Academics line up against each other in US OA battle

Universities in the US have become embroiled in a letter-writing war over a proposed public access research law.

The Oberlin Group of Liberal Arts College Libraries backs the law, but the DC Principals for Free Access to Science Coalition is worried it will damage scientific publishing.

“The free posting of unedited author manuscripts by government agencies threatens the integrity of the scientific record, potentially undermines the publisher peer-review process, and is not a smart use of funds that could be better used for research,” the coalition wrote in a letter to Joseph Liebermann and John Cornyn, the senators behind the bill.

Senior academics from 10 US institutions signed the letter.

If the Federal Research Public Access Act is passed, federal agencies with $100m of annual funding will have to make the manuscripts of peer-reviewed journal articles publicly available online within six months.

“The legislation would damage the special relationship between scholarly societies and academic communities,” said Robert Rich, dean of the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine . “The Act would divert federal dollars away from research to fund a service already provided to the public by society publishers.”

The Oberlin Group said 53 college presidents had signed its letter to the senators. “Academic libraries simply cannot afford ready access to most of the research literature that their faculty and students need. The Act will benefit education, research and the general public,” its letter said.

The Oberlin letter said the Act would be a “major step forward in ensuring equitable online access to research literature paid for by taxpayers” and a “significant benefit for the progress of science and the advancement of knowledge”.

Like this story? Spread the news by clicking below:

 del.icio.us     Digg this     reddit!