Nonprofit Publishers Oppose Government Mandates for Scientific Publishing
Washington, DC (February 20, 2007) A coalition of 75 nonprofit publishers opposes any legislation that would abruptly end a publishing system that has nurtured independent scientific inquiry for generations. One such measure, the Federal Research Public Access Act, introduced in the 109th Congress, would have required all federally funded research to be deposited in an accessible database within six months of acceptance in a scientific journal. Some open access advocates are pressing for the introduction of a similar measure in the 110th Congress.
Among the signatories (in opposition to FRPAA), our own Soil Science Society of America.NSCSS endorsed the FRPAA last month. I am not surprised that SSSA signed, but I doubt they can feel as threatened by this legislation as the news release makes them out to be. FRPAA does not "abruptly end a publishing system". Many journals, including SSSA, already release articles after an 18 month embargo. FRPAA simply mandates a 6 month embargo. It's a significant but not an institution shattering change. FRPAA does not affect the copyright-transfer-to-publishers-in-lieu-of-money arrangement nor does it affect the subscription-fee-based-access structure.
The argument for OA is straightforward. When research is paid for by tax dollars, the taxpayer should have access. Greater public access increases the impact of the research. The cost of peer review and publishing is a minor percentage of research funding - changing to OA will not drive down the effectiveness of research funding. But FRPAA is only a move toward OA, sufficient to gain some of the benefits, but it intentionally does not "abruptly end" our existing system of publishing. That is what is being proposed in Australia and the European Union. Not here.
The argument against OA is weak. On the one hand it denies any benefits to OA. It claims that poorly funded research cannot get published, when in practice a sliding fee scale is used and it is a fact that important works will always be published. Still, the argument that societies, like SSSA, that have come to depend on journal income will be damaged: this hits home. One senses that the full gains embodied in OA will come only at a very real financial price to our scientific societies. NSCSS is not unconcerned about this. Most members of NSCSS are also members of SSSA, and look to it for strength and leadership in the profession. That capacity for strength is sustained to some degree by the income from its journals.
One could also make the argument that SSSA's financial dependence on publishing research has unbalanced its potential for leadership, and disconnected it from other forces, natural and economic, that drive the advance of science.
Technorati Tag SSSA FRPAA open access
