Open Access
Takes on the Government
Helen Vozenilek
Seminar in
Information Science, 287-05
Professor Ellyssa
Kroski
November 29,
2009
ABSTRACT
The open access
movement in the United States is slowly expanding into the government
arena. While at least eight other
countries are working to open up government-funded research results, this paper
will focus on work within the United States. Bills to ensure that
taxpayer-funded research is made freely and openly available to the public have
recently been introduced into the 111th Congress. This paper will
look specifically at those bills which cover eleven governmental agencies and
the Congressional Research Service and view them in light of the successful
Public Access Policy at The National Institute of Health (NIH). This paper will
also consider some of those players in the foreground and background of the
movement to make the electronic products of government-funded research open to
all.
HISTORY
One could argue
that the raison detre of the open access movement is to make the world a
better place. To this end, opening up access to scientific studies and other
scholarly research to everyone regardless of nationality or password
authorization is fundamental. The spread of the Internet in the early 1990s
radically transformed the whole field of information access. The open access
movement spread like wildfire to include online journals which now number
nearly 4400. (http://www.doaj.org) This helped
remove scholarly research from the limited audience of subscription-based
journals, to journals where anyone could find scholarly, peer-reviewed
literature. These journals cover all subjects ranging from Agriculture and Food
Sciences, to Mathematics and Statistics, on to Technology and Engineering. The
number of journals and articles available increases daily.
Journal articles
written by researchers at government agencies may or may not make it into these
open access journals depending on what relationship that agency or author has
with publishers. Some publishers severely restrict access to the papers owned
by them, while others have opted to join the open access movement albeit with
many caveats. According to open access advocates and their Congressional
supporters, publication in open access journals should be mandatory. In their
view, the U.S. Government spends a lot of valuable time and taxpayers money on
scientific and medical research and everyone should be able to share the
bounties of this research money.
The Federal
Research Public Access Act (FRPAA), Senate Bill 1373, introduced on June 28,
2009 by Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and Senator John Cornyn of
Texas, seeks to open up to the public
the fruits of federally-funded research in eleven governmental agencies.
Section 4 of the
Bill states:
In General- Not later than 1 year after the date of
enactment of this Act, each Federal agency with extramural research
expenditures of over $100,000,000 shall develop a Federal research public
access policy that is consistent with and advances purposes of the Federal
agency.
The Bill applies to these 11
government agencies: Department of
Agriculture, Department of Commerce, Department of Defense, Department of
Education, Department of Energy, Department of Health and Human Services,
Department of Homeland Security, Department of Transportation, Environmental
Protection Agency, National Aeronautics and Space Administration and National
Science Foundation. The FRPAA, applying only to non-classified research, would
require that each researcher submit a final manuscript to the agency no later
than six months after publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
S.
1373 was referred to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental
Affairs where it now awaits action. (All congressional bill information is
available online from the Library of Congress, http://www.thomas.gov/)
A
nearly identical bill, S. 2695 was introduced in 2006 again by Senators
Lieberman, Cornyn and Jeff Sessions of Alabama. That bill died in the 109th
Congress after it was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary where it
appears to never even have gotten a hearing. To those who are worried that S.
1373 will suffer a similar fate of neglect, Corey Williams, Associate Director of the Office of Government
Relations of the American Library Association insists that the introduction of
the bill in itself is a victory. Reached at her office on October 28, 2009, Williams,
who works as a lobbyist for the ALA on issues of copyright and open access as
well as other things, has a more long-term view of the legislative process than
others might. Its a process. You never know what will grab hold and move
quickly. Williams is optimistic saying that the new Obama administration is
based on openness and transparency and that can only bode well for the open
access movement.
Williams says that the next step for S. 1373 is
getting a co-sponsor within the Committee to take on the bill and to bring it
to hearing. To that end, the ALA has targeted libraries and supporters in the
sixteen states where those committee members reside, urging them to contact
their senators in support of the Bill.
Contacted in Senator Liebermans Washington office
on October 28, 2009, staff member Adam Sedgewick could not predict whether or
not the bill would go anywhere. He described the Senate and Mr. Lieberman as
having a lot of things on their plates. He reiterated Senator Liebermans
interest in and commitment to open access issues. He also said that while open
access was important, cyber security was taking up much of the Committees
time.
At the end of April, 2009, Mr. Lieberman had
introduced Senate Resolution 118 which
would allow Senators to officially provide public Internet access to all non-confidential
Congressional Research Service (CRS) products.
