Publishers Back Bill to Ban Public Access Mandates to Federally Funded Research

Connotea Imports 2012-07-31

Summary:

"The bill, however, has awakened public access advocates, and sparked a strong response. On his blog, Duke University Scholarly Communication Officer Kevin Smith said he was “stunned by the audacity” of Allen’s claim that research articles are “produced” by private sector publishers. “I think the producers of these works are sitting at desks and labs scattered around my campus, and thousands of other college and university campuses,” Smith wrote. “We cannot say it often enough. The intellectual work for scholarly publications is done by academics, not publishers. They own the copyright in those works up until they are asked to transfer it to the publisher as a condition of publication. And if publishers persist in interfering with that copyright ownership and insisting that scholars cannot take advantage of the tremendous opportunities that digital technologies offer, the solution is to stop giving them those copyrights.” U.C. Berkeley scientist Michael Eisen, a strong advocate of open access, has called on the University of California Press to quit the Association of American Publishers over the the group's efforts to block public access provisions. “The [UC] Press should denounce this bill and suspend its membership in the AAP until it reverses its opposition to the NIH Public Access policy. If it does not, the University must terminate their relationship immediately,” Eisen wrote, saying that the press, through its membership in AAP, was “complicit in this atrocious effort to place the private interests of a small number of publishers ahead of the public good.” Officials at the major library organizations have vowed to track the bill, but as the battle heats up, the Research Works Act appears to be facing an uphill battle in Congress. In 2010, Congress introduced the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA), which would do the opposite of the Research Works Act: it would mandate public access to publicly-funded research...."

Link:

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/50126-publishers-back-bill-to-ban-public-access-mandates-to-federally-funded-research.html

Updated:

01/18/2012, 20:34

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » Connotea Imports

Tags:

ru.no oa.new oa.comment oa.usa oa.legislation oa.negative oa.rwa oa.nih oa.copyright

Authors:

petersuber

Date tagged:

07/31/2012, 11:51

Date published:

01/17/2012, 22:12