BioMed Central opposes Research Works Act

The Open Access publisher BioMed Central (BMC) has just emailed me this statement concerning the controversial Research Works Act (RWA). 

 

BioMed Central strongly supports the NIH's role in enhancing open access through the operation of PubMed Central and through its Public Access Policy for employees and grantees. We are opposed to the RWA's proposal to roll back that policy, and feel that the success of open access publishers such as BioMed Central clearly demonstrates the invalidity of the arguments, made by supporters of the RWA, that public access undermines the ability of publishers to seek fair recompense for the service they provide.

BioMed Central has contributed to the latest OSTP RFIs on public access to peer-reviewed research, and to research data, and we will be posting those responses on the BioMed Central blog shortly.

OASPA [the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association] will be issuing a statement relating to RWA shortly on behalf of its member open access publishers, including BioMed Central.

If passed, the RWA would be a major setback for the Open Access movement, since it would reverse the Public Access Policy introduced by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2005, a policy that requires all NIH-funded research to be made freely accessible online within 12 months. The bill would also prevent other federal agencies from imposing similar requirements on researchers.

It is expected that BMC’s parent company, Springer, will make its position regarding the RWA known at the American Library Association (ALA) meeting in Dallas tomorrow. (Now available here).

Neither BMC nor Springer is a member of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), which supports the RWA. However, a number of AAP members have disavowed the RWA, including MIT Press, ITHAKA, Pennsylvania State University Press, California University Press, Rockefeller University Press, Nature Publishing Group, and the non-profit American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), which publishes the journal Science.

Some other AAP members have opted to stay neutral (see here and here).

Library of Congress neutral on the Research Works Act

The Library of Congress has indicated that it is neutral on the controversial Research Works Act (RWA).

Commenting by email, a spokesperson told me, “The Library does not take a position on legislation we haven’t requested, unless asked a question directly by our oversight or appropriations committees. As a practical matter, we would not likely disseminate in any way that would violate copyright.”

 The Library of Congress is a member of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), which backs the RWA, and which has described the bill as “significant legislation that will help reinforce America’s leadership in scholarly and scientific publishing in the public interest and in the critical peer-review system that safeguards the quality of such research.”

If passed, the RWA would be a major setback for the Open Access movement, since it would reverse the Public Access Policy introduced by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2005, a policy that requires all NIH-funded research to be made freely accessible online within 12 months. The bill would also prevent other federal agencies from imposing similar requirements on researchers.

On the NIH Policy the Library of Congress spokesperson commented, “I can find no evidence of the Library having a pro- or con- stance on the NIH policy.”

Gary Price at INFOdocket recently drew my attention to a 12th January announcement by the Library of Congress indicating that Gayle Osterberg has been appointed director of communications at the Library, effective January 30th.

Osterberg was instrumental in founding the Copyright Alliance, an organisation whose membership includes the largest supporters of another controversial piece of legislation — the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Prior to that, Osterberg served for two years as vice president of corporate communications at the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), a major player in trying to get SOPA passed.

The day after it was announced that Osterberg would be joining the Library of Congress, the Copyright Alliance published a press release praising US Representatives Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) for co-sponsoring the Research Works Act, otherwise known as HR 3699.

Meanwhile, another member of the AAP has also indicated that it wishes to remain neutral on the RWA. By email, director of media relations at the RAND Corporation Jeffrey Hiday told me, “RAND is not taking a position on the Research Works Act. We make all of our unclassified research available on our website and will continue to do so.”

By contrast, a number of AAP members have disavowed the RWA, including MIT Press, ITHAKA, Pennsylvania State University Press, California University Press, Rockefeller University Press, Nature Publishing Group, and the non-profit American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), which publishes the journal Science.

Further background on the RWA is available here. 

Nature Publishing Group and Digital Science do not support the Research Works Act

Nature Publishing Group (NGP) and Digital Science today released a joint statement about the controversial Research Works Act (RWA), otherwise known as H.R. 3699.

The statement reads:

Nature Publishing Group (NPG) and Digital Science note the concern amongst the scientific and library communities about the Research Works Act (H.R. 3699), currently under consideration by the U.S. federal government, and wish to clarify our position.

NPG and Digital Science do not support the Research Works Act.

NPG and Digital Science exist to support the creation and dissemination of human knowledge on a sustainable commercial basis. We seek to enable the open exchange of ideas, especially in scientific communities, in line with the requirements and objectives of relevant stakeholders.

