The big news in the US this morning is the mid-term election that gave Democrats control of the House of Representatives. It may also have given them the Senate, but we won't know until we've wandered for a while in the desert of recounts and lawyers.
Here are the outcomes of four races that matter for open access.
Joe Lieberman was re-elected Senator from Connecticut. If you remember, he was defeated in the Democratic primary by Ned Lamont and decided to run as an Independent. Lieberman introduced the CURES Act in December 2005 and co-sponsored FRPAA with John Cornyn (R-TX) in May 2006, making him the sponsor or co-sponsor of the two strongest OA bills ever introduced in Congress. Both CURES and FRPAA would mandate OA to publicly-funded research.
Rick Santorum (R-PA) lost his Senate seat from Pennsylvania. Santorum is notable for taking money from AccuWeather, the weather-forecasting company, to sponsor legislation that would stop the National Weather Service from providing open access to publicly-funded weather data. Santorum was defeated by Bob Casey, Treasurer for the State of Pennsylvania.
Mike DeWine (R-OH) lost his Senate seat from Ohio. Because Elsevier is a major employer in Ohio, as the owner of Ohio-based Lexis-Nexis, DeWine listened when Elsevier argued that national OA policies would cost jobs in the publishing industry. DeWine was defeated by Sherrod Brown (D-OH), currently in Congress as a Representative from Ohio's 13th District. Brown has been a friend of OA, and especially the NIH public-access policy, from his position on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, the authorizing committee for the NIH, and his position as ranking Democrat on the Subcommittee on Health.
Finally, Ernest Istook (R-OK) gave up his seat in the House to run for governor of Oklahoma. He lost that race and is now, at least temporarily, out of politics. Istook was OA's best friend on the influential House Appropriations Committee and introduced the language (July 2004) requiring the NIH to mandate OA to NIH-funded research. We often forget that the House language --Istook's language-- demanded a mandate even though the NIH eventually adopted a weaker policy.
That's three for four --a good day for OA. I'll add more about other races as I learn more.
As I reported in July, the House Appropriations Bill for fiscal 2007 would compel the NIH to strengthen its public-access policy from a request to a requirement. The fate of this bill will be decided by the current House and Senate, not the new ones. The fiscal year started on October 1, so action is past due and we can expect Congress to get back to business as soon as the dust settles.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/08/2006 08:54:00 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.
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.
