More on the Sabo bill....Jeffrey Brainard reports the story in today's Chronicle of Higher Education (accessible only to subscribers). Excerpt: "A Democratic member of Congress filed legislation on Thursday that would make research papers ineligible for copyright protection if written by scientists who received 'substantial' federal financing for the work. The intent of the bill is to provide free and widespread public access to the papers....The bill does not provide a dollar threshold for how much federal financing would be deemed 'substantial,' and would leave it to individual federal agencies to set those standards. The bill is not meant to drive subscription-based scholarly journals out of business, nor is that an expected result, said Michael S. Erlandson, Mr. Sabo's chief of staff....Mr. Sabo's bill lacks a co-sponsor. As a member of the minority party in the U.S. House of Representatives, he will need support from Republican lawmakers for the bill to come to a vote. Mr. Erlandson said he expected the bill to attract co-sponsors and stimulate debate, and said that he did not expect partisan opposition."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 6/27/2003 09:54:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
