From: Raji Edayathumangalam
Date: 15 February 2012 22:53
If you agree, please signing the petition below. You need to register on the link below before you can sign this petition. Registration and signing the petition took about a minute or two.
Cheers,
Raji
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From:
Seth Darst Rep. Caroline Maloney has not backed off in her attempt to put forward the interests of Elsevier and other academic publishers.
If you oppose this measure, please sign this petition on the official 'we the people' White House web site. It needs 23,000 signatures before February 22nd and only 1100 so far. Please forward far and wide.
Oppose HR3699, the Research Works Act
HR 3699, the Research Works Act will be detrimental to the free flow of scientific information that was created using Federal funds. It is an attempt to put federally funded scientific information behind pay-walls, and confer the ownership of the information to a private entity. This is an affront to open government and open access to information created using public funds.
This link gets you to the petition:
--
Raji Edayathumangalam
----------
From: Tim Gruene
Dear Raji,
maybe you could increase the number of supporters if you included a link
to (a description of) the content of HR3699 - I will certainly not sign
something only summarised by a few polemic sentences ;-)
Cheers,
Tim
- --
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From: Boaz Shaanan
I initially thought that it had to do with a new Hampton Research thing.
But can non-American citizens sign the petition too?
Boaz
----------
From: Adrian Goldman
I signed, and I think so. Further information can be found here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/feb/02/academics-boycott-publisher-elsevier ----------
From: Ian Tickle
Reading the H.R.3699 bill as put forward
(
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:HR03699:@@@L&summ2=m&)
it seems to be about prohibiting US federal agencies from having
policies which permit, authorise or require authors' assent to break
the law of copyright in respect of published journal articles
describing work funded at least in part by a US federal agency. I'm
assuming that "network dissemination without the publisher's consent"
is the same thing as breaking the law of copyright.
It seems to imply that it would still be legal for US federal agencies
to encourage others to break the law of copyright in respect of
journal articles describing work funded by say UK funding agences! -
or is there already a US law in place which prohibits that? I'm only
surprised that encouraging others to break the law isn't already
illegal (even for Govt agencies): isn't that the law of incitement
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incitement)?
This forum in fact already has such a policy in place for all journal
articles (i..e not just those funded by US federal agencies but by all
funding agencies), i.e. we actively discourage postings which incite
others to break the law by asking for copies of copyrighted published
articles. Perhaps the next petition should seek to overturn this
policy?
This petition seems to be targeting the wrong law: if what you want is
free flow of information then it's the copyright law that you need to
petition to overturn, or you get around it by publishing in someplace
that doesn't require transfer of copyright.
Cheers
-- Ian
----------
From: Herbert J. Bernstein
Dear Ian,
You are mistaken. The proposed law has nothing to do with preventing the
encouragement people to break copyright law. It has everything to do with
trying to kill the very reasonable NIH open access policy that properly
balances the rights of publishers with the rights of authors and the interests of
the scientific community. Most publishers fare quite well under a policy that
gives them a year of exclusive control over papers, followed by open access.
It is, unfortunately, a standard ploy in current American politics to make a
law which does something likely to be very unpopular and very unreasonable
sound like it is a law doing something quite different.
Please reread it carefully. I think you will join in opposing this law. Science
benefits from the NIH open access policy and the rights of all concerned
are respected. It would be a mistake to allow the NIH open access policy to
be killed.
I hope you will sign the petition.
Regards,
Herbert
----------
From: Herbert J. Bernstein
The bill summary says:
Research Works Act - Prohibits a federal agency from adopting, maintaining, continuing, or otherwise engaging in any policy, program, or other activity that: (1) causes, permits, or authorizes network dissemination of any private-sector research work without the prior consent of the publisher; or *(2) requires that any actual or prospective author, or the author's employer, assent to such network dissemination. *
Defines "private-sector research work" as an article intended to be published in a scholarly or scientific publication, or any version of such an article, that is not a work of the U.S. government, describing or interpreting research funded in whole or in part by a federal agency and to which a commercial or nonprofit publisher has made or has entered into an arrangement to make a value-added contribution, including peer review or editing, but does not include progress reports or raw data outputs routinely required to be created for and submitted directly to a funding agency in the course of research.
