John Conyers and Open Access

Lawrence Lessig wrote about John Conyers and Open Access.

"The Huffington Post is running a piece about H.R. 801 (the 'Fair Copyright in Research Works Act'), the latest version of John Conyers' [D-MI] awful idea. The law would forbid entities like the NIH from requiring that recipients of government grants make the product of their research openly accessible. (The current practice requires articles be freely accessible after 12 months.) Instead, Conyers' proposal would require that after the American taxpayer has paid for the research, the American taxpayer must pay publishers to get access to the product of the research."

There are thousand of scientific journals. Scientists submit papers to them to be published, they are reviewed by peers and if passed, they're published to the journals subscribers. What amazes me is the business model. Scientists pay submission fees, reviewers aren't paid and subscribers pay often exorbitant prices so that only wealthy university libraries can afford them. The biggest journals are the most prestigious and can therefore charge the highest fees. Now the crazy part, lots of university research is funded by government grants (like from the NIH) and then those university libraries pay the journal subscriptions (I think sometimes with NIH funding). The journals are screwing the tax payer.

There has been a movement for open access journals which is kind of like what open source is for software. That is journals that are free to readers. The problem is one of prestige. Researchers still want to publish in one of the bigger journals since it's better for their careers. The Public Library of Science (PLoS) is trying to make open access available and prestigious to many disciplines. That's of course a simplification and you can read more about Open Access on wikipedia.

Lessig went on..."For what possible reason could Conyers have for supporting a bill that 33 Nobel Prize Winners, and the current and former heads of the NIH say will actually hurt scientific research in America? More pointedly, what possible reason would a man from a district that insists on the government "Buying American" have for supporting a bill that basically subsidizes foreign publishers (for the biggest players in this publishing market are non-American firms, making HR 801 a kind of "Foreign Publishers Protection Act")? Well no one can know what goes on the heart or mind of Congressman Conyers. But what we do know is what MAPLight.org published yesterday: That the co-sponsors of this bill who sit on the Judiciary Committee received on average two-times the amount of money from publishing interests as those who haven't co-sponsored the bill."

I was all for Conyers (failed) efforts to impeach Bush, but he's wrong on this issue. That average figure is a bit of a stretch. Conyers got $9,000. There are four co-sponsers who got $8,800, $4,500, $3,000 and $450. Three non-sponsors got more than Conyers and 16 committee members got $0. I question why Trent Franks (R-AZ) is sponsoring this bill having only gotten $450 from publishers. Can he actually think it's a good idea on its merits?