Dr Annette Thomas [then Managing Director of NPG] was on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) working group that introduced the NIH Public Access Policy, and NPG has actively supported self-archiving since 2005. NPG encourages self-archiving of the author's accepted manuscript six months after publication. Since 2008, NPG's free deposition service has deposited over 3000 manuscripts in PubMed Central on behalf of authors. NPG works constructively with other 'open' repositories. Digital Science provides tools, such as ReadCube and figshare, for scientists and scholars to share content.

NPG's January 2011 position statement on open access remains representative of our views. NPG's business development efforts are very much focused on open access as one of a range of sustainable publishing models. Recently we have demonstrated this by launching the multidisciplinary titles Nature Communications and Scientific Reports, and several specialist open access journals and journals with open access options. Of the five journals NPG launched in 2011, four are open access, and 51 of the 54 academic and society journals that we publish now offer open access options.

—ends—

 We should note that Nature Publishing Group is a member of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), which backs the RWA, and has described the bill as “significant legislation that will help reinforce America’s leadership in scholarly and scientific publishing in the public interest and in the critical peer-review system that safeguards the quality of such research.”

If passed, the RWA would be a major setback for the Open Access movement. It would reverse the Public Access Policy introduced by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2005 — which requires that all NIH-funded research is made freely accessible online within 12 months — and it would prevent other federal agencies from imposing similar requirements on researchers.

A number of other AAP members have disavowed the RWA, including MIT Press, ITHAKA, Pennsylvania State University Press, California University Press, and Rockefeller University Press. Others may be weakening — e.g. University of Chicago Press and Cambridge University Press. 

NPG's statement is available here. 

Further background on the RWA is available here. 

*** UPDATE: AAAA DOES NOT ENDORSE THE RESEARCH WORKS ACT *** 

The nonprofit American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and publisher of the journal Science, has posted a statement on its web site stressing that it does not endorse the RWA. Below is an extract:

“We believe the current NIH public access policy provides an important mechanism for ensuring that the public has access to biomedical research findings,” said AAAS Chief Executive Officer Alan I. Leshner, executive publisher of Science. “At the same time, the NIH policy provides appropriate support for the intellectual property rights of publishers who have invested much in science communication.”

Leshner added, “AAAS, like many organizations, is a member of the Association of American Publishers, but we do not endorse all of their policies or statements, and we wish to make that very clear in this case. AAAS is not in favor of the proposed Research Works Act.”

The full statement is available here.

Research Works Act: Cambridge University Press expands on its position

Last Friday I wrote about the Research Works Act (RWA) and included a quote from Cambridge University Press (CUP) about the bill, otherwise known as HR 3699.  

The quote was in response to three questions I had asked CUP about, respectively, the National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy, the RWA, and the sponsorship of the RWA by the Association of American Publishers (AAP).

The RWA would have the effect of reversing the requirement (introduced by the NIH in 2005) that all research it funds is made freely accessible online. The bill would also prevent other US federal agencies from imposing similar requirements on researchers.

Last week CUP, which is a member of the AAP, provided the following statement in response to my questions, “We have submitted a formal response to the Office of Science and Technology (OSTP), but we want that response to have time to be processed by OSTP and it is too early for us to make any public statements.”

I also reported that Peter Murray-Rust, a Reader in molecular informatics at the University of Cambridge had written an open letter about the RWA to both CUP and Oxford University Press.

Murray-Rust wrote: “The AAP has proposed a bill which effectively legislates the restriction of access to scholarly publication with the sole intention of raising the income of publishers. I and many others feel this is unethical, immoral and unworthy of any organisation committed to the dissemination of knowledge. Some commentators have described it as an act of war by the publishing industry on the scholarly community … I hope that you can assure me CUP was not involved in creating the AAP’s position and ask you to consider the downsides of belonging to an organisation such as AAP.”

Peter Davison

Today I was copied into an email from CUP’s director of corporate affairs Peter Davison. The email expands on CUP’s position vis-à-vis the RWA, and reads:

“Cambridge University Press has submitted testimony to the United States Office of Science and Technology in response to the Request for Information (2011-28623) on subjects related to HR 3699. Our testimony is not identical to the position adopted by the Association of American Publishers. In particular, we write: ‘We support all sustainable access models that ensure the permanence and integrity of the scholarly record... The Bill as proposed could undermine the underlying freedoms expected by and of scholarly authors...’