==============================
============
It is the second provision that really cuts the legs out from the NIH open access policy. What the NIH policy does is to make open access publication a condition imposed on the grant holders in publishing work that the NIH funded. This has provided the necessary lever for NIH-funded authors to be able to publish in well-respected journals and still to be able to require that, after a year, their work be available without charge to the scientific community. Without that lever we go back to the unlamented old system (at least unlamented by almost everybody other than Elsevier) in which pubishers could impose an absolute copyright transfer that barred the authors from ever posting copies of their work on the web. People affiliated with libraries with the appropriate subscriptions to the appropriate archiving services may not have noticed the difference, but for the significant portions of both researchers and students who did not have such access, the NIH open access policy was by itself a major game changer, making much more literature rapidly accessible, and even more importantly changed the culture, making open access much more respectable.
The NIH policy does nothing more than put grant-sponsored research on almost the same footing as research done directly by the government which has never been subject to copyright at all, on the theory that, if the tax-payers already paid for the research, they should have open access to the fruits of that research. This law would kill that policy. This would be a major step backwards.
Please read:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/evo-eco-lab/2012/01/16/mistruths-insults-from-the-copyright-lobby-over-hr-3699/ http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/action/action_access/12-0106.shtml http://www.care2.com/causes/open-access-under-threat-hr-3699.html Please support the petition. This is a very bad bill. It is not about protecting copyright, it is an effort to restrict the free flow of scientific information in our community.
Regards,
Herbert
----------
From: Ian Tickle
Dear Herbert
Thanks for your detailed explanation. I had missed the important
point that it's the requirement on the authors to assent to open
access after a year, which the proposed Bill seeks to abolish, that's
critical here.
I will go and sign the petition right now!
Best wishes
-- Ian
On 16 February 2012 15:24, Herbert J. Bernstein
----------
From: Paula Salgado
> Can non-US based scientists sign the petition, btw?
Well there's nothing to stop you! It asks for your zip code, but I
just left it blank and it accepted it.
Cheers
-- Ian
----------
From: Charles W. Carter, Jr <
For what it's worth, my own experience with the issue of scholarly publication and open access is nuanced enough that perhaps my two-bits worth can add to this discussion. In short, I agree both with Ian's previous message and with Herbert, and feel that the incompatibility between them goes to the root of a problem for which the answer is certainly not quite there.
I have been much influenced by the work done on this issue by Fred Dylla, Executive Director of the American Institute of Physics. Here is a link to recent information concerning his four-year effort to reach consensus on this issue:
http://www.aip.org/aip/aipmatters/archive/2011/1_24_11.html I personally think that the NIH Open Access requirement is a vast overreach. PubMed Central is very difficult to use and ultimately has never satisfied me: I always go to the UNC library holdings. There are several reasons why. The most immediate is that PubMed Central almost never gives a satisfactory copy of a paper I want to read, and the most serious reason is that I am convinced that the overhead exacted on authors and PIs by the NIH means that few, if any authors give much more than a glance in the direction of updating deposited manuscripts from journals that do not automatically deposit the version of record. For this reason, many PubMed Central entries are likely to have more than minor errors corrected in proof only in the version of record. I don't personally see any way around the problem that there is only one version of record and that version is the one for which copyright is retained by the publisher.
On the other hand, I am deeply sympathetic to the argument that publicly-funded research must be freely accessible. After talking intensely with the library administrators at UNC, I also believe deeply that university library subscriptions satisfy the need for open access. Casting aside for the moment the issue of Open Access journals, whose only real difference lies in who pays the costs of publication, I have long believed that careful validation through peer review constitutes serious added value and that journals are entitled to being paid for that added value. What makes this issue more difficult for me is that I share with many the deep suspicions of corporate (as opposed to Member Society) publishing organizations. Several years ago I withdrew my expertise from the Nature group in protest over what I felt (after, again, long discussions with our UNC librarians) was a power play designed only to weaken the library systems. I have similar views about Elsevier.
