Federal Research Access Bill Making Progress in Congress

Bill would require open access to federally funded research after six months

Josh Hadro -- Library Journal, 04/22/2010

• Advocates make the case
• Would trump NIH 12-month embargo
• Opposition from publishers

Baby steps toward legislation: the broad open access mandate known as The Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) is now before the House of Representatives as well as the Senate, following its introduction by Rep. Mike Doyle (D-PA) last week. Both versions are substantially the same, and with the bill now before both legislative bodies, has at least the potential of becoming law.

During prepared remarks on a press conference call Wednesday morning hosted by the Alliance for Taxpayer Access, Doyle said, "I hope that we can move this bill through Congress before the end of the year."

The bill is co-sponsored by five others, representing members of both parties.

Broad mandate
FRPAA was re-introduced into the Senate last year. It would require every federal department and agency with an annual extramural research budget of $100 million or more to make their research available to the public within six months of publication. (A similar bill, introduced in the Senate in 2006, died in committee.)

The bill covers all unclassified research funded by agencies including the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Transportation, Environmental Protection, as well as the National Science Foundation and NASA.

The bill also would ostensibly trump the current 12-month embargo specified by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) mandate—on which FRPAA is directly modeled—by rolling the embargo period back to six months.

In the lab, and in the classroom
On Wednesday's press call, Doyle and other advocates made a case for the bill.

Gary Ward, University of Vermont Microbiology & Molecular Genetics professor and Co-Director, Vermont Center for Immunology and Infectious Diseases, offered the perspective of "someone who's in the trenches" as both a practitioner and an educator.

In his lab practice, Ward said that he and his staff often "have to make due without articles that would help our research." As an educator, Ward added, he finds himself spending precious time "teaching what I have access to, rather what they most need to know."

"It's extremely frustrating to me as an educator, and clearly not in the best interest of our students," he said.

He concluded, "the research that I do every day in the lab is really only valuable insofar as other people read it. The more widely my results are disseminated, the more readily they can be applied and built upon by other scientists."

Mutual goals
The bill's proponents also have highlighted the synergy between this bill and the recent White House call for comment on an open access policy. When asked about any explicit support, Rep. Doyle said "we have not heard from the White House directly," but added that the bill dovetails with the Obama administration's stance on increased access to and transparency of governmental information.

"They don't need this bill to open the door to public access," he said.

Opposition from publishers
"There's really no downside to this bill," Doyle contended, adding that "opposition comes from one area—the publishers who feel threatened by this."

Publishers, in turn, are throwing their support behind Rep. John Conyers' (D-MI) opposing Fair Copyright in Research Works Act (HR 801), which that would curtail any NIH-like mandates.

They say the Doyle bill prompts governmental interference in the well established business practices of the publishing industry. They contend that a broad-ranging bill would potentially upend the existing business model that makes the dissemination of scholarly research viable.

Aniticpating some of these concerns James V. Maher, Provost and Senior Vice Chancellor, University of Pittsburgh, said that the he believes the bill to be "very fair to the publishers—virtually all of us [colleges and universities] who can afford to buy those journals will continue to do so."

But there are those who can't afford the access they need, he said, which justifies this bill's attempt at "democratizing the access to federally funded research."

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