Matt Jones on GenomeWeb News points out to the Bill against NIH Open-Access Policy has been introduced
again. The bill
is based on the belief that "the policy is a breach of standing copyright laws
that protect scientific publishers".
"A bill aimed at
limiting the open-access publishing policy adopted by the National Institutes
of Health has been re-introduced in the US House of Representatives by Rep.
John Conyers (D - Mich.), after the same legislation expired at the end of the
110th Congress.
The law would
effectively overturn the policy NIH put into effect last year mandating that
all NIH-funded investigators must submit electronic versions of their final,
peer-reviewed manuscripts to PubMed Central within a year after they are
officially published.
The Conyers bill
claims that the policy is a breach of standing copyright laws that protect
scientific publishers. It would amend US Code to keep the federal government
from imposing terms or conditions regarding licenses or rights based on certain
federal funding conditions.
The Fair
Copyright in Research Works Act, as it was called in last year's Congress, has
supporters in the publishing industry who opposed the open-access policy. But
it also has fired up the advocates of open-access for scientific reasons and
those who favor taxpayer access to government-funded research -- both groups
that pressed NIH to adopt the policy."
To read the entire
report from GenomeWeb click here.
