[Forwarding from Mike Rossner, Executive Director of Rockefeller University
Press. Â --Peter Suber.]
January 13, 2012
Â
Representative Carolyn Maloney
2332 Rayburn HOB
Washington, DC 20515-3214
Â
Dear Representative Maloney,
Â
I am the Executive Director of The Rockefeller University Press, a nonprofit
organization that publishes three biomedical research journals. I am
contacting
you as a publisher and as your constituent in the 14th Congressional District of
New York to express my strong opposition to the Research Works Act (H.R. 3699),
which you and Representative Issa introduced into the House on December 16,
2011.
Â
I want to state emphatically that I support the NIH Public Access Policy and
think it should be expanded to other federal funding agencies. All publishers
of biomedical research understand several truths: 1) that their content is
generated in large part through federally funded research, 2) that the peer
review process is carried out in large part by federally funded individuals, and
3) that a significant portion of their subscription revenue is obtained from
government funded institutions. Although publishers' content may technically
be
considered "private-sector research work" as described in the text of H.R. 3699,
its very existence depends on public funding.
Â
Some publishers believe they have an obligation to give back to the public that
has provided those funds, and, even before the NIH mandate, they made their
online content free after a short delay under subscription control. However, a
few large, highly profitable publishers refused to do this voluntarily and thus
forced the NIH into the position of mandating deposition of NIH-funded research
publications in PubMed Central to make them available to the public.
Â
At The Rockefeller University Press, we have released the content of our three
journals to the public six months after publication since January, 2001, and our
subscription revenues have grown since then. All of the content in our
journals
is released to the public, regardless of funding source. We are not aware of
any data indicating that subscription revenues of biomedical research journal
publishers have been directly and negatively affected by the NIH mandate.
Â
Enacting a law that prohibits federal funding agencies from mandating public
access to the results of the research they fund will deprive the public of
important information that is rightly theirs. Although this Act has been
supported by the Association of American Publishers (AAP), it is vital that
members of Congress know that not all members of this Association agree with
their position. The Rockefeller University Press is a member of the AAP, but
we
strongly oppose H.R. 3699.
Yours sincerely,
Mike Rossner, Ph.D.
Executive Director
The Rockefeller University Press
Â
These comments are the opinion of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
position of The Rockefeller University.
[ Part 2: "Attached Text" ]
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