With the library community and politically strong disease groups behind the bill [FRPAA], one has high hopes that something of this order will end up as law. However don't hold your breath, as the battle is just beginning on the bill. Many influential society publishers are already working the halls of Congress to get the bill off track. They are joined by the lobbying efforts of major STM publishers. So it is anyone's guess how this will all end, but it is clear that Congress and the general public feel that NIH and other government-funded research results are locked up and not providing a proper return on investment. While many of the library groups are crying that the scientific publishing is broken, it is the disease groups that are getting the most attention. Just creating the image that the cure is out there for any of these horrific diseases that affect children and others but that the cure is locked up in high price journals not accessible to researchers gets great political play and gets votes on the hill.
While many are in the debate on Open Access and this bill, if passed, this bill would have a major impact on publisher's business models. The one community that is still not engaged is the faculty that writes, reads and edits 60,000 articles that result from NIH funding alone. Without this constituency one has to wonder if the Open Access movement is going forward with the power and influence that it needs to win the battle. It is hard to find great enthusiasm in the community of scholars. Scholars just want to do research, teach, and share their results with their peers and to advance their field of knowledge. Promotion and tenure are still the main issues of the day, not Open Access or the high price of journals. Perhaps Open Access is just the current phase that we are going through and some other solution will rise to the top. My feeling is that commercial publishers will evolve and continue to find a way to make money, and the society publishers will be left shifting in the wind if this bill passes.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 9/20/2006 10:25:00 AM.
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.
