Scholarly Communication at Texas A&M

EXPERT PANEL CALLS ON U.S. RESEARCH AGENCIES TO DEVELOP POLICIES FOR PROVIDING FREE PUBLIC ACCESS TO FEDERALLY SPONSORED RESEARCH RESULTS

Policies Should Protect Peer-Reviewed Publications While Ensuring Rapid Access

An expert panel of librarians, library scientists, publishers, and university academic leaders today called on federal agencies that fund research to develop and implement policies that ensure free public access to the results of the research they fund “as soon as possible after those results have been published in a peer-reviewed journal.”

The Scholarly Publishing Roundtable was convened last summer by the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology, in collaboration with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Policymakers asked the group to examine the current state of scholarly publishing and seek consensus recommendations for expanding public access to scholarly journal articles.

The various communities represented in the Roundtable have been working to develop recommendations that would improve public access without curtailing the ability of the scientific publishing industry to publish peer-reviewed scientific articles. (more…)

Nobel Prize-winning scientists urge Congress to act to ensure free
online access to federally funded research results

Washington, DC – “For America to obtain an optimal return on our
investment in science, publicly funded research must be shared as
broadly as possible,” is the message that forty one Nobel Prize-
winning scientists in medicine, physics, and chemistry gave to
Congress in an open letter delivered yesterday. The letter marks the
fourth time in five years that leading scientists have called on
Congress to ensure free, timely access to the results of federally
funded research – this time asking leaders to support the Federal
Research Public Access Act of 2009 (S.1373). (more…)

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) uses taxpayer dollars to produce excellent reports on public policy issues ranging from foreign affairs, to agriculture, to health care. These reports are made accessible to Members of Congress and their staff through an internal system, and are never released to the public directly from the Congressional Research Service.  Bills to provide free online public access to CRS Reports have been introduced in the House (H.R. 3762) and the Senate (S. Res. 118). The House bill is currently pending before the Committee on House Administration; the Senate bill is awaiting action by the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration. (more…)

The Chief Academic and Research Officers of 18 research universities in the U.S., representing public and private institutions across 10 states, have declared their support for the Federal Research Public Access Act (S. 1373) in a letter issued today by the Greater Western Library Alliance. The letter is the first issued by chief academic and research officers in partnership, jointly recognizing the value of greater accessibility and utility afforded by legislation for public access to federally funded research.

The Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA), introduced in June by Senators Lieberman (I-CT) and Cornyn (R-TX), is a bi-partisan measure to ensure online public access to the published results of research funded through eleven U.S. agencies. The bill would require that journal articles stemming from publicly funded research be made available in an online repository no later than six months after publication. (more…)

February 3, 2009 - H.R. 801, the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act, has been introduced for the second Congress in a row by House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI), and co-sponsored by Reps. Steve Cohen (D-TN), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Darryl Issa (R-CA) and Robert Wexler (D-FL). This bill would have the effect of overturning the “open access” to research policy of the National Institutes of Health, which requires that research funded by the agency to be made available for free in an online archive within 12 months of publication. (more…)