It looks like Congressman John Conyers needs to do his homework on the impact of science policy on the health care for the average American. Turns out that he introduced a bill that would effectively forbid the US National Institutes of Health from allowing taxpayers (you and me) from reading the results of medical research that we have paid for with our tax dollars.
He introduced a bill called "Fair Copyright in Research Works Act" that is anything but fair. It is opposed by 33 Nobel Prize winner, a coalition of patients' rights organizations, and American Research Libraries among others. It should also be opposed by anyone who thinks someday they might get sick and need the latest medical research -- which means all of us.
"This bill would forbid us from building the World Wide Web for science, even for the research that taxpayers have funded. And that is truly a tragedy", according to James Boyle professor of law at Duke and co-founder of Science Commons. "We cannot create such a web until scientific articles come out from behind the publishers' firewalls."
Right now the NIH requires researchers who get federal funds to make their articles available no later than one year after publication -- so publishers have a year of exclusivity. This Bill would forbid even that modest approach if there was any contribution to the article by anyone other than the Federal government (for example, by an editor.) Effectively, that means that any article published in a commercial journal would be off limits to the public that paid for the research behind it, unless they paid a second time to see the final results.
How to protest? Send a letter to your congressman and tell him how you feel about locking up medical research behind financial walls. Tell him/her we need to open up science research to improve everyone's access to important medical data. Alert him that even his doctor may not have access to important medical information that may impact his life.
Click here for another blog on this subject by Professor James Boyle.
Not paying twice for taxpayer funded research sounds good, but is utterly misleading. What people don't understand is that research is research, and publishing is publishing, and taxpayers don't pay for the publishing part. Author's manuscripts have always been free to access, but the problem is they aren't reliable until they've been published -- that's the part that's worth paying for. Please stop the exaggerations people!
Taxpayers' money is used to fund all sorts of research, from wind energy, to biomedical applications, to telecommunications, etc. In every case, publishers like the IEEE (originally an acronym for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), who claim to be non-profit, charge excessive fees for copies of articles paid for by government sponsored research. Authors are NOT paid, members have to both pay for membership and subscriptions to journals along with additional fees for any other article; magazines advertise just like any other for-profit magazine. University libraries pay huge annual fees for access. Scientists and Engineers, that do not have access to these libraries and working on similar government-sponsored research, pay research dollars into this system for access to information that has already been paid for and should be accessible. Everything is paid for multiple times over; yet, the IEEE claims to be non-profit.
ALL articles published using ANY taxpayer-funded government-sponsored research should be made accessible to everyone after one year; there should be no exceptions. We have already paid for it.
I guess the answer is no and it happens at all levels of government.
In this economy, there are already a lot of people who can't afford health care insurance, and if they can't afford health care insurance to go to their doctor to ask what the best most recent most effective treatments are, then there is a good chance they can't afford the cost of a subscription to the health care journals where these studies and research are published.
And, my fear is that, if no one can get access to this kind of health care information, then the government will start to say that it is rediculous to do the studies and research if no one can find it, because they cant afford it themself or through their doctor.
This legislation MUST be stopped.
As for "Free" medicine I didn't see anyone asking for "Free" medicine but the research SHOULD be out there and also subject to review by anyone. WE paid for it.
Now, I agree that we shouldn't let this become law because it would make an already poor educational system even poorer. But it will not stop the public from accessing this information. It will simply make it harder.
It's about ACCESS to the results of PUBLICLY FUNDED MEDICAL RESEARCH.