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New Bill Would Repeal NIH Open Access Policy
pigah writes "The Fair Copyright in Research Works Act has been reintroduced into Congress. The bill will ban open access policies in federal agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH). These policies require scientists to provide public access to their work if it has been funded with money from an agency with an open access policy. Such policies ensure that the public has access to read the results of research that it has funded. It appears that Representative John Conyers (D-MI), the author of the bill, is doing the bidding of publishing companies who do not want to lose control of this valuable information that they sell for exorbitant fees thereby restricting access by the general public to an essentially public good."
The President does not set the budget. He may suggest what he wants, but it is CONGRESS who holds the purse strings
The Budget is a law that the President may veto. During the years when Republicans ran all three branches of government (with of course the usual level of compromise in the Senate as they never had the 60 votes), Bush NEVER vetoed anything. He exerted no discipline over his own party, pretty mortgaging whatever political capital he had to get funding for his war.
Better take a look who was in charge of Congress during those years.
Republicans were. That's why there were so many independents that remembered Clinton's balanced budgets who voted for Obama, hoping he would continue the Clintonian fiscal restraint and prudent government. Clinton actually identified the budget deficit as an obstacle to economic recovery in 1991 and he was right to close that gap. By taking new Treasuries off of the market, investors had to look for other places to put their capital and they put it in the stock market. Now, the government borrows money hand over fist, the money goes there, and now we see completely economic irrationality when companies like Intel and Microsoft, that essentially have monopolies in growth industries, pay dividends, make profits hand over fist, and still wind up getting their market valuation tanked.
This is my sig.
Republicans cost FAR more. Do some research: U.S. government debt. During the administration of George W. Bush, 5 trillion dollars of debt was added to U.S. government debt.
Ummm... try again. The President does not set the budget. He may suggest what he wants, but it is CONGRESS who holds the purse strings. Better take a look who was in charge of Congress during those years.
And Republicans held a majority in Congress for six of those eight years, and notoriously did whatever the President wanted. This does not bolster your counter-argument.
Top journals like Science and Nature have gotten much better with copyright, allowing authors to maintain copyright over their papers, and releasing content for free after some time (usually ~12 months). Also, personal subscriptions to the top journals (honestly, i don't know of anyone who reads through whole journals other than science, nature, and maybe 1 specialty journal) come down to $5 per issue. It tends to be the small specialists journals and publishers that get nasty with copyright. One of these publishers made us jump through hoops for permission to reprint a figure from an older review in a newer one. The best part is that we were publishing the new review with the same publisher! Also, does anyone know if the current open access policy covers review papers? Those would be of most value to the average taxpayer I believe.