Publisher Pulls Supports; 'Research Works Act' Killed 72
crabel writes "It appears the dreaded Research Works Act is dead. The bill would have prevented agencies of the federal government from requiring public access to federally subsidized research. After Elsevier pulled its support, it was decided that no legislative action will be taken on the bill."
A glimmer of hope as well: "Meanwhile, attention has shifted to another proposed bill: the reintroduced Federal Research Public Access Act, which would require public access." Elsevier has vowed to battle it, however.
What are you waiting for if you're an US citizen (Score:5, Informative)
Sign the petition(s) to the Congress
http://www.congressweb.com/cweb2/index.cfm/siteid/sparc
and to the white house
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/strengthen-public-access-publicly-funded-research-and-support-federal-research-public-access-act/jF4mxRc4
Unless you like being locked out behind a paywall from research paid with your tax dollars.
Re:I agree (Score:5, Informative)
It's whack.
I'll try to explain it simply:
The government finances scientific research, with tax money.
That research is conducted by scientists, then other sicentists review the research for flaws, and finally the research is published in scientific journals. Elsevier is the editor of several such journals.
Elsevier and other publishers do not pay scientists who do research and they do not pay the scientists who review the original research either. They don't pay anybody. They only pay the publication of journals (i.e. printing). And then they sell those journals for a very, very expensive sum of money. I don't have the prices, but it's so expensive that only universities buy these journals (even public libraries can't afford them).
So Elsevier and other publishers like them make a ton of money through the work of others.
Now get this:
The government wanted research that it finances to be available to the public. Your tax money pays for research, therefore you should have access to that research - makes sense, right?
Well Elsevier had a problem with that. Publishers such as them try to keep the research for themselves, in order to force universities and public services to buy their journals. So Elsevier pushed the Research Works Act.
As the summary says, this act would make it illegal for the government to say "we'll pay for this research, but on the condition that the results are made public". Yes, I know how crazy it sounds but no, there's no mistake.
It's like you paying an artist to make a painting, and then being forced to pay a publisher (on top of the artist) in order to receive the painting.
The Federal Research Public Access Act, on the other hand, is a law that makes public access mandatory for research that is financed by the government. It's a good thing. Currently, the government can choose to pay for research without the results being made public. Where do you find the results then? In the journals of Elsevier and co. Why should you pay to see the research your tax money financed? You shouldn't!
So that law is a good thing. It would put an end to research paid with tax money but locked away from the public. With that law, if your taxes pay for research, then you get access to it, no exceptions.
On top of giving you what you are owed (i.e. the research you paid for), this law will also help science in general.
The premise behind science is that every fact can be checked. You can either do the research yourself, or you can read the papers on the original research. This is important for scientists because if scientist A could not know what scientist B did, science would not advance.
However, it is also important that the public be able to access the research. Science is important in society. Take global warming: there's a lot of controversy about it. Maybe it's real, maybe it's a hoax. People should be able to see all the research on it (and I mean the full original research, not a summary), and make their own opinion. Of course understanding all that research requires knowledge and intelligence, but people who wish to look at it should be able to do that. Science is about evidence and proof - science is not "I'm a scientist so believe everything I say!". Having science locked up behind expensive journals forces the public to trust scientists entirely, instead of letting the public study the research and make its own opinion.
And why are expensive scientific journals an issue now? Because of the Internet and advances in computers. Before, these journals had to be printed. If you haven't seen these journals before, trust me, they're huge and there's usually a new one to print each month. Printing costs are high (although nowhere close to the sale price - trust me, the publishers make insane profits).
But as long as these journals were printed, people tolerated the high prices. But now, with the Internet, the publishers have very little costs. The articles are written by scientists. They are also reviewed by other scientists. The editors do
Re:What are you waiting for if you're an US citize (Score:4, Informative)
Done. But /.ers are lazy:
Sign the petition(s) to the Congress
http://www.congressweb.com/cweb2/index.cfm/siteid/sparc [congressweb.com]
and to the white house
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/strengthen-public-access-publicly-funded-research-and-support-federal-research-public-access-act/jF4mxRc4 [whitehouse.gov]
Re:I agree (Score:5, Informative)
There is a list of a lot of "open access" repositories at:
http://roarmap.eprints.org/ [eprints.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROARMAP [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Open_access_archives [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArXiv [wikipedia.org]
In addition to funding agencies with open access requirements for research they fund, some fairly "big name" institutions in the US maintain documents produced by their faculty:
Harvard Arts and Science - http://roarmap.eprints.org/75/ [eprints.org]
University of California - http://roarmap.eprints.org/55/ [eprints.org]
MIT - http://roarmap.eprints.org/122/ [eprints.org]