“You ask that we consider the ‘downsides of belonging to an organisation such as AAP’. Few members of industry associations will find themselves in complete agreement with every action of those associations, but the support of AAP for our and our authors’ interests continues to be highly valued by Cambridge University Press, both within the United States and further afield.”

University of California Press differs from AAP on Research Works Act

Alison Mudditt, the director of the University of California Press, has just emailed me the following statement outlining the Press’ position on the controversial Research Works Act (RWA).  

We should note that the University of California Press is a member of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), which has backed the RWA.

“As part of the world’s leading public research university, University of California Press is committed to the wide dissemination of knowledge to researchers, educators, leaders, and public audiences worldwide. The issues raised by Research Works Act are complex and we welcome continued informed debate on this topic. Our perspective on these issues differs from that of AAP, and we are committed to engaging closely with scholars from all disciplines in exploring new models that retain critical features such as quality control, long-term preservation, and measures of impact and use. However, UC Press does not believe withdrawing our membership in AAP is beneficial to the resolution of this issue or to our long-term interests. Scholarly communication faces unprecedented and undeniable challenges, and we believe that rich and diverse debate is the best path to sustainable solutions.”

Statements on the RWA are also available from MIT Press, ITHAKA, and Pennsylvania State University Press here, here, and here.

Readers may also be interested in an article I wrote earlier today on the topic of the RWA, which provides some background on this controversial topic.

I invite other members of AAP to email me their views on the RWA, which I am happy to publish here. 


*** UPDATE: THE ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY PRESS ***

Executive director of The Rockefeller University Press Mike Rossner has today sent a letter to Rep. Carolyn Maloney who, with Rep. Darrell Issa, introduced the RWA (AKA H.R. 3699) into the US House of Representatives at the end of last year.

The Rockefeller University Press is located in Maloney's constituency, and Rossner is a resident and voter in her constituency.

The letter can be viewed here. Below is an extract:

“I want to state emphatically that I support the NIH Public Access Policy and think it should be expanded to other federal funding agencies … Enacting a law that prohibits federal funding agencies from mandating public access to the results of the research they fund will deprive the public of important information that is rightly theirs. Although this Act has been supported by the Association of American Publishers (AAP), it is vital that members of Congress know that not all members of this Association agree with their position. The Rockefeller University Press is a member of the AAP, but we strongly oppose H.R. 3699.”

 *** FURTHER UPDATE: AN ONLINE PETITION TO TRY AND STOP THE RESEARCH WORKS ACT HAS BEEN SET UP HERE ***

Can AAP Members stay neutral in the row over the Research Works Act?

In the past couple of days I have reported on the decisions by MIT Press, ITHAKA and Pennsylvania State University Press to distance themselves from the Research Works Act (RWA), otherwise known as HR 3699.

All three organisations are members of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), which backs the RWA, and has described the bill as “significant legislation that will help reinforce America’s leadership in scholarly and scientific publishing in the public interest and in the critical peer-review system that safeguards the quality of such research.”

If passed, however, the RWA would be a major setback for the Open Access movement, since it would reverse the Public Access Policy introduced by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) requiring that all NIH-funded research is made freely accessible online, and it would prevent other federal agencies from imposing similar requirements on researchers.

Unsurprisingly, therefore, the AAP has become the target for a lot  of criticism, with the research community calling on members of the association to disavow both the bill and AAP’s support for it. There have also been calls for AAP members to resign in protest.

However, it is not currently clear how representative the views of MIT Press, ITHAKA and Pennsylvania State University Press are. In an attempt to find out I have over the past week or so contacted around 35 members of the AAP, primarily scholarly publishers. The majority of these organisations have yet to reply to my enquiry.

In contacting these organisations I asked the following three questions:

1.    Do you support the National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy? If not, why not?

2.    Do you support the Research Works Act (RWA)? If not, why not

3.    If you do not support the RWA is it your intention to try to change AAP/PSP's public support of the Act (as outlined in its statement of 23rd December), or are you more likely to publicly disassociate yourself from AAP’s position, or even perhaps leave the AAP?

Of those who responded to me, the only organisation to answer all three questions directly (rather than issue a general statement) was the New England Journal of Medicine. The NEJM answered in this way:

1.    Dr. Drazen [NEJM editor-in-chief] was on the NIH Public Access working group, and our policies actually surpass the guidelines of the NIH Public Access Policy: All of our research content, regardless of funding source, is freely available six months after publication.

