Enterprise Efficiency - Ivan Schneider - Researchers With Attitude

“As legislation goes, the proposed Research Works Act(RWA) is mercifully short... Despite their brevity, these proposed provisions have created an outsized uproar in the academic community. Thousands of professional academics assembled under the Cost of Knowledge banner are leading a boycott of the Amsterdam academic publisher Elsevier, which has been one of the RWA’s primary champions and a target of complaints regarding high subscription prices and bundling of journals to academic libraries. Elsevier’s response is that it’s simply defending the sustainability of the peer-review process... The RWA would change the terms under which government funding agencies could insist on secondary publication rights... A competing bill, the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA), would take the law in the opposite direction. It would require federal agencies to develop public access policies that reduce the publisher exclusivity window to six months, with provisions for guaranteed free online public access and long-term preservation of published research. I don’t like either of these bills. They’re both one-size-fits-all... Looking at this from the point of view of an enterprise IT professional, the overriding principle should be the maximization of innovation and advancement in technology, which in turn creates opportunities for higher productivity and economic growth. These objectives would be best served by enabling the highest degree of latitude in contracting among government agencies, researchers, universities, and academic publishers... Personally, I’d enjoy increased public access to online research... Yet what right do I have to insist on immediate, free access to the fruit of someone’s academic labors, even if my tax dollars helped pay for it? My taxes also paid for fighter jets and tanks, yet I don’t get to take a joyride in those... Government agencies should set whatever terms and conditions they deem appropriate. The only constraint should be the public interest managed with sufficient transparency...”