Ask your Representative to oppose H.R. 801 -- The Fair Copyright in Research Works Act
H.R. 801 is designed to amend current copyright law and create a new category of copyrighted works (Section 201, Title 17). SPARC (The Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition) asks all supporters of public access to contact your Representative no later than February 28, 2009 to express your support for public access to taxpayer-funded research and ask that he or she oppose H.R.801. Draft letter text is included below. Contact information for Minnesota's Congressional Delegation is available at: http://www1.umn.edu/urelate/govrel/delegation.html
From SPARC's February 11, 2009 press release:
In effect, [H.R. 801] would:
1. Prohibit all U.S. federal agencies from conditioning funding agreements to require that works resulting from federal support be made publicly available if those works are either: a) funded in part by sources other than a U.S. agency, or b) the result of "meaningful added value" to the work from an entity that is not party to the agreement.
2. Prohibit U.S. agencies from obtaining a license to publicly distribute, perform, or display such work by, for example, placing it on the Internet.
3. Stifle access to a broad range of federally funded works, overturning the crucially important NIH Public Access Policy and preventing other agencies from implementing similar policies.
4. Because it is so broadly framed, the proposed bill would require an overhaul of the well-established procurement rules in effect for all federal agencies, and could disrupt day-to-day procurement practices across the federal government.
5. Repeal the longstanding "federal purpose" doctrine, under which all federal agencies that fund the creation of a copyrighted work reserve the "royalty-free, nonexclusive right to reproduce, publish, or otherwise use the work" for any federal purpose. This will severely limit the ability of U.S. federal agencies to use works that they have funded to support and fulfill agency missions and to communicate with and educate the public.
Because of the NIH Public Access Policy, millions of Americans now have access to vital health care information through the PubMed Central database. Under the current policy, nearly 3,000 new biomedical manuscripts are deposited for public accessibility each month. H.R.801 would prohibit the deposit of these manuscripts, seriously impeding the ability of researchers, physicians, health care professionals, and families to access and use this critical health-related information in a timely manner.
All supporters of public access -- researchers, libraries, campus administrators, patient advocates, publishers, and others -- are asked to contact their Representatives to let them know you support public access to federally funded research and oppose H.R. 801. Again, the proposed legislation would effectively reverse the NIH Public Access Policy, as well as make it impossible for other federal agencies to put similar policies into place.
Thank you for your support and continued persistence in supporting this policy. You know the difference constituent voices can make on Capitol Hill.
[...]
-------------------------
Draft letter text:
Dear Representative;
On behalf of [your organization], I strongly urge you to oppose H.R. 801, “the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act,” introduced to the House Judiciary Committee on February 3, 2009. This bill would amend the U.S. Copyright Code, prohibiting federal agencies from requiring as a condition of funding agreements public access to the products of the research they fund. This will significantly inhibit our ability to advance scientific discovery and to stimulate innovation in all scientific disciplines.
Most critically, H.R. 801 would reverse the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy, prohibit American taxpayers from accessing the results of the crucial biomedical research funded by their taxpayer dollars, and stifle critical advancements in life-saving research and scientific discovery.
Because of the NIH Public Access Policy, millions of Americans now have access to vital health care information from the NIH’s PubMed Central database. Under the current policy, nearly 3,000 new biomedical manuscripts are deposited for public accessibility each month. H.R.801 would prohibit the deposit of these manuscripts, seriously impeding the ability of researchers, physicians, health care professionals, and families to access and use this critical health-related information in a timely manner.
H.R. 801 affects not only the results of biomedical research produced by the NIH, but also scientific research coming from all other federal agencies. Access to critical information on energy, the environment, climate change, and hundreds of other areas that directly impact the lives and well being of the public would be unfairly limited by this proposed legislation.
[Why you support taxpayer access and the NIH policy].
The NIH and other agencies must be allowed to ensure timely, public access to the results of research funded with taxpayer dollars. Please oppose H.R.801.
Sincerely,
(name)
[END LETTER TEXT]
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June 24, 2009
Kansas University: first public university to pass a faculty-initiated open access policy
From a June 23 message sent by Lorraine Haricombe, Dean of Libraries at the University of Kansas, to the ARL (Association of Research Libraries) Directors Discussion List:
Colleagues: I am pleased to inform you that the Faculty Senate has approved an Open Access Policy for KU at its final meeting on April 30, 2009. On May 19th and 22nd, respectively, the Provost and Chancellor approved the policy. The approval of this policy is significant in that it makes KU the first public university to pass such a faculty-initiated policy and puts KU faculty in the company of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard's Law School, Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, Stanford's School of Education, and most recently, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology [...]. These are all institutions whose faculties voted and approved policies very similar to the policy passed by our Faculty Senate.Please note: The policy has been approved in concept, but the details have yet to be determined. Details of the policy implementation will be developed in the 2009-2010 academic year by a faculty senate task force. The KU Faculty Senate decided that additional details of the policy would be developed by faculty governance in consultation with the Provost's Office, to be voted on by the Faculty Senate in the coming academic year. Whatever implementation plan is created will provide faculty with an option to seek a waiver from the policy (to opt out). As such an implementation task force is being created to develop the policy details and provide a report during the 2009-2010 school year. The entire policy is included at the end of this message.
