Scientists whose medical research is funded by taxpayer dollars would not be allowed to publish their findings openly on the Internet if a bill sponsored by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) is made law.
The so-called “Fair Copyright in Research Works Act” (H.R. 801), would repeal the current National Institutes of Health (NIH) policy that requires government funded (i.e. taxpayer funded) research to be made available free of charge and free of most copyright rules. It also forbids other agencies from enacting open access policies of their own.
So why should you care? Well, because this ban on “open access publishing” would result in most government funded research being published exclusively in for-profit journals, essentially ensuring that citizens have to pay for the research twice; once to fund it and a second time to access it. It's akin to hiring a wedding photographer who then tries to sell you the pictures of the wedding individually after the event.
Open access advocates, along with 33 U.S. Nobel laureates in science, 46 law professors, the American Library Association, the Alliance for Taxpayer Access, and OhMyGov! oppose the bill. And one copyright law professor is furious about the proposed new law.
"It flies in the face of decades of research which shows the extraordinary multiplier effect of free access to information on the speed of scientific development,” said professor James Boyle.
The premise of the bill is that the open access policy violates copyright law, but critics say it is the result of special interest influence through campaign donations. A report by the transparency group MAPLight.org points out that Conyers and bill co-sponsors Steve Cohen (D-TN), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Darrell Issa (R-CA), and Robert Wexler (D-FL) received twice as much money from the publishing industry as those on relevant committees who are not sponsors.
Shady? Yes. Unusual for Congress? Of course not.
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