Publishers this week submitted testimony to the House of Representatives opposing the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2010 (FRPAA), a bill that would mandate free public access to publicly-funded research in the U.S. In testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Allan Adler, the Association of American Publishers vice president for legal and government affairs, warned lawmakers that government mandates requiring free access to journal articles published by the private sector would “seriously undermine” scientific communication, translate to lost U.S. jobs, exports and would diminish copyright protection.
“Publishers invest hundreds of millions of dollars every year in the screening, peer review, editing and production of these journal articles,” Adler said. “It is unfair for the government to expropriate these private-sector products without compensation and make them available free.” Adler detailed for lawmakers what he believes to be the “inevitable unintended consequences” of mandated public access, such as enabling foreign governments, corporations and others to use U.S. publishers’ output without compensation, hurting U.S. publishers' subscription revenues, and “diminishing” copyright protection. “This kind of government intrusion into the free market creates a harmful precedent for many other U.S. industries whose viability depends on the ability to develop and protect their intellectual property,” Adler testified.
The FRPAA was reintroduced in April, 2010 with bipartisan support. It is modeled after a similar policy put in place by the U.S. National Institutes for Health (NIH) in April, 2008, and would require federal agencies with annual extramural research budgets of $100 million or more to provide the public with online access to research manuscripts within six months after publication in a peer-reviewed journal. A Senate version of the bill was introduced in July 2009.
