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Congress May Kill NIH Open Access Research Rules
Savuka writes "A policy that mandates public, open access to all National Institutes of Health research is in danger. The House of Representatives is considering legislation that would change the open access policy to make it more publisher-friendly, under the false pretense of protecting copyrights. The Ars author paints the new legislation as somewhat reflective of a turf battle in Congress: 'The Intellectual Property Subcommittee clearly felt that it had been ignored during the original passage of the bill that compelled the NIH's open access policy...' The article concludes: 'Currently, the disruptions wrought by the Internet and expectations of open access are too new for a viable alternative to traditional publishing to have emerged. But it doesn't appear that the NIH policy is making a significant contribution to that disruption, and the benefits of the policy appear likely to be significant. If Congress rolls back that policy in response to disagreements with other countries over film piracy, then it could really be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.'"
You've left out another important factor. Publishers often charge the researchers that are providing the content "page charges" to defray publication costs. Researchers are willing to pay this fee (often hundreds of dollars for a single article) because success in their field is judged in part by the reputation of the journals in which they have published.
I think because of history.
When journals where paper based, they had an obvious cost.
Academics would write up their research, lets say on a typewriter. They send it to a journal (owned by a publisher). The journal would need to copy this, send it out to be peer reviewed, collect corrections from the peer reviewers, send them to the academic, collection revised copy from academic, and then set the article (and diagrams/images) out to be sent to printers. It would then need to be sent to subscribers around the world by post.
You can see the costs, and the work which the publisher undertook.
Now? of course all online, and I'm sure all can imagine the web based systems that make nearly all of this automatic (apart from laying out the pages, though some expect academics to write straight in to their MS Word template). The valuable work is the researcher (who may have taken years), the peer reviewers (the stamp which shows this is good research) and the editor. All of whom do not get paid by the publisher.
Meanwhile publishers have been increasing their costs by 10% or so a year, ever year, what once cost $1,000 is now$ 10,000, while adding in clauses and strings attached (you can only subscribe to journal A if you subscribe to our new but useless journal B).
And perhaps part of the problem is that those who see the problem (such a librarians, who get the flack from academics when they have to cancel journals because the cost has gone up and their budget hasn't) aren't those who can really change it (academics - who give their research 'away' for free - and senior university administrators).
Chris
You will forget this sig before you next see it
except all the reps in the article are Democrats - didn't someone post a chart with who supports who (copyright == mostly Democrats).
Bullshit.
The open access law that they are threatening to overturn wasn't enacted until December, 2007.
It never would've had a shot at becoming law in the first place when the Republicans were in charge of Congress.
Now, it's absolutely true that we (the voters) must be vigilant to make sure that the reforms we won in the 2006 election aren't eroded. We must also be vigilant that they aren't simply ignored (presumably in exchange for sex) by the executives we elect.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
BTW, if you want to view the subcommittee hearing, here's a link to it.
Also, don't /. it, I want to be able to watch it later tonight!
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
It depends on what you wanted access to, at least historically. Before the public access to publication initiative, NIH only really required that the data be made publicly available - i.e. if after reading a publication I wanted to look at the data from that publication for my own use, the lab I requested it from had to provide it (given that they had published it at that point). This is elaborated in NIH NOT-OD-03-032 and the NIH grant policy statement. Of course this all requires that I have access to the publication that talks about the data in the first place, so it was a bit of a chicken and egg problem.
So along came the initiative to make the publication itself open access (see the nih public access site for more info). Publishers are worried they'll lose cash, and thus the shitstorm you see in front of you.
CAPS LOCK IS THE CRUISE CONTROL OF AWESOMNESS
Write your representative
Let them know you're not happy about this mess.
They're using their grammar skills there.
check out plos.org :)
its not the end-all by any means, but a step in the right direction
Mod me down, and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Speaking as a scientist, part of the problem is that the system is admittedly broken but extremely entrenched.
In my field (Cognitive Psychology / Neuroscience) publishers do NOT typically charge page costs for printing, and so researchers did not request that the cost be covered by their grants (standard practice in fields that do require these page costs). Now, NIH says that research must be open access, but to defray the incredible costs in lost subscriptions for doing so, large publication houses are deciding that the best way to do so is by charging researchers page costs.
Would this be a problem if the legislation was written in such a way as to be progressive? No. But, as it currently stands, Journals want to charge researchers for publication - even if they don't have the money to pay for it. For example, suppose you researched the interaction of some protein and some drug as a post-doc while on an NIH funded grant that has subsequently expired - how do you afford to publish that research if you are currently funded by another institution or lab?
In theory, open-access research is great. You'll notice that it's not scientists who want closed access research - most of them have the majority of their work up on websites (flagrantly violating copyright, which they no longer own to their own work) because the journal would never dare attack a scientist (it would be terrible karma and invite a huge backlash). Scientists are incredibly pro-access. But, the business model is so broken that there's really no alternative unless the legislation carefully reworks the industry rather than simply changing the rules overnight, putting it into a blender, and hoping that what comes out is what you intended.
The other major problem, as a scientist, is that the large majority of work is really published for the scientific community and not for the layperson. It is simply a tragic fact that since the majority of Americans do not believe in Evolution, they do not need access to journals about Evolutionary Biology, nor would they understand the research if it was published there. Before people get up in arms - I know that there are plenty of good examples of places where people DO need access or could make use of access to publicly funded research and that it ought to be available (e.g., private radiology practices should have access to the best and newest in radiological findings, but these journal costs are so prohibitive that only the best libraries can afford them).
So, the business model is broken, the solutions to the business model are broken, and the rationale for fixing it is really just as broken. It's really a bad set of circumstances all around.