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November 12, 2008
New Bill Would Forbid Copyright Transfer as a Condition for Federal Funding
The Fair Copyright in Research Works Act (HR 6845) has now been officially introduced. While it awaits passage, the bill would "bar agencies of the federal government from requiring the transfer of copyright, whole or in part, as a condition for receiving public funding." With interested parties from both sides, it is important to watch this short copyright bill and follow its path. Taking this issue from a library point of view, the passing of this bill may inhibit the collection of works for the formation of either an institutional repository or an open access collection.
Basically, this would be a direct contradiction to the NIH public access policy and also to growing open access collections who offer funding. The NIH public access policy requires creators to deposit their final papers in the PubMed Central repository if they accepted taxpayer funds. The NIH policy also requires the creator to give the agency a non-exclusive right to offer free access within the year allowing members of the public to access information that their tax dollar help fund. However, it also is logical to assume that there may be no change in work on OA projects, because while there is a restriction on requiring access, it's not restricting the creator's ability to offer their research in an open access repository (unless other restrictions are made by the holder of the copyright). According to this bill, creators are not required to offer free access within a year (even when their work is publically funded). Martin Frank from the American Physiological Society explained the appeal of the bill (and criticism of the NIH policy) as "The NIH has become a publisher," adding that the NIH is now taking advantage of publishers' value-added efforts of editing and peer-review.
In reference to the hearing, the LibraryJournal.com wrote, "not only was the legislation motivating the hearing barely discussed, the testimony and the questions asked by committee members looked far more to the economic future of science publishing than to public access to taxpayer funded research." There seems to be more of an interest in keeping up the status quo of the publishing industry, and according to NIH director Elias Zerhouni, it is being done at the expense of the public. He explained that the policy is "to maximize the return on investment for the public, which funds the research, and for the scientific community."
--Laura
Posted by colldev at November 12, 2008 08:30 PM