Hot Type: Who Gets to See Published Research? - Research - The Chronicle of Higher Education

"The battle over public access to federally financed research is heating up again. The basic question is this: When taxpayers help pay for scholarly research, should those taxpayers get to see the results in the form of free access to the resulting journal articles? Actions in Washington this month highlight how far from settled the question is, even among publishers. A major trade group, the Association of American Publishers, has thrown its weight behind proposed new legislative limits on requiring public access, while several of its members, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's press, have publicly disagreed with that position. The White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy just closed a period of public comment on public access to what it called "peer-reviewed scholarly publications resulting from federally funded research." ...The MIT Press was the first to say it didn't agree with the association's endorsement of the bill. Other academic presses, including California's, have said the same. The Nature Publishing Group and Digital Science issued a joint statement last week saying that they do not support the Research Works Act....The American Association for the Advancement of Science, which publishes the journal Science, also issued a statement saying it is not in favor of the bill...."