A few weeks ago, the Research Works Act (RWA) was introduced in Congress. This legislation would forbid federal agencies from insisting that publications arising from research supported by their grants should be freely available to the public. It would therefore contribute to the trend of increasingly exhorbitant costs of access to most research publications.
In part because of the outcry against the RWA, there is a now a competing bill that goes in the opposite direction, and that deserves enthusiastic support: the (revised) Federal Research Public Access Act, or FRPAA. Here is the text of the bill and here is a good explanation.
For background, details, and a call to action, see below.
(Full disclosure: I work for MSP, a nonprofit publisher. Our goal is to make scientific research widely accessible at a low cost to the reader.)
Background
Scientific and scholarly journals have been an important factor in the advancement of knowledge ever since the Journal des sçavans and the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society were founded in 1665. The number and page count of scientific journals has increased decade after decade, but throughout most of their 350-year history, the mission and price per page (in today's dollars) remained much the same. Mostly, journals were published by professional associations and by a variety of specialized publishers, whose interests were tied to those of the community of scholars they served.
In the last 50 years, however, not only has the volume of articles increased at an accelerated rate, doubling every 10 to 20 years, but also the price per page of for-profit journals has gone up relentlessly. Mergers and acquisitions have so reduced the number of publishers that now a few conglomerates (Elsevier, Springer, Wiley/Blackwell, Taylor and Francis) publish the majority of journals considered indispensable in their fields, together with thousands of journals of marginal value.
Libraries are squeezed to the point where they cannot subscribe to new journals, no matter how good, because they're paying millions of dollars a year for the big four's journal packages. These include lots of journals whose articles are cited less than once, on average. (Contrast this with dozens or hundreds of citations per article in the best journals.)
Electronic publication has not lowered costs, though it has certainly made access easier for those who can afford it. The problem is that many can't. In the past, an unaffiliated researcher (not uncommon in the social sciences) could walk into a university library and consult its journal collection. Nowadays, the typical institutional library has discontinued most paper journals, and electronic access is limited to people affiliated with the institution. Needless to say, researchers in poor countries are also completely left out.
Many of the best journals are still published by scholarly societies and nonprofits, and their subscription prices (per page) are a small fraction of that of commercial journals. So it is possible to publish good science at reasonable costs; but not with Elsevier, which insists of profit margins around 25% in a recession, and nearly 40% in a good year.
The new bills
Much of this scientific output is in the biological sciences, and is supported by public grants. To try to ensure that research paid for by the public is actually available to the public, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) declared in 2005 that articles supported by their research grants must be electronically accessible for free after no more than 12 months of first publication.
The Research Works Act would roll back that policy, and forbid federal funding from being tied to open-access requirements. The new FRPAA does just the opposite: it would reduce the maximum period before published research papers have to be made freely available online from one year to six months, and it would require other agencies of the federal government to follow the NIH's lead.
Surprisingly (since it is certain to be opposed by big commercial interests), the FRPAA has attracted bipartisan support. In the House, it is sponsored by Mike Doyle (D-PA), Kevin Yoder (R-KS), and William Lacy Clay (D-MO), and in the Senate by John Cornyn (R-TX), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), and Ron Wyden (D-OR).
Passage of the FRPAA would be a tremendous win for the idea that
research funded by the public should be accessible to the public. It
would be beneficial throughout the world. If you're part of the
research community in any field of knowledge, please make your voice
heard by contacting your representative and your senator in support of
the FRPAA. (You might also check out this pledge.)