Finally, I am inclined to sign this petition for other reasons, including the fact that HR 3699 appears to be as deeply flawed in the other direction as the original enabling legislation that vested such power in the NIH and, in the same act, all but eliminated any opposition by diluting responsibility for compliance to the fullest possible extent, by penalizing PIs for non-compliance. When I first read of this petition, I was deeply incensed that the wing nuts in Congress would craft a bill so obviously designed to reward the 1%, so to speak.
In closing, I earnestly recommend that as many of you as possible look into Fred Dylla's work on this issue. The AIP is a publisher whose only revenue other than philanthropy comes from the intellectual property and added value of its journals, some of which represent the finest in physical chemistry relevant to our community. Dylla deserves kudos for his effort to find consensus, something that seems to have gone way out of fashion in recent years.
Charlie
----------
From: Pedro M. Matias
Can non-US residents sign this petition? You need a Whitehouse.gov account and in order to register you have to provide a U.S. (I presume) zipcode.
----------
From: Ian Tickle
Pedro,
Well it worked for me (and I see many others) without a zip code. I
see that someone else typed "Bayreuth" in the zip code field - so I
suspect you can type anything there!
Cheers
-- Ian
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From: Enrico Stura
I am strongly in favour of Open Acess, but Open Access is not always helped
by lack of money for editing etc.
For example:
Acta Crystallographica is not Open Acess.
In one manner or another publishing must be financed.
Libraries pay fees for the journals. The fees help the International Union of Crystallography.
The money is used for sponsoring meetings, and some scientists that come from less rich
institutions benefit from it.
Open Acess to NIH sponsored scientific work will be for all world tax payers and tax doggers as well.
OR May be you would suggest that NIH sponsored work should be accessed only by US tax payers with a valid social security number?
The journal server will verify that Tax for the current year has been filed with the IRS server. A dangerous invasion of privacy!
The more legislation we add the worse off we are.
If the authors of a paper wants their work to be available to the general public there is Wikipedia.
I strongly support an effort by all members of ccp4bb to contribute a general public summary of their work on Wikipedia.
There are Open Source journals as well.
I would urge everybody NOT to sign the petition. Elsevier will not last for ever, and the less
accessible the work that they publish, the worse for them in terms of impact factor.
In the old days, if your institution did not have the journal, most likely you would not reference the work
and the journal was worth nothing.
We are the ones that will decide the future of Elsevier. Elsevier will need to strike a balance between excellent
publishing with resonable fees or not getting referenced. A law that enforces a copyright will not help them.
They are wasting their money on lobbing.
The argument that NIH scientist need to publish in High Impact Factor Journals by Elsevier does not hold up:
1) We should consider the use of impact factor as a NEGATIVE contribution to science.
2) Each article can now have its own impact factor on Google Scholar, independent on the journal it is published in.
3) Even for journals not indexed on PubMed, Google Scholar finds them.
I hold the same opinion for the OsX debate.
Don't buy Apple! Use linux instead. When enough people protest where it really hurts the
company, they will no longer have the money to lobby the American Congressmen.
If they make an excellent product, then they deserve the money and quite rightly they
can try to build a monopoly around their technology. I fight that, I use LINUX.
By signing petitions we acknowledge the power of the legislators. This is another form
of lobbing. If we disapprove of lobbing we should not engage in the practice even if we give
no money.
We have more powerful means of protest. The 24 Hour shutdown of Wikipedia meets my approval.
There is also patenting. How do we feel about it?
Some of the work I have done has also been patented. I do not feel right about it.
There is MONEY everywhere. This ruins our ability to acqure knowledge that should be free for everybody.
But since it costs to acquire it, it cannot be free.
LAWS should be for the benefit of the nation. But legislators have the problem of money to be re-elected.
Can we trust them?
Can we trust their laws?
Companies also play very useful roles. Some companies less so.
