The American Physiological Society has publicly released its comment in opposition to the NIH plan. The comment includes a 47 page appendix by a Washington law firm. Excerpt: 'The APS recommends that instead of this proposal, the NIH should enhance the existing MedLine/PubMed web site so that it is possible to search the full text of articles on journals' own websites. These searches would yield links to finished [but non-OA] articles on those websites rather than access to manuscripts....NIH's plan would infringe on the copyright interests of (a) federal grantees who author copyrighted articles based upon NIH-sponsored research, and (b) publishers of professional journals that have accepted those articles for publication and to whom copyright interests have been conveyed.'
(PS: Two quick replies. (1) The APS alternative has the advantages that the APS cites for it, but also the decisive disadvantage that it doesn't provide OA to full-text articles. For that reason, it doesn't solve the problem that NIH is trying to solve. (2) The copyright analysis here overlooks the fact that funders like NIH are upstream of publishers. Authors sign their grant contracts with funders before they sign copyright transfer agreements with publishers. NIH grantees will give NIH the rights it needs for this program before they transfer any rights to publishers. Hence, NIH will never need to ask publishers for their consent and will never infringe the rights held by publishers.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/18/2004 10:04:00 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.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