Open Access Policy at KU
"The faculty of the University of Kansas (KU) is committed to sharing the intellectual fruits of its research and scholarship as widely as possible and lowering barriers to its access. In recognition of that commitment and responsibility, the KU faculty is determined to take advantage of new technologies to increase access to its work by the citizens of Kansas and scholars, educators, and policymakers worldwide. In support of greater openness in scholarly endeavors, the KU faculty agrees to the following concept: Each faculty member grants to KU permission to make scholarly articles to which he or she made substantial intellectual contributions publicly available in the KU open access institutional repository, and to exercise the copyright in those articles. In legal terms, the permission granted by each faculty member is a nonexclusive, irrevocable, paid-up, worldwide license to exercise any and all rights under copyright relating to each of his or her scholarly articles, in any medium, and to authorize others to do the same, provided that the articles are not sold for a profit. This license in no way interferes with the rights of the KU faculty author as the copyright holder of the work. The policy will apply to all scholarly articles authored or co-authored while a faculty member of KU. Faculty will be afforded an opt out opportunity. Faculty governance in consultation with the Provost's office will develop the details of the policy which will be submitted for approval by the Faculty Senate."
Also, the week before, Harvard issued this press release (excerpted):
The faculty of the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) voted overwhelmingly at its last faculty meeting to allow the university to make all faculty members' scholarly articles publicly available online. The resolution makes HGSE the fourth of Harvard's 10 schools to endorse open access to faculty research publications. The Faculties of Arts and Sciences, the Harvard Law School, and the Harvard Kennedy School all passed similar policies in recent months.
[...]
As a result of the resolution, HGSE faculty will now provide their scholarly articles to the Harvard Office for Scholarly Communication for deposit in an open access digital repository that is currently under development. When the repository launches later this year, the contents will be freely available to the public, unless an author chooses to embargo or block access. The policy makes rights sharing with publishers and self-archiving the default, while allowing faculty to waive Harvard's license on a case-by-case basis, at the author's discretion.
June 19, 2009
University Press directors endorse public access to scholarly articles
On June 3, the directors of ten U.S. and Canadian university presses released this statement:
Position Statement From University Press Directors on Free Access to Scholarly Journal Articles:1. The undersigned university press directors support the dissemination of scholarly research as broadly as possible.
2. We support the free access to scientific, technical, and medical journal articles no later than 12 months after publication. We understand that the length of time before free release of journal articles will by necessity vary for other disciplines.
3. We support the principle that scholarly research fully funded by governmental entities is a public good and should be treated as such. We support legislation that strengthens this principle and oppose legislation designed to weaken it.
4. We support the archiving and free release of the final, published version of scholarly journal articles to ensure accuracy and citation reliability.
5. We will work directly with academic libraries, governmental entities, scholarly societies, and faculty to determine appropriate strategies concerning dissemination options, including institutional repositories and national scholarly archives.
The participating presses:
- Athabasca University Press
- Penn State University Press
- Rockefeller University Press
- University Press of Florida
- University of Akron Press
- University of Calgary Press
- University of Massachusetts Press
- University of Michigan Press
- University Press of New England
- Wayne State University Press
The statement was covered by the Chronicle of Higher Education in its June 5 Wired Campus.
Peter Suber from Open Access News comments: "This is significant. It's the first statement in support of OA from a group of mostly-TA publishers and the first from a group of mostly-book publishers. It's also an important reproach to the American Association of University Presses, which publicly supported the Conyers bill last September without consulting its members."
May 29, 2009
University of California Libraries release Open Letter to Licensed Content Providers on CA budget crisis
This week Ivy Anderson, Director of Collections for the California Digital Library, sent the following open letter to most of CDL's key content providers.
*****
OPEN LETTER TO LICENSED CONTENT PROVIDERS
The University of California Libraries ask all information providers with whom we negotiate content licenses to respond to the major fiscal challenges affecting higher education in California in a spirit of collaboration and mutual problem-solving. We expect to work with each of our vendors at renewal to develop creative solutions that can preserve the greatest amount of content to meet the information needs of the University of California’s students, faculty, and researchers.
