A bill recently introduced in the House of Representatives, H.R. 3699 – the Research Works Act, would prevent federal agencies such as the National Institutes of Health from requiring that articles resulting from the research they fund be made publicly available.  The bill reads, in part:

“No Federal agency may adopt, implement, maintain, continue, or otherwise engage in any policy, program, or other activity that–

(1) causes, permits, or authorizes network dissemination of any private-sector research work without the prior consent of the publisher of such work; or

(2) requires that any actual or prospective author, or the employer of such an actual or prospective author, assent to network dissemination of a private-sector research work.”

Here’s why I think that the Research Works Act is a bad idea and, if passed, would have a chilling effect on scholarly and corporate research in the U.S.

It all goes back to scholarly journal prices and how they’ve increased over the past several decades. As an academic librarian, I am discouragingly familiar with the pricing practices of scholarly publishers.  A publisher of a prestigious journal has, in effect, a monopoly on the articles published in that journal, and those articles are not interchangeable with others in the same field published in other journals.   (Interlibrary loan of articles is, of course, a long-standing library practice; but the time it takes to deliver these articles is inconvenient for many researchers and students.)  Because they are the only source of the specific articles that researchers require, scholarly publishers have been able to increase their subscription prices by as much as 10% annually, with the knowledge that most research universities cannot cancel their subscriptions without adversely affecting the work of their students and faculty.

The open access movement in scholarly publishing has developed over the past 20 years to oppose these practices, and to take advantage of emerging technologies by developing an alternative, affordable model of sharing scholarly work among students and researchers. Providing open access to the results of publicly-funded research is an important part of this effort.

The NIH mandate to provide open access to publicly-funded medical research does give scholarly publishers the opportunity to publish these results first, which is a considerable advantage in time-sensitive areas of research. This advantage, along with the importance to researchers of publishing their findings in journals prestigious in their field, means that for-profit scholarly publishers are not being forced out of business by the mandate.  But they will be less able to act–and price–as monopolies, as the sole, permanent sources of critical research findings needed by researchers in higher education, medicine, and industry.

By making research results accessible to everyone without regard for their ability to pay, the open access movement increases the influence and impact of that research on future scientific and scholarly work.  It is a spur to the innovation and creativity needed to maintain the United States’ leadership role in science and technology, and to work towards the resolution of the many challenges facing this country and the world.

What can you do?  Contact your federal officials and ask them to help defeat the Research Works Act.  For Middletown, these officials are: President Barack Obama; Senator Joseph Lieberman, Senator Richard Blumenthal, and Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro.  The Alliance for Taxpayer Access has a site that allows you to easily contact all of them: http://www.congressweb.com/cweb2/index.cfm/siteid/SPARC/action/TakeAction.Main

Update, January 18:  See the Chronicle article on some university presses’ opposition to RWA: http://chronicle.com/article/University-Presses-Disagree/130366/

Tags: open access movement