The Conyers bill (a.k.a. Fair Copyright in Research Works Act, HR 801), is back. Despite all the debunking it got last time around, and despite the country having more important problems to deal with right now, this regressive bill, completely unchanged word-for-word, is apparently back again. It is the attempt by TA publishers, through lies and distortions, to overturn the NIH open access policy. Here are some reactions - perhaps Rep.Conyers and colleagues should get an earful from us....
Peter Suber, in Comments on the Conyers bill provides all the useful links, plus some of the blogospheric responses.
Greg Laden: Open Access Under Threat (also interesting discussion in the comments):
The publishing industry is dangerous. Why? Because it is big and rich, but it is also in danger. The publishing industry, like the music industry, and like the commercial proprietary software industry, faces structural reorganization of the markets served and uncertainty in the flow of cash into coffers. So we should not be surprised when we see the industry buying off members of congress to get legislation passed that protects the industry from change that is coming. Change the industry does not want to see.
The Scientist: Anti-open access bill is back:
A bill aimed at undoing the NIH's mandate to make federally-funded research manuscripts freely available on PubMed Central within a year of publication was re-introduced in the US House of Representatives on Tuesday night (Feb. 3).
The legislation claims that the NIH policy breaches existing copyright laws that protect academic publishers. If passed, the bill would stop federal agencies from requiring the transfer of copyright as a stipulation of investigators receiving taxpayer-backed grants.
Campus Entrepreneurship: Monopoly Rights to Taxpayer Funded Research?:
This sounds like monopoly rights for publicly funded knowledge. Please contact representative John Conyers (MI) and ask him to stop pushing this bill. His co-sponsors on the bill appear to be Steve Cohen of TN, Trent Franks of AZ, Darrell Issa (CA), and Robert Wexler of FL. (BTW, should anyone representing Michigan be spending their time on this? Dereliction of duty?)
David Bruggeman: Bill Introduced to Roll Back NIH Open Access:
There is a legislative effort to push back the move toward open access in scientific publishing. Representative John Conyers, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, has introduced a bill to roll back the National Institutes of Health requirement that its grantees provide a copy of their peer-reviewed articles to be published in PubMed Central, a free online database. The competing interests in this issue (and similar efforts to make federally funded research more available to the public) are the copyright interests of the journals (which are typically assigned them by the authors) and an interest in making research - especially that funded by citizens' tax dollars - more accessible to the public.
I lean toward the latter, but I suspect that journals will be forced to revamp their publication models and business plans long after newspapers do, even though there are some similarities in how online access to information has undercut their respective market advantages.
Michael Eisen: Conyers reintroduces bill to kill NIH Public Access Policy:
As many have pointed out, the whole premise of the bill is absurd. Publishers are arguing that the NIH has taken their copyright. But, of course, if that were true, they would already have protection under federal copyright law, and they would be suing the government. Instead, they are pushing legislation that would actually remove the governments right to distribute work it funds, thereby clearly demonstrating that they believe the government's action is perfectly legal under copyright law.
What is particularly galling is that Conyers held hearings on this bill last year, in which a LOT of important issues were raised about the bill, and there were many on the committee who were skeptical about it. So, what does Conyers do with all that useful feedback? He ignores it, and introduces exactly the same bill in the new Congress. One hopes such an ill-conceived piece of public policy would have no hope when Congress has many more important things on its hands, but one never knows. Let's hope it dies in committee. But just to be safe, let the members know how you feel.
It's hard to know why Conyers is doing this. He receives some modest contributions from Elsevier and some others in the publishing industry - but it's hard to imagine $4,000 buys a piece of legislation. Conyers has recently reorganized the House Judiciary Committee in order to take control of intellectual property cases, so maybe this is part of a more broadly orchestrated "defense" of copyright.
Related - Questionable Authority: Way To Support Science, Reed Elsevier:
Reed Elsevier is one of the leading - if not the leading - publishers of scientific journals. They make profits on the scale of thousands of dollars a minute selling these journals to libraries so that scientists can read them. They have, I'd suggest, some motivation to keep from pissing scientists off any more than necessary.
Which is why I was almost surprised to discover that Reed Elsevier Inc. gave Senator Inhofe $16,500 in 2008, with $3,000 of that coming right from their own Political Action Committee. It's nice to know that Reed Elsevier is always ready to stand behind scientists. With a knife in their hand.
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