The University of California Libraries, including the California Digital Library (CDL), share the economic concerns expressed in the Statement to Scholarly Publishers on the Global Economic Crisis issued by the Association of Research Libraries <http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/economic-statement-2009.pdf> and the Statement on the Global Economic Crisis issued by the International Coalition of Library Consortia <http://www.library.yale.edu/consortia/icolc-econcrisis-0109.htm>. The economic crisis affecting libraries is particularly acute in California, which as of this writing (May 2009) is forecasting a $21 billion state budget shortfall for 2010 despite previous efforts to close a $42 billion budget gap in 2009.
As a state-supported institution, the University of California has experienced significant budget reductions in fiscal year 2009, with more reductions to come. The $531 million shortfall now anticipated in state funding for the 2009-10 fiscal year amounts to nearly 17 percent of the $3.2 billion the state provides UC annually. Numerous cost containment measures are in place across the university, including salary and other compensation freezes for senior managers, hiring curtailments for other staff, travel restrictions, and other mandated reductions. More information about the UC budget situation is available on the University’s Web site at http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/budget
UC Libraries are being hit hard by the budget reduction mandates in effect at each of the UC campuses. Targeted reductions to library materials budgets for fiscal year 2010 vary across the campuses, with some as high as 20%. Many campuses have been alerted that additional cuts will be levied in fiscal year 2011. Coupled with the typical inflationary increases for scholarly publications, the erosion of library buying power will have a profound and lasting impact on all of the UC libraries. Monographic purchasing has already been seriously curtailed, and every electronic content license is being placed under careful scrutiny.
While we will not be able to spare every product, we will pursue every possible creative option to maintain access to resources important to the UC mission. These options may include developing processes for individual campuses to disengage from systemwide agreements without penalty to other campuses and without penalties being levied upon re-entry; deeper overall discounts when new or add-on products are acquired; and in some if not many cases, outright cost reductions. We welcome all innovative proposals for managing through these difficult times.
May 22, 2009
The first OA mandate anywhere by a humanities department
From Peter Suber's SPARC Open Access Forum:
On Wednesday, May 14th, by unanimous vote, the faculty of the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Oregon adopted an Open Access mandate [...]. This mandate is the first (according to ROAR) such mandate in the world by any Department in the Humanities and the 3rd in Oregon (after OSU Library faculty and UO Library faculty). It is distinguished by the stipulation that URLs of self-archived postprints are to be included in all materials submitted to the Department for purposes of review and promotion.
Suber makes these two comments:
* This is one of the strongest policies anywhere. It starts with a Harvard-style mandate-plus-waiver policy and then adds a libre OA license (CC-BY-NC-ND). It seems to say that promotion review of journal articles will be limited to those on deposit in the repository (a desirable feature pioneered by Napier Edinburgh and Liege). Moreover, it does not allow embargoes beyond the date of publication unless the author seeks a waiver. All this in another unanimous vote. Kudos to the whole department.
* As the announcement notes, this is the first OA mandate anywhere by a humanities department. I believe it makes the U of Oregon the first university anywhere with two departmental mandates. The UO library faculty adopted an OA mandate one week ago today --also by a unanimous vote. (Harvard has three schools with mandates but they are not departments.) This is the start of what Arthur Sale called a patchwork mandate and suggests that we'll soon see mandates from other Oregon departments.
May 15, 2009
Journals forecast to cost 7-9% more in 2010
Library Journal, in its annual Periodical Price Survey, says that the current state of the dollar means that journal prices will likely average 7-9% more in cost next year. Given the state budget deficit and the effect that will undoubtedly have on funding for higher education, LJ's forecast raises concern about the Libraries' ability to hold off journal cancellations.
Contrary to perceptions that access issues only affect scientists, LJ projects that journals in the social sciences will actually have a higher price increase than science journals (8.3% for the former, 7.5% for the latter).
An excerpt:
Amidst the national and international financial crises, the journals marketplace is navigating new waters. Many libraries, including some of our largest research institutions, say massive cancellations are already in the works. It seems certain that most libraries will have less money to spend than they had in 2009. Publishers have been asked to roll back prices so libraries can keep valued content. Based on past records, some will remain intractable, absorb cancellations without making price concessions or renegotiating licenses, and wait for a better day. Others will deal in the hopes of keeping content in front of users until library budgets recover and prices return to prerecession levels. In recent years, price increases for journals have averaged 7–9%. Despite pleas for pricing mercies, we don’t have any information at this point that suggests those averages won’t hold for 2010. The conservative budget manager will plan on increases in that range in the coming year.
May 8, 2009
American Medical Association provides OA to "all [its] pandemic influenza related articles"
From "A National Response to an International Outbreak" by Nancy Nielsen, M.D., President, American Medical Association:
The AMA’s strategies on disaster medicine and public health preparedness education are implemented through its National Disaster Life Support (NDLS) Program and peer-reviewed publication, Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness. Through the Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness journal, the AMA will release all pandemic influenza related articles for open access, to provide resources for medical and public health responders. Relevant articles in the journal pipeline also will be published ahead of print to ensure timely dissemination.
