[A2k] Steve Kolowich: presidents of 57 colleges endorsing the Federal research Access Act of 2009

[Manon Ress]

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/09/23/access

Open Letter on Open Access
September 23, 2009

The presidents of 57 liberal arts colleges released an open letter on
Tuesday endorsing the Federal Research Access Act of 2009, a bill
aimed at increasing public access to academic research that is funded
by the federal government.

The bill would require certain federal agencies -- those that fund
more than $100 million in extramural research annually -- to require
peer-reviewed journals that publish that research to make it available
for free on the Web after six months. It would be =93a major step
forward in ensuring equitable online access to research literature
that is paid for by taxpayers,=94 according to the presidents' letter.
The signatories note that both faculty who wish to stay current on
research and students who aspire to doctoral degrees stand to lose out
as academic journals grow prohibitively expensive.

It is not a new argument, nor is it a new bill. A similar piece of
legislation died in the Senate in 2006. Liberal arts presidents
belonging to the same library consortium (the Oberlin Group) wrote a
similar letter then, too.

But some open-access advocates see more cause for optimism this time
around. Since the last bill failed, the open access movement has
gained momentum. Congress passed a law in 2007 requiring articles on
research funded by the National Institutes of Health -- about a third
of all federally funded research -- to be made publicly available on
the Internet within a year of publication. Meanwhile, many professors
have opened up access to their own research, sometimes paying
publishers for the rights to do so. Last week, a coalition of five
elite universities took a groundbreaking step by pledging to
underwrite their faculty's efforts in this regard.

The current bill might be able ride that momentum to the president's
desk, said Ray English, director of libraries at Oberlin College.
=93There was a general feeling that the bill didn=92t have a great chance
at passing at when it was introduced in 2006,=94 said English. =93This
time, we anticipate that it will be introduced into the House of
Representatives. We also believe that the Obama administration has a
strong commitment to open access.=94

As usual, some publishers are leery of the bill. Martin Frank,
executive director of the American Physiological Society and
coordinator of the Washington D.C. Principles for Free Access to
Science, said the bill could cause some publishers to fold up shop
once their subscription revenue dries up. If certain publishing
societies are only allowed to own their content for six months before
the government throws open the gates, Frank said, it could compromise
the quality of their product, along with other activities such as
student scholarships.

The argument that taxpayers deserve access to the research they pay
for is not compelling, he added, since many journal subscribers are
from outside the country. =93The Internet does not respect national
borders,=94 Frank said. =93Right now, 50 percent of the subscribers to
[journals published by] the American Physiological Society are
foreign, and they currently pay for it. But [this bill] would allow
them to decide whether they really wanted to pay for it.=94
=97 Steve Kolowich

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Manon Ress
manon.ress@keionline.org
Knowledge Ecology International
1621 Connecticut Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20009 USA
Tel.:  +1.202.332.2670, Fax: +1.202.332.2673