New York Times: “Gulf on open access to federally financed research”
DOI: 10.1063/PT.4.0194
Inside the Science Times section of the 28 February New York Times appears Guy Gugliotta’s update on the Washington politics of open access to scientific publications. The headline mistakenly conflates raw research results with value-added publishing products: “ Gulf on open access to federally financed research .”
Online, the Times links to the article with this summary teaser blurb, again with the mistaken conflation: “Advocates and opponents of ‘open access’ for government-financed scientific research are girding for a long battle before Congress, which has little enthusiasm for either extreme.”
The article’s opening sentence reinforces the conflation: “During the next few weeks, the Obama administration’s Office of Science and Technology Policy will submit to Congress a progress report on its search for a balanced approach to the contentious and complex question of how government-financed scientific research should be disseminated in the digital age.”
Later the article does report at least some of the differences between research results and value-added publishing products: “Commercial publishers, and many nonprofits . . . emphasize that their role extends far beyond merely mailing out scientific reports. The journals convene peer-review panels, select the papers and edit them.”
Early on, the article summarizes the situation:
Advocates of “open access,” who include many scientists, libraries and universities, say that reports of scientific discoveries paid for by government grants should be made available on the Web immediately and without charge to anyone who wants to see them.
Opponents, which include many private and nonprofit publishers and many professional societies, argue that an unfettered policy would bankrupt journals and make a shambles of the peer-review and article selection system that has served the world scientific community for centuries.
Both sides have bills pending before Congress, and both have bipartisan support, but sponsors of legislation favored by publishers said Monday that they would not push their bill in this session, and neither measure seemed likely to move forward in an election year.
Despite the lack of movement, current evidence suggests that Congress has little enthusiasm for either extreme—full open access or an affirmation of the traditional system. Instead it appears to be moving toward a middle ground. The Obama administration’s report will take an even more measured approach and is not expected to make specific recommendations.
The article goes on to summarize the controversy’s decade-long, internet-era background. It quotes microbiologist and open-access advocate Michael Eisen’s belief that in the internet era, “the notion that the good of science is served in any way by giving it to publishers evaporates.” It also quotes the belief of Allan Adler, vice president for legal and governmental affairs for the Association of American Publishers, that mandated open access would amount to “infringing upon and taking without compensation the added value [that a] journal provides.” It summarizes the open-access measures in use at the National Institutes of Health.
Gugliotta asserts that the “debate between these two extremes has been remarkably vitriolic, in part, perhaps, because neither side has been completely honest.” He says that it “was this nasty standoff in part that prompted the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology in 2010 to assemble a task force of stakeholders to ask the White House to review the debate and present options.” He continues:
Publishers were also afraid that the Obama administration was going to impose an open-access policy without consulting them.
“No one was satisfied with the way this was going—folks from all sides were coming to us,” said Bart Gordon, a Tennessee Democrat and former Science Committee chairman now retired from Congress. “We were most of all a convener, and tried to do it outside the spotlight so people didn’t have to posture as much.”
The results of their work appeared in the America Competes Reauthorization Act last year, calling on the administration to prepare the coming report on possible dissemination policies for all government agencies with an annual research budget of $100 million or more. There are about a dozen of these.
Then the article explains the Research Works Act and the Federal Research Public Access Act. It reports that neither is expected to advance.
Gugliotta quotes the sponsors of the Research Works Act, Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA), who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), a committee member. They have reportedly said in a statement that they “will not be taking legislative action” on the bill and, Gugliotta writes, “acknowledged that greater public access ‘appears to be the wave of the future,’ but emphasized that the transition must be ‘collaborative’ and ‘must respect copyright law.’”
Gugliotta also mentions researchers’ boycott of Elsevier, which he calls “the Amsterdam-based publisher of about 2,000 scientific journals and a leading backer of the Research Works Act.” He reports that Elsevier is withdrawing its backing for the bill while continuing to oppose government mandates.
Steven T. Corneliussen, a media analyst for the American Institute of Physics, monitors three national newspapers, the weeklies Nature and Science, and occasionally other publications. He has published op-eds in the Washington Post and other newspapers, has written for NASA’s history program, and is a science writer at a particle-accelerator laboratory.