I don't believe that the transcripts of Mike Leavitt's confirmation hearings are free and online yet. But if you can't wait, the Federal News Service now has priced online transcripts for the two days of the hearings, January 18, before the Senate Healath, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, and January 19, before the Senate Finance Committee. Excerpt from the latter:
SEN. WYDEN: [...] The second point is the press in the last few days has been reporting that the National Institutes of Health is going to reduce substantially a proposal to make research that the taxpayers have funded available to the country. Now, I'm sure you're just starting to get into this. But I would find it helpful if you could just tell us about your commitment to making sure that the public does get access to this information, because these reports in the last couple of days that come from sources within the department are pretty troubling.
MR. LEAVITT: I know very little about the specifics of this issue, but I can just tell you in principle that I believe that research that's made available by government funded research ought to add to the knowledge of an informed public generally and ought to be readily and easily available.
SEN. WYDEN: I appreciate that. Let's try to get it down to that short turnaround time, the six months, because otherwise the taxpayer pays twice. The taxpayer pays first when their tax dollars go for the research, and then they've got to shell out more to a scientific publisher. And those publishers fought the department. There's no question about that. And I appreciate your answer. [...]
MR. LEAVITT: Thank you.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/25/2005 02:25:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