An accompanying House Resolution, HR 3762, The Congressional Research
Service Electronic Accessibility Act of 2009, was introduced six months later
on October 8, 2009 by U.S. Representative Frank Kratovil of Maryland. (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.3762:)
The CRS
With
a staff numbering over 700 and an annual budget greater than $100 million, the
Congressional Research Service provides timely and in-depth legislative
analysis for members of Congress. In existence for nearly one century, this arm
of the Library of Congress produces volumes and volumes of information on
topical matters. Though not protected by copyright, the papers of the CRS are
not readily available to the public. The Penny Hill Press located in Maryland,
holds all of the CRS documents issued since 1995 and will provide them to
interested folks for a fee. For example,
a13-page document, Digital Rights and Fair
Use in Copyright Law by Robin Jeweler issued in March, 2003 retails for $7.95 for subscribers
and 29.95 for non-subscribers. (http://www.pennyhill.com/index.php?lastcat=40&catname=Intellectual+Property&viewdoc=RL31827. )
Some Congressional
members want to do away with this pricing. In the words of one cosponsor of HR 3762, Congressperson Leonard Lance of New Jersey:Our bill will allow for
greater transparency and ensure that non-partisan, public policy reports that
are prepared with taxpayer funds for members of Congress be available to
educators, students, members of the news media and every citizen across the
country. (http://lance.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=29§iontree=7,29&itemid=243)
The Bill
was referred to the House Committee on House Administration. As with the manuscripts
covered by S. 1373, the CRS Bill would only apply to non-classified materials.
One major
organization supporting opening up publications of the Congressional Research
Service is the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT). The Center for Democracy and Technology is a
fifteen-year old organization working to keep the Internet open, innovative, and
free. While supportive of other
legislative efforts such as S. 1373, they have been especially vocal around the
Congressional Research Service. The organization operates the Open CRS website,
http://opencrs.com/, which is a direct route for citizens to get CRS reports
already in the public domain. For example, the report cited earlier that
retails for $29.95 is available free-of-charge on the opencrs website. (http://assets.opencrs.com/rpts/RL31827_20030324.pdf)
Ari
Schwartz, Deputy Director of CDT, explained in late October, 2009, the
difference between the governments repository and his. We are not the
official source- we dont get the reports immediately. We think we have
everything but we dont know if it is the official report or not. We are the
next best thing but we want to be put out of business; we are duplicating the
government services.
Legislation
to open up the CRS has been introduced every year for the last ten years and
has pretty much gone nowhere. As far as opposition goes, Schwartz says that
Congressional members are opposed to it because the director of the CRS is so adamantly
opposed. CRS director since 1994, Daniel P. Mulhollan, stated many of
those reasons in a memo posted to CRS staff on April 18, 2007. In response to
suggestions that taxpayers should have access to the publications, he stated: the
true value of CRS is as a resource devoted solely to the needs of Congress. In
that way, the taxpayers realize the utmost value for their investment. Among
the reasons he named for limiting the access to CRS publications are that the
CRS would be called upon to serve the interests of the public rather than the
interests of Congress as is their mandate, and that opening access to the CRS
publications would alter the relationship between
a congressional member and his/her constituents as now a citizen must go
through their representative to get an official report. (http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/crs032007.pdf)
THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF HEALTH
Open access advocates, disappointed by the lack of
advancement on these bills, may take solace in the legislative history of open
access at the National Institute of Health (NIH). The NIH is one of the worlds
largest medical research centers. It is operated by the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services and had a total budget of 40.9 billion in FY 2009. After four years
of study and refinement, enactment and reenactment, the NIH instituted such a
Public Access Policy in April, 2008 directing that articles arising from
federally funded research monies must be made freely available at Pub Med
Central within 12 months of publication. The already existing Medline published
by the National Library of Medicine, part of the NIH, had been already offering
freely accessed bibliographic citations and article abstracts since 1997. But this piece of legislation ensures that
the entire peer-reviewed final manuscript be electronically submitted within a
year of release.
Getting to this
point was not easy and many open access advocates are not happy that the
original embargo period was extended from six months to one year. NIH director,
Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D. spoke out forcefully for the Policy on February 5, 2008
at the 145th Meeting of the National Cancer Advisory Board. He
concluded his presentation on the many advances in the science and medical
fields made possible by public access saying: It is my opinion that Public
Access to an interconnected world of scientific information databases provides
one of our most powerful tools to accelerate discovery and combat disease. To
take this access away now would be a historic mistake. Because the NIH cannot
comment on ongoing legislative efforts, they are unable to lend their comments
to the bills involving the CRS and the 11 other governmental agencies covered
by Senate Bill 1373.
Complicating
matters, on February 3, 2009, Representative John Conyers of Michigan
introduced H.R. 801, The Fair Copyright in Research Works Act, which would
effectively undo the NIH Public Policy Act and prevent other governmental
agencies from creating similar open access databases. Conyers introduced the
same bill a year earlier to the 110th Congress where it just
sat. ALAs Williams thinks that this
bill also will go nowhere. When asked why a generally progressive
Representative like Conyers would introduce such a restrictive piece of
legislation, Williams suggested that it may be more a procedural pique than a
real heartfelt resolution. But whether a fit of pique or a real threat, many
open access advocates are up in arms and irritated at having to spend precious
time and money combating spurious allegations of copyright infringement
An organization
known as MAPLIGHT, Money And Politics: Illuminating the Connection (http://maplight.org/HR801_2009_Analysis) published some figures showing that Conyers
and co-sponsors may be motivated by donations from book, newspapers and
magazine publishers. This idea of bought votes has gained a fair amount of
currency in the blogosphere, but it seems questionable that the average
donation of $5000 given to the Resolutions five sponsoring members would
really carry much weight. Open access
advocates will especially be monitoring this Resolution as it could not only
reverse the NIH Policy but prevent those eleven agencies outlined in S. 1373
from taking part in a similar opening up of their research.
