The bill summary says:
Research Works Act - Prohibits a federal agency from adopting,
maintaining,
continuing, or otherwise engaging 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; or
*(2) requires that any actual or prospective author, or the author's
employer, assent to such network dissemination. *
Defines "private-sector research work" as an article intended to be
published in a scholarly or scientific publication, or any version of
such
an article, that is not a work of the U.S. government, describing or
interpreting research funded in whole or in part by a federal agency
and to
which a commercial or nonprofit publisher has made or has entered into
an
arrangement to make a value-added contribution, including peer review
or
editing, but does not include progress reports or raw data outputs
routinely
required to be created for and submitted directly to a funding agency
in the
course of research.
==========================================
It is the second provision that really cuts the legs out from the NIH
open
access policy. What the NIH policy does is to make open access
publication a
condition imposed on the grant holders in publishing work that the NIH
funded. This has provided the necessary lever for NIH-funded authors
to be
able to publish in well-respected journals and still to be able to
require
that, after a year, their work be available without charge to the
scientific
community. Without that lever we go back to the unlamented old system
(at
least unlamented by almost everybody other than Elsevier) in which
pubishers
could impose an absolute copyright transfer that barred the authors
from
ever posting copies of their work on the web. People affiliated with
libraries with the appropriate subscriptions to the appropriate
archiving
services may not have noticed the difference, but for the significant
portions of both researchers and students who did not have such
access, the
NIH open access policy was by itself a major game changer, making much
more
literature rapidly accessible, and even more importantly changed the
culture, making open access much more respectable.
The NIH policy does nothing more than put grant-sponsored research on
almost
the same footing as research done directly by the government which has
never
been subject to copyright at all, on the theory that, if the tax-payers
already paid for the research, they should have open access to the
fruits of
that research. This law would kill that policy. This would be a major
step
backwards.
Please read:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/evo-eco-lab/2012/01/16/mistruths-insults-from-the-copyright-lobby-over-hr-3699/
http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/action/action_access/12-0106.shtml
http://www.care2.com/causes/open-access-under-threat-hr-3699.html
Please support the petition. This is a very bad bill. It is not about
protecting copyright, it is an effort to restrict the free flow of
scientific information in our community.
Regards,
Herbert
On 2/16/12 9:02 AM, Fischmann, Thierry wrote:
Herbert
I don't see how the act could affect the NIH open access policy.
Could you
please shed some light on that?
What I read seems reasonable and I intend to ask my representatives to
support this text. But obviously I am missing something and like to
learn
from you first.
Regards
Thierry
-----Original Message-----
From: CCP4 bulletin board [mailto:CCP4BB@JISCMAIL.AC.UK] On Behalf Of
Herbert J. Bernstein
Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2012 8:16 AM
To: CCP4BB@JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Subject: Re: [ccp4bb] Fwd: HR3699, Research Works Act
Dear Ian,
You are mistaken. The proposed law has nothing to do with
preventing
the
encouragement people to break copyright law. It has everything to do
with
trying to kill the very reasonable NIH open access policy that
properly
balances the rights of publishers with the rights of authors and the
interests of
the scientific community. Most publishers fare quite well under a
policy that
gives them a year of exclusive control over papers, followed by open
access.
It is, unfortunately, a standard ploy in current American politics
to
make a
law which does something likely to be very unpopular and very
unreasonable
sound like it is a law doing something quite different.
Please reread it carefully. I think you will join in opposing this
law. Science
benefits from the NIH open access policy and the rights of all
concerned
are respected. It would be a mistake to allow the NIH open access
policy
to
be killed.
I hope you will sign the petition.
Regards,
Herbert
On 2/16/12 6:29 AM, Ian Tickle wrote:
Reading the H.R.3699 bill as put forward
(http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:HR03699:@@@L&summ2=m&;)
it seems to be about prohibiting US federal agencies from having
policies which permit, authorise or require authors' assent to break
the law of copyright in respect of published journal articles
describing work funded at least in part by a US federal agency. I'm
assuming that "network dissemination without the publisher's consent"
is the same thing as breaking the law of copyright.
It seems to imply that it would still be legal for US federal
agencies
to encourage others to break the law of copyright in respect of
journal articles describing work funded by say UK funding agences! -
or is there already a US law in place which prohibits that? I'm only
surprised that encouraging others to break the law isn't already
illegal (even for Govt agencies): isn't that the law of incitement
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incitement)?
This forum in fact already has such a policy in place for all journal
articles (i..e not just those funded by US federal agencies but by
all
funding agencies), i.e. we actively discourage postings which incite
others to break the law by asking for copies of copyrighted published
articles. Perhaps the next petition should seek to overturn this
policy?
This petition seems to be targeting the wrong law: if what you want
is
free flow of information then it's the copyright law that you need to
petition to overturn, or you get around it by publishing in someplace
that doesn't require transfer of copyright.
Cheers
-- Ian
On 16 February 2012 09:35, Tim Gruene<t...@shelx.uni-ac.gwdg.de>
wrote:
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Hash: SHA1
Dear Raji,
maybe you could increase the number of supporters if you included a
link
to (a description of) the content of HR3699 - I will certainly not
sign
something only summarised by a few polemic sentences ;-)
Cheers,
Tim
On 02/15/2012 11:53 PM, Raji Edayathumangalam wrote:
If you agree, please signing the petition below. You need to
register
on
the link below before you can sign this petition. Registration and
signing
the petition took about a minute or two.
Cheers,
Raji
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Seth Darst<da...@mail.rockefeller.edu>
Date: Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 12:40 PM
Subject: HR3699, Research Works Act
To:
Rep. Caroline Maloney has not backed off in her attempt to put
forward
the
interests of Elsevier and other academic publishers.
If you oppose this measure, please sign this petition on the
official
'we
the people' White House web site. It needs 23,000 signatures before
February 22nd and only 1100 so far. Please forward far and wide.
Oppose HR3699, the Research Works Act
HR 3699, the Research Works Act will be detrimental to the free
flow of
scientific information that was created using Federal funds. It is
an
attempt to put federally funded scientific information behind
pay-walls,
and confer the ownership of the information to a private entity.
This
is an
affront to open government and open access to information created
using
public funds.
This link gets you to the petition:
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/oppose-hr3699-research-works-act/vKMhCX9k
- --
- --
Dr Tim Gruene
Institut fuer anorganische Chemie
Tammannstr. 4
D-37077 Goettingen
GPG Key ID = A46BEE1A
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