2.    We have no position on the RWA as drafted.

3.    We will continue to support AAP/PSP.

But is NEJM’s neutrality more representative of what AAP members feel about the RWA than the position taken by, say, MIT Press? One cannot know for sure, but it does seem likely (for the moment at least). Below, for instance, is the response I received from CrossRef:

“As a not-for-profit trade association of publishers CrossRef does not take positions on political matters. We have 1,300 very diverse members who range from large commercial publishers to small not-for-profits and they also include society publishers, government organisations, and university publishers. Our members hold a variety of opinions about open access and mandatory deposits of government funded research. We are intentionally business-model neutral. It is not part of our mission to lobby.”

CrossRef is right to point out that it is more difficult for an organisation to arrive at a consensus when its membership is diverse. Nevertheless, at least two university presses seem equally keen to remain neutral about AAP’s backing of the RWA. In response to my three questions, for instance, Oxford University Press (OUP) simply replied, "We cannot comment as we aren't taking a public position on this issue.”

Cambridge University Press (CUP), meanwhile, responded, “We have submitted a formal response to the Office of Science and Technology (OSTP), but we want that response to have time to be processed by OSTP and it is too early for us to make any public statements.”

For its part, Getty Publications appeared to be unaware of the RWA. “Thanks for your inquiry,” I was told by the Getty media relations department. “We passed it by our colleagues at Getty Publications, but they are unaware of the issue you raise.”

But whatever their current position, what remains to be seen is whether AAP members will be able to stay neutral in light of the growing pressure they face from the research community to overturn the AAP's support for the RWA. Is it really possible, as the president of the ACM Alain Chesnais clearly believes, for AAP members to stay neutral on legislation like the RWA when its own members/customers/users begin to criticise it for doing so?

Time will tell, but some maintain that it is in any case disingenuous to pretend that neutrality is possible. As OA advocate Peter Suber points out, AAP members who choose to sit on their hands on this issue are not abstaining, as they may claim. Rather they are sending out a clear message. This message, he says, reads, “We're undecided about RWA, or our members disagree about RWA, or we don't take stands on political issues, but we agree to pay dues to an organisation using our money and our name to work energetically against the interests of researchers and research.”

Clearly, some AAP members do actively support the RWA, and are highly unlikely to change their minds. But exactly how many that is we do not know. What we can say with certainty is that Elsevier, the largest scholarly publisher in the world, does support the bill. Commenting on a blog post published by Public Library of Science co-founder Michael Eisen, Elsevier’s vice president and head of global corporate relations Tom Reller asserted, “Elsevier, along with other commercial and non-profit publishers do indeed support the Research Works Act and commend Congressman Issa and Congresswoman Maloney for co-sponsoring this important legislation.”

The problem is that many in the research community see things very differently. Some, like Peter Murray-Rust, a Reader in molecular informatics at the University of Cambridge, are not just critical of the AAP’s support for the RWA, but enraged by it. For that reason, Murray-Rust has written open letters to both OUP and CUP asking them to repudiate the bill.

He writes, “The AAP has proposed a bill which effectively legislates the restriction of access to scholarly publication with the sole intention of raising the income of publishers. I and many others feel this is unethical, immoral and unworthy of any organisation committed to the dissemination of knowledge. Some commentators have described it as an act of war by the publishing industry on the scholarly community.”

*** UPDATE: CUP EXPANDS ON ITS POSITION VIS-À-VIS THE RESEARCH WORKS ACT HERE ***

Pennsylvania State University Press says No to Research Works Act

Following the recent repudiations of the Research Works Act (RWA) by MIT Press and ITHAKA, I have now received an email from the director of Pennsylvania State University Press Patrick Alexander.

Like MIT Press and ITHAKA, Pennsylvania State University Press is a member of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), which backs the RWA.

Alexander writes: “Echoing our colleagues at MIT Press who recently commented on the Association of American Publishers’ endorsement of H.R. 3699, AAP’s statement does not reflect the position of The Pennsylvania State University Press. Nonetheless, our relationship with the AAP remains a vital aspect of our responsibility to share a role in the academic publishing community worldwide. Accordingly, we have no plans to sever that relationship.”

Pennsylvania State University Press is the third member of the AAP to publicly repudiate the RWA, notwithstanding the fact that the AAP supports the bill. When it was introduced in December, the AAP described the RWA as “significant legislation that will help reinforce America’s leadership in scholarly and scientific publishing in the public interest and in the critical peer-review system that safeguards the quality of such research.”

