[Ip-health] FYI: Washington Post story on Open Access to Research Funded by U.S.

[Manon Ress]

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[ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]
Open Access to Research Funded by U.S. Is at Issue
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/31/
AR2007103102668.html

By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 1, 2007; Page A02

A long-simmering debate over whether the results of government-funded
research should be made freely available to the public could take a
big step toward resolution as members of a House and Senate
conference committee meet today to finalize the 2008 Department of
Health and Human Services appropriations bill.

At issue is whether scientists funded by the National Institutes of
Health should be required to publish the results of their research
solely in journals that promise to make the articles available free
within a year after publication.

The idea is that consumers should not have to buy expensive
scientific journal subscriptions -- or be subject to pricey per-page
charges for nonsubscribers -- to see the results of research they
have already paid for with their taxes.

Until now, repeated efforts to legislate such a mandate have failed
under pressure from the well-heeled journal publishing industry and
some nonprofit scientific societies whose educational activities are
supported by the profits from journals that they publish.

But proponents -- including patient advocates, who want easy access
to the latest biomedical findings, and cash-strapped libraries
looking for ways to temper escalating subscription costs -- have
parlayed their consumer-friendly "public access" message into
legislative language that has made it into the Senate and House
versions of the new HHS bill.

That has set the stage for a last-minute lobbying showdown.

"There's been loads of debate and discussion, and at last it's going
forward," said Heather Joseph, executive director of the Scholarly
Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, a Washington-based
library group. She has been a persistent presence on Capitol Hill,
making the case for open access.

Joseph and other supporters of the initiative have argued that
subscription rolls would not plummet as a result of the requirement.
Most journals contain plenty of research from non-NIH scientists,
which would still be available only to subscribers, they say. And in
any case, they contend, most scientists and libraries would not want
to wait a year just to see research results free of charge.

They also point to the growing number of scientific journals that
have switched to the open-access model, in which expenses are covered
not by subscriptions but by fees charged to scientists whose work the
journals publish. Such costs are usually covered by scientists' grant
money.

Scientists assert that open access will speed innovation by making it
easier for them to share and build on each other's findings.

"Congress recognizes that, in the Internet age, unimpeded access to
publicly funded research results is essential for the advancement of
science and public health," said NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni.

A two-year-old policy encouraging, but not requiring, NIH-funded
scientists to publish in open-access journals has not had much impact
on where scientists send their manuscripts, in part because many of
the most prestigious journals have not adopted the open approach.

Opponents say that the economics of the open-access model are still
experimental and tenuous, and that some open-access journals are
dependent on philanthropic-foundation money to balance their books.
They also contend that the approach raises copyright issues.

"I think there are some very serious questions to examine as to
whether this is an unwarranted government intrusion into the private-
sector publishing industry," said Allan R. Adler, vice president for
legal and government affairs at the Association of American
Publishers, which has organized efforts to quash the movement.

Adler criticized proponents for attaching the language to an
appropriations bill instead of going through formal hearings. And he
said new programs designed to gently push federally funded
researchers toward open-access journals should be given more time to
work.

With both Senate and House appropriation committee chairmen in favor,
the language requiring the change would normally be virtually
assured, despite a recent negative White House pronouncement. But
Hill watchers said that -- given President Bush's threat to veto the
bill for budgetary reasons and the likelihood of a continuing
resolution, which would not have the new language -- it is too soon
for the open-access movement to publish a victory paper.


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Manon Anne Ress
manon.ress@keionline.org,

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Il vaut mieux remuer une question, sans la d=E9cider, que la d=E9cider,
sans la remuer.
Pens=E9es, essais, maximes et correspondance de J. Joubert  p.249
http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/Visualiseur?Destination=3DGallica&O=3DNUMM-88671
Translation: It is better to debate a question without settling it
than to settle a question without debating it