SOME
OF THE PLAYERS
While the legislative stage moves
with fits and starts, the activist stage is working steadily to open up
government research to taxpayers. The Alliance for Taxpayer Access, despite
sounding like a conservative front group wanting to eliminate government
spending, is a loose-knit coalition of groups working to gain access to
research paid for with tax dollars. The groups focus is on government agencies
as well as on institutions of higher learning who receive a large portion of
their research money from taxpayers rather than through tuition dollars. The
ATA is spearheaded by SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources
Coalition.
Made up of
an international coalition of academic and reference libraries, SPARC brings
the considerable weight of librarians involved in the work of scholarship to
the open access debate. SPARC has been busy
on the Hill writing legislators and testifying before Congressional hearings on
the need for bills such as S. 1373 and the Congressional Research Services
resolutions.
On the first go around of the Federal Research Public Access
Act in 2006, SPARC and its activist arm ATA spearheaded gathering letters of
support from universities, national student organizations and Nobel
Prize-Winners. The 2009 Bill has added more supporters one of the more vocal
being the Oberlin Group, a consortium of 80 libraries of various liberal arts colleges. These liberal arts
colleges, primarily centered on the East Coast and Great Lakes Region, bring a
fresh and activist voice to the debate. Fifty-two members of the group recently
sent a letter to the Nature Publishing Group protesting the price increases of
Scientific America, a hike from
$39.95 to $299 in print and from
$1,000 to $1500 (depending on the size of the college) for an annual license
for the online version of the magazine. (http://www.oberlingroup.org/files/The%20Oberlin%20Group%20Scientific%20American%20Letter.pdf)
On the
other side of the debate are found such groups as the Washington DC Principles
to Free Access to Science who opposes all attempts to open up government
agencies to mandatory open access publishing. Calling themselves the non-for
profit medical and scientific societies, they say that the 6-month embargo
period will hurt the process of peer- review. They also say that government funds
do not pay for all of the research and that it is supported in part by their
scientific societies. In effect, they argue that the federal legislation is
unneeded and that they are already helping make the research open and available
to the public. The group, formed in 2004, sees themselves as the
middle-ground between open access advocates and advocates of the current
closed access journal publishing system.
In looking at DC Principles March 2004
statement of principles, the differences between their idea of free access
and the open access sought by SPARC and others is made clear.
3.
As not-for-profit publishers, we have introduced and will continue to support
the following forms of free access:
- Selected important articles of interest are free online
from the time of publication;
- The full text of our journals is freely available to
everyone worldwide either immediately or within months of publication,
depending on each publishers business and publishing requirements;
- The content of our journals is available free to
scientists working in many low-income nations;
- Articles are made available free online through
reference linking between these journals;
- Our content is available for indexing by major search
engines so that readers worldwide can easily locate information.
(http://www.dcprinciples.org/statement.pdf )
Another
group working hand-in hand with DC Principles in their opposition to
Liebermans bill is the Association of American Publishers (AAP). The AAP is the principal trade association
of the U.S. book publishing industry.
Both groups come out strongly in favor of Conyers Copyright Act.
CONCLUSION
While
governmental support, and to a certain extent, control, of open access
publications can pose difficulties, the benefits are huge. Government
organizations will not disappear overnight; they will not fail because of the
lack of an operating budget; they will not plea regularly with their supporters
for sustenance funds; they will not operate without a clear, some may say
obsessive, focus on legalese. They, however, can be subject to the changing
tides of political favor. The Administration in power can be against
governmental transparency and do everything possible to slow down the movement
to make governmental research and studies open to the public. But it is
important to remember that although those tides may change, those steering the
boats, both with oars and with outboard motors, are ultimately at the helm. It
is the people within these organizations, the researchers writing the articles,
the assistants collating and sending them out, that are ultimately the
deciders. And for anyone who is serious about scientific and medical research
and gathering the largest amount of thinkers to address a problem or issue,
open access is the clear choice.
REFERENCES
1) Falk, Howard (2004). Open Access
Gains Momentum. The Electronic Library,
22, 6.
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Access Bill Stalls in Congress. TheScientist.com.
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New Push to Unlock University-Based Research. Chronicle of Higher Education, 55.
4)Joseph, Heather Dalterio (2008,
December). Letter to Representative Howard Berman on H.R. 6845, the Fair
Copyright in Research Works Act. Retrieved from http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/bm~doc/berman_response_08-1201.pdf
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Newsletter, Retrieved from http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/08-02-09.htm#frpaa
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