May 1, 2009
NPR does story on public access movement
On April 28, American Public Media's Marketplace program did a story on "Publicly funded research for a price."
The opening anecdote puts a human face on the issue of public access to publicly funded research:
People who grew up with the Internet expect information to be free. That's what 21-year-old Josh Sommer thought.In 2006 he was a typical college freshman. Studying environmental engineering, hanging out, making new friends. Suddenly, he started to get severe headaches. He had a series of routine tests.
Josh Sommer: End up having an MRI and being told that I have a mass right in the very center of my head, entwined with critical arteries, in one of the most difficult locations to operate on.
The cancer Josh has is called Chordoma. It's a rare disease with a low survival rate. Even doctors don't know much about it. So Josh threw himself into Chordoma research. He Googled the disease to find out all he could about it, but kept hitting roadblocks.
Sommer: I'd find an abstract, and I'd click on it. And oh, you have to pay $60 to read this article. Oh, you have to pay $40 to read this article. I mean, I have this disease, I want to know about it.
Journal subscriptions -- like the Journal of the American Medical Association -- can cost thousands of dollars each year. With universities and libraries trimming budgets, they can't afford all of them either.
And Duke University law professor James Boyle gives a colorful take on the issue as well:
The Web works great for porn or for shoes, or for flirting on social networks. But it doesn't work really well for science. We haven't done for science what we did on the rest of the Web, which is basically to have this open Web with everything linked together.
Many reader comments on the piece are intriguing as well.
Read or listen to the story here:
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/04/28/pm_copyright/
April 24, 2009
Sci-Eng librarian succeeds in altering publishing agreement
Lisa Johnston, Physics, Astronomy and Geology Librarian at the U-MN Science & Engineering Library, successfully negotiated changes to the Taylor and Francis publishing agreement. Read her recounting of her experience in her blog entry "A Copyright Story." Congratulations, Lisa!
http://blog.lib.umn.edu/ljohnsto/physics/2009/04/a_copyright_story.html
April 17, 2009
Harvard and American Physical Society reach agreement on public access mandate
On April 9, Harvard and APS have issued a joint press release, from which the following is excerpted:
The Harvard Office for Scholarly Communication and the American Physical Society (APS) announced jointly today that they have entered into an agreement to facilitate faculty compliance with the University’s open access policies when Harvard faculty members publish in the APS journals, comprising Physical Review, Physical Review Letters, and Reviews of Modern Physics. As a result of the new agreement, APS recognizes Harvard's open access license and will not require copyright agreement addenda or waivers, in exchange for Harvard's clarification of its intended use of the license. In general terms, in exercising its license under the open access policies, Harvard will not use a facsimile of the published version without permission of the publisher, will not charge for the display or distribution of those articles, and will provide an online link to the publisher's definitive version of the articles where possible. The agreement does not restrict fair use of the articles in any way.
Three of Harvard’s ten faculties have passed open access resolutions within the past 14 months, most recently Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. The main beneficiaries of the Harvard-APS agreement will be physics faculty members, who are no longer obliged to acquire waivers of Harvard’s prior license. In addition, other institutions and their authors may find the agreement to be a useful model in their interactions with APS and other scholarly publishers.
April 10, 2009
Scholarly publishers consider price freezes
In her article in the Chronicle of Higher Education's April 10 issue, "University Press Hears Libraries' Pleas and Freezes Journal Prices," Jennifer Howard tells how publishers like Annual Reviews and Rockefeller University Press have decided not to raise their prices in 2010. This comes in response to formal requests from organizations like the Association of Research Libraries and the International Coalition of Library Consortia.
Some compelling statements from publishers in the article:
"We understand the pressure that librarians are under because of budget cuts in the current economic climate, and we realized that even if we kept our prices the same, we could continue, we hope, to bring in enough revenue to operate. We still need income to publish journals, [he said, but as a nonprofit] we don't have to provide a dividend to shareholders."
-- Mike Rossner, executive director, Rockefeller University Press
"We don't have the margin that a lot of companies, particularly commercial companies, have [... This year the press will stick to what she called] the most moderate price increase we can possibly pass along, [perhaps as low as 3 percent for digital-only journals]. We're still running the numbers and seeing what we can tolerate. We're trying really hard. [The California press] paid very close attention to the statements [from the library groups]. We know it's a tough budget environment for them. It's a tough climate for all of us."
-- Rebecca Simon, associate director and director of journals and digital publishing, University of California Press
"[Presses and libraries] live and die together, really. We understand the pressures that are on them and don't want to do anything to damage that relationship."
-- William M. Breichner, journals publisher, Johns Hopkins University Press
