When the draft sequence of the human genome was finished in 2001, the accomplishment was heralded as marking the dawn of the age of “big biology”. The high-throughput techniques and automation developed to sequence DNA on a massive scale would be wielded to generate not just genomes, but reference data sets in all areas of [...]
[The Washington Post ran a nice op-ed today from two student leaders linked to the recent public access petition campaign. I had submitted one that urges the administration to take a more agressive stance, which I am posting here.] Last weekend, a “We the People” petition calling on the Obama administration to provide free access [...]
This November, Californians will vote on an initiative that would require any food containing ingredients derived from genetically modified crops to be labeled as such. Backers of the “California Right To Know Genetically Engineered Food Act” are pitching it as a matter of providing information to consumers, who, they argue, “have a right to know [...]
The American Association of Publishers and the anti-open access DC Principles group have sent letters to both houses of Congress outlining why they oppose the Federal Research Public Access Act, which would make the results of all federally funded research publicly available. They largely trot out the same tired “not all publishers are alike, so don’t impose [...]
Late last year Elsevier and two of its allies in Congress quietly introduced a bill that would have halted the trend towards increased public access to the results of government funded research headlined by the NIH’s Public Access Policy. This brazen act, which its backers hoped would pass unnoticed in the quiet of the holidays, [...]
And here’s a hi-res version of the image if you want it. Some other versions I’ve been working on:
I decided to design an image: For those of you who don’t recognize it, it’s inspired by Elsevier’s old printers mark, emblazoned in all of their texts since the 17th century: I hope the iconography of my image is self-explanatory.
A showdown is looming in Congress as defenders of the public interest have moved to counter the special interest sellout of the pending Research Works Act (RWA), which would end public access to the results of Federally funded research. A bipartisan group of legislators in both houses of Congress just introduced the Federal Research Public Access Act [...]
There has been lots of activity this week surrounding the “Research Works Act“, a bill introduced in the US House of Representatives that seeks to end the NIH’s Public Access Policy. Despite the flurry of attention to the bill, its authors – Reps Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Darrell Issa (R-CA) have remained silent (save a [...]
I have an op-ed out today in the New York Times prompted by a new effort by publishers to restrict public access to the results of publicly-funded scientific research. If you’re as incensed by this as I am, you have several important opportunities to weigh in. Help protect the NIH’s Public Access Policy in Congress If [...]
I'm a biologist at UC Berkeley and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. I work primarily on flies, and my research encompases evolution, development, genetics, genomics, chemical ecology and behavior. I am a strong proponent of open science, and a co-founder of the Public Library of Science. And most importantly, I am a Red Sox fan. (More about me here).
I can be reached at:
mbeisen at berkeley.edu
and @mbeisen on Twitter