But at least they work for a profit and thus they must provide a worth while service.
This is not true for politicians.
Enrico.
-----------
From: Enrico Stura
Charlie,
A much more balanced view than others have posted.
NIH Open Access requirement is a vast overreach.
I agree.
HR 3699 appears to be as deeply flawed.
It could be made better with amendments?
Enrico.----------
From: Herbert J. Bernstein
Dear Colleagues,
Acta participates very nicely and fully in the NIH Open Access program. After
one year of the normal restricted access any NIH-funded paper automatically
enters the NIH open access system. The journals get to get their revenue when
the paper is most in demand, but the community is not excessively delayed in
free access.
I most certainly do suggest that it is a good idea for people who are not US taxpayers
to also have access to the science the NIH funding produces. We will all live longer
and happier lives by seeing a much progress made as rapidly as possible world-wide
in health-related scientific research. I would hate to think of the cure of a disease being
greatly delayed because some researcher in Europe or India or China could not get
access to research results. We all benefit from seeing the best possible use made
of NIH-funded research.
I agree that in this case, adding more legislation is a bad idea -- particularly
adding this legislation.
I agree that
"If the authors of a paper wants their work to be available to the general public there is Wikipedia.
I strongly support an effort by all members of ccp4bb to contribute a general public summary of their work on Wikipedia.
There are Open Source journals as well. "
However, there is a practical reality for post-docs and junior faculty that, at least in the US,
most institutions will not consider Wikipedia articles in tenure and promotion evaluations,
so it really is a good idea for them to, in addition to publishing in Wikipedia, to write "real"
journal articles. I also agree that using open source journals in a good idea in the abstract,
but I, for one, really don't want the IUCr journals to go away, and the NIH Open Access
policy allows me to both support the IUCr and have my work become open access a
year later. I think it is a wonderful compromise. Please, don't let the perfect be the
enemy of the good. If we don't prevent Elsevier from killing NIH Open Access with
this bill, then there is a risk that many fewer people will publish in the IUCr publications.
You seem to be arguing strongly that we should both have Open Access and have money
for editing journals. I agree. The current NIH Open Access policy does just that.
It is the pending bill that will face you with the start choice of either having Open Access
or having edited journals. You come much closer to your goals if you sign the petition
and help the NIH Open Access policy to continue in force, than if the bill passes and
the NIH Open Access policy dies. If the Open Access policy dies, I for one will face
a difficult choice -- publish in the IUCr journals and pay them an open access fee
I may not be able to come up with, or publish in free, pure open source journals
but fail to support the IUCr. Let is hope the petition gets lots of signatures and this
misguided bill dies.
Regards,
Herbert
----------
From: Herbert J. Bernstein
Dear Colleagues,
If you want an excellent, painless transfer from journal to PUBMED, just stick
to the IUCr journals. They do an excellent job of cooperating in the NIH
open access policy with an automatic transfer of the clean refereeded and edited
paper to PUBMED. Yes, the IUCr journal copy does look prettier -- more
power to them -- but nothing is missing from the PUBMED version, so
everybody benefits: the IUCr has its subscription money from libraries and
individuals who need results as quickly as possible or in the best form, and
students and researchers without an institutional subscription can still get
a completely valid and complete copy on line.
If you pay IUCr for open access and are NIH funded, they deposit in PUBMED
immediately. If you don't pay IUCr for open access and are NIH funded, they
deposit in PUBMED a year after publication. Either way it works and works well,
you get excellent editing, you are publishing in very respectable journals, and
your work ends up available to everybody.
So, if you want a balanced, nuanced approach, please sign the petition, but also
publish in the IUCr journals if you work fits, but don't publish in any journals
that don't do automatic deposition or that support the NIH Open Access policy poorly.
Regards,
Herbert
----------
From: John R Helliwell
Dear Colleagues,
Further to Herbert's summary, which I support, the publishers allowing
the deposition of their published version/PDF in Institutional
Repositories can be found listed here:-
http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/PDFandIR.php?la=en Best wishes,
John
