US economy as a whole.
What needs to be done about public access to peer-reviewed scholarly publications resulting from federally funded research?
The minimum policy is for all US federal funders to mandate (require), as a condition for receiving public funding for research, that: (i) the fundee’s revised, accepted refereed final draft of (ii) all refereed journal articles resulting from the funded research must be (iii) deposited immediately upon acceptance for publication (iv) in the fundee’’s institutional repository, with (v) access to the deposit made free for all (OA) immediately (no OA embargo) wherever possible (over 60% of journals already endorse immediate gratis OA self-archiving), and at the latest after a 6-month embargo on OA.
It is the above policy that H.R.3699 is attempting to make illegal…
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/867-guid.html
Stevan Harnad (@AmSciForum)
12 January 2012 at 7:30 pm