New bill in Congress would EXPAND federal public access policies!

By Michael Eisen | Published: February 9, 2012

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 (FRPAA) of 2012 which would require Federal agencies that fund significant amounts of extramural research (more than $100 million per year) to implement public access policies similar in aims to that already in place at the NIH.

Let’s make sure the good guys win by transforming the public outcry against RWA into support for FRPAA. Write to your reps and urge them to support the bill, and write to the following legislators to thank them for their ongoing support of this important piece of public policy:

The big question now is whether all the publishers who disowned the Research Works Act amidst its bad publicity will take the logical next step and express their support for FRPAA. I’m sure the Association of American Publishers and Elsevier will come out against FRPAA, but public support for the bill from other members of the AAP would greatly undermine their stance. I’m particularly interested to see where the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology will come down on this. FASEB, an umbrella group that represents many scientific societies in the US, has a very effective lobbying effort, and do a lot of great things to support science and science funding in the US. Their history with respect to public access is mixed, however. It would be a big step forward if they came out in support of FRPAA, and would be a major step towards its passage. If you are a member of any FASEB societies, urge them to express their support for FRPAA publicly, as well as to FASEB leadership.

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5 Comments

  1. DrugMonkey
    Posted February 9, 2012 at 8:47 am | Permalink

    Great News! Now maybe my fence-sitting Critter will get with the program!!!!

  2. Mike Taylor
    Posted February 9, 2012 at 8:54 am | Permalink

    This is fantastic news! I have been very bothered by a comment that technology blogger Joel Spolsky made during the outcry about SOPA/PIPA:

    The internet seems to ignore legislation until somebody tries to take something away from us… then we carefully defend that one thing and never counter-attack. Then the other side says, “OK, compromise,” and gets half of what they want. That’s not the way to win… that’s the way to see a steady and continuous erosion of rights online.

    The solution is to start lobbying for our own laws. It’s time to go on the offensive if we want to preserve what we’ve got.

    It’s a real delight to find that we now have positive legislation out there that we can get behind, rather than just a sequence of bad bills that we have to oppose. Also good to see five pro-science co-sponsors, pretty evenly made up of Democrats and Republicans.

    Good times.

  3. Mike Taylor
    Posted February 9, 2012 at 8:55 am | Permalink

    (Dammit, failed to close the anchor tag. Seems there is no way to edit, or delete-and-resubmit, my comment. Michael, if you can fix that for me, and delete this one, I’d appreciate it.)

  4. Peter Suber
    Posted February 9, 2012 at 10:06 am | Permalink

    Hi Mike. See the reference page on FRPAA I’m building at the Harvard Open Access Project.
    http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/hoap/Notes_on_the_Federal_Research_Public_Access_Act

  5. Comrade PhysioProf
    Posted February 11, 2012 at 11:26 am | Permalink

    This is very good!

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