If passed, the RWA would reverse the Public Access Policy introduced by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2005 requiring that all NIH-funded research is made freely accessible online. The bill would also prevent other federal agencies from imposing similar requirements on researchers. This would be a major blow to the Open Access movement.

What impact these public statements will have remains to be seen. All three of the above organisations have made it quite clear that they do not intend to resign from the AAP, which some researchers have been calling on members to do.

We should, however, note the comment posted earlier today on my blog by Gary Daught. Daught cites a statement that he says he received from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) today in which CLIR says, “We are opposed to the Research Works Act, the goals of which are, indeed, fundamentally in conflict with CLIR’s values, vision, and mission. Today we will draft a letter of withdrawal from AAP.”

I emailed CLIR myself on Wednesday asking for a comment on the RWA, but have yet to receive a reply.

I invite any member of AAP to send me their views on the RWA.

ITHAKA becomes the second AAP member to disavow the Research Works Act

Yesterday I reported that MIT Press has distanced itself from the Research Works Act (RWA). The RWA is a new bill introduced into the House of Representatives at the end of last year that would reverse the US National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy requiring taxpayer-funded research to be made freely accessible online. It would also prevent other federal agencies from imposing similar requirements on their funded researchers.

The RWA is backed by the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and its Professional and Scholarly Division (PSP), which last December published a press release describing the bill as, “significant legislation that will help reinforce America’s leadership in scholarly and scientific publishing in the public interest and in the critical peer-review system that safeguards the quality of such research.”

If passed, however, the bill would be a major setback for the Open Access movement. As I noted yesterday, AAP has therefore been widely criticised for its support of the RWA, and some in the research community have called on members of the association to disavow both the bill and AAP’s support for it. There have also been calls for AAP members to resign in protest.

Today I received an email from ITHAKA, the non-profit organisation dedicated to helping the academic community take full advantage of information and networking technologies, and which includes JSTOR, the online service providing access to archived academic journals, and Portico, the electronic-archiving Initiative.

The email was in response to an enquiry I made a few days ago asking ITHAKA to comment on the RWA, and AAP’s support for it. It contained the following statement:

“A core principle of our organisation is to provide the broadest possible access to scholarly works in ways that are sustainable and account for their long term preservation. We have no intention of endorsing RWA. We also have no intention of leaving the AAP. We do not agree with them on every issue, but we value our membership, as we do our participation in a number of library and scholarly associations.”

Commenting on the news, Open Access advocate Peter Suber said, “I applaud ITHAKA for distancing itself from the harmful Research Works Act. The AAP acts in the name of its members when it lobbies for the RWA, in effect recruiting all its members as allies in a cause that not all of them support. Through their public statements, MIT Press and ITHAKA have refused to lend their weight to a policy they do not endorse.”

MIT Press distances itself from Research Works Act

There has been a great deal of discussion online recently about the Research Works Act (RWA), a new bill introduced into the US House of Representatives on December 16th by Representatives Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Darrell Issa (R-CA).

Effectively, the bill would reverse the NIH's Public Access Policy requiring taxpayer-funded research to be made freely accessible online, and prevent any other federal agency from introducing a similar requirement. 

The RWA is backed by the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and its Professional and Scholarly Division (PSP). On 23^rd December the AAP published a press release welcoming the introduction of the bill, which it described as “significant legislation that will help reinforce America’s leadership in scholarly and scientific publishing in the public interest and in the critical peer-review system that safeguards the quality of such research.”

If passed, the bill would be a major setback for the Open Access movement.

AAP has been widely criticised for supporting the RWA, and some have called on members of the association to disavow both the bill and AAP’s support for it. There have also been calls for AAP members to resign in protest.

It appears that at least one publisher has been listening: MIT Press has just announced that it does not support the RWA, although it does not plan to leave the AAP.

A short while ago I received an email from Ellen Faran, the director of MIT Press. The email reads, “The AAP’s press release on the Research Works Act does not reflect the position of the MIT Press; nor, I imagine, the position of many other scholarly presses whose mission is centrally focused on broad dissemination. We will not, however, withdraw from the AAP on this issue as we value the Association’s work overall and the opportunity to participate as a member of the larger and diverse publishing community.”

After receiving the same email message, OA advocate Peter Suber commented on the Global Open Access List (GOAL), “I believe MIT Press is the first AAP-member press to disavow the AAP position on the Research Works Act. Kudos and profound thanks to Ellen Faran and MIT Press for their leadership on this issue.”

***More on the RWA here, here, here,and here***