[A2k] Major society publisher announces support for public access

[Manon Ress]

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[ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]
Alliance for Taxpayer Access
www.taxpayeraccess.org
Media Advisory
For Immediate Release
February 6, 2007

Contacts:
Jennifer McLennan
Director of Communications,
SPARC
jennifer@arl.org
(202) 631-8854
Kevin Wilson
Public Policy Director,
ASCB
kwilson@ascb.org
(301) 347-9300

Major society publisher announces support for public access
to scientific literature

Washington, DC (Feb. 6, 2007) - The American Society for Cell Biology
(ASCB), a non-profit scientific society of over 11,000 members and
publisher of the high-impact monthly journal, Molecular Biology of
the Cell, has announced its "Position on Public Access to Scientific
Literature," calling for free public access to federally funded
research within six months of publication. ASCB has provided free
access (after a two-month embargo) to research published in its
journals since 2001 and has experienced no adverse impact on its
finances.

The ASCB statement, which was announced in a January 31, 2007 press
release, reads:

ASCB Position on Public Access to Scientific Literature

The ASCB believes strongly that barriers to scientific communication
slow scientific progress. The more widely scientific results are
disseminated, the more readily they can be understood, applied, and
built upon. The sooner findings are shared, the faster they will lead
to new scientific insights and breakthroughs. This conviction has
motivated the ASCB to provide free access to all of the research
articles in Molecular Biology of the Cell two months after
publication, which it has done since 2001. The articles are available
both on the journal's website and in the National Library of
Medicine's online archive, PubMed Central.

The vast majority of the biomedical research conducted at American
universities and colleges is funded by taxpayers. The ASCB believes
that taxpayers are best served when all scientists, educators,
physicians, and members of the public - including patients and their
families - have access to publicly funded research results. So long
as significant access barriers remain, taxpayers are not fully
benefiting from the work that they fund. With the proliferation of
networked technology, we have an unprecedented and cost-effective
means to overcome such barriers. For the first time, it is possible
and practical to offer free access to every potential user. It is
incumbent upon us, as scientists and citizens, to take full advantage
of this opportunity.

Some publishers argue that providing free access to their journal's
content will catastrophically erode their revenue base. The
experience of many successful research journals demonstrates
otherwise; these journals make their online content freely available
after a short embargo period that protects subscription revenue. For
example, as noted above, the content of Molecular Biology of the Cell
is free to all after only two months, yet the journal remains not
only financially sound, but profitable. The data clearly show that
free access and profitability are not mutually exclusive.
Our goal should be to make research articles freely available as soon
as feasible so that science and the public benefit from their
expanded use and application. At the same time, it is important that
nonprofit societies and other publishers generate sufficient revenues
to sustain the costs of reviewing and publishing articles. We believe
that a six-month embargo period represents a reasonable compromise
between the financial requirements of supporting a journal and the
need for access to current research.
For these reasons, the ASCB supports efforts to require that the
results of federally funded biomedical research be made freely
available to the public, no more than six months after they are
published.
[statement ends]

The statement, which is available online at http://ascb.org/index.cfm?
navid=10&id=1968&tcode=nws3, bolsters the case for a mandatory
National Institutes of Health public access policy and for passage of
The Federal Research Public Access Act, a measure that would require
federal agencies that fund over $100 million in annual external
research to make manuscripts of peer-reviewed journal articles
stemming from that research publicly available via the Internet
within six months of publication. The bill was introduced last year
by Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) and Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and
awaiting reintroduction in the 110th Congress (For further
information about the legislation, see http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/
frpaa/).

###
The Alliance for Taxpayer Access is a coalition of patient, academic,
research, and publishing entities that support open public access to
the results of federally funded research, including passage of the
Federal Research Public Access Act. The Alliance was formed in 2004
to urge that peer-reviewed articles on taxpayer-funded research
become fully accessible and available online at no extra cost to the
American public. Details on the ATA may be found at http://
www.taxpayeraccess.org.


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Manon Anne Ress
manon.ress@cptech.org,
www.cptech.org

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