Opposition is growing to the recently-introduced Research Works Act, recently introduced by Reps. Issa and Maloney, which would prevent federal agencies from requiring that peer-reviewed literature funded by their grants be made freely available online.
The American Library Association released a statement saying that “The ALA has been a long-time, ardent supporter of increasing access to information of all types, including federally funded research. This latest bill, the Research Works Act, would act in direct contradiction and therefore the ALA vehemently opposes the bill.”
PLoS co-founder Michael Eisen warns in a New York Times op-ed that “If the bill passes, to read the results of federally funded research, most Americans would have to buy access to individual articles at a cost of $15 or $30 apiece. In other words, taxpayers who already paid for the research would have to pay again to read the results.”
Cory Doctorow writes in BoingBoing that “HR 3699 creates a regulation that make it hard-to-impossible to publish open access scholarly journals… Rather than allowing an open marketplace to decide which model is best, Congress — including Rep Darrell Issa, who has taken a strong stand for open networks in his opposition to SOPA — is putting its thumb fist on the scales to support the incumbent closed journals.”
