Call yer congresscritters -- right now.

[Guest guest]

This does effect many of us that do research.

Call yer congresscritters -- right now.

http://www.sennoma.net/main/archives/2007/10/call_yer_congresscritter

s_righ.php

The bill to make the NIH OA policy mandatory instead of voluntary is

in trouble: from the ATA via Suber (with some editing by yours

truly):

The Senate is currently considering the FY08 Labor-HHS Bill, which

includes a provision (already approved by the House of

Representatives and the full Senate Appropriations Committee), that

directs the NIH to change its Public Access Policy so that

participation is required (rather than requested) for researchers,

and ensures free, timely public access to articles resulting from

NIH-funded research. On Friday, Senator Inhofe (R-OK), filed two

amendments (#3416 and #3417), which call for the language to either

be stricken from the bill, or modified in a way that would gravely

limit the policy's effectiveness.

Amendment #3416 would eliminate the provision altogether. Amendment

#3417 is likely to be presented to your Senator as a compromise

that " balances " the needs of the public and of publishers. In

reality, the current language in the NIH public access provision

accomplishes that goal. Passage of either amendment would seriously

undermine access to this important public resource, and damage the

community's ability to advance scientific research and discovery.

Please contact your Senators TODAY and urge them to vote NO on

amendments #3416 and #3417. (Contact must be made before close of

business on Monday, October 22).

Contact information and a tool to email your Senator are online

[here]. No time to write? Call the U.S. Capitol switchboard at (202)

224-3121 to be patched through to your Senate office.

If you have written in support before, or when you do so today,

please inform the Alliance for Taxpayer Access. Contact

McLennan through jennifer@... or by fax at (202) 872-0884.

The ATA has provided a sample email, but I think they miss one

important point: Inhofe's amendments are likely to be presented as

compromises aimed at avoiding a presidential veto, and that is

purely bullshit. (Note to self: find out how much money Inhofe gets

from publishers.) Here's Suber's extract from the White House

Statement of Administration Policy:

The Administration strongly opposes S. 1710 because, in combination

with the other FY 2008 appropriations bills, it includes an

irresponsible and excessive level of spending and includes other

objectionable provisions....

S. 1710 exceeds the President's request for programs funded in this

bill by nearly $9 billion, part of the $22 billion increase above

the President's request for FY 2008 appropriations. The

Administration has asked that Congress demonstrate a path to live

within the President's topline and cover the excess spending in this

bill through reductions elsewhere, while ensuring the Department of

Defense has the resources necessary to accomplish its mission.

Because Congress has failed to demonstrate such a path, if S. 1710

were presented to the President, he would veto the bill.

The Administration strongly opposes provisions in this bill that

overturn the President's policy regarding human embryonic stem cell

research....

Public Access to Research Information. Provisions in the bill would

require that manuscripts based on NIH-funded research be made

available to the public within 12 months of publication. The

Administration notes that NIH's current policy requesting the

voluntary submission of manuscripts has only been in effect for 2

years, and the Administration believes there is opportunity to work

with Congress to study the current policy and consider ways to

encourage better participation. The Administration believes that any

policy should balance the benefit of public access to taxpayer

supported research against the possible impact that grant conditions

could have on scientific research publishing, scientific peer review

and on the United States' longstanding leadership in upholding

strong standards of protection for intellectual property....

The Administration strongly opposes...the elimination of the

longstanding definition of abstinence education that keeps these

programs focused solely on abstinence....

Note that the real reason for the President's objection is the money

he'd rather spend on his own priorities. The paragraph that deals

directly with the NIH provision shows unsettling echoes of the PRISM

propaganda but is really just waffle -- padding to make the list of

objections look longer. In fact, as I noted earlier, the NIH

estimates that it will cost about $3 million to implement the

mandate -- not much of a dent in that $9 billion the President is

complaining about. So, here's an alternative sample email, the one I

just sent:

Dear Congresscritter,

I am a research scientist and about to become a US citizen. I have

worked in the US for four years, having held an NIH T32 postdoctoral

fellowship for two of those years. As a scientist and as a concerned

member of the US public, I recently wrote to you in support of that

portion of the Senate Appropriations Committee's FY 2008 Labor-HHS-

Education appropriations bill (S.1710) which directs the NIH to

change its policies from a request to a mandatory requirement for

free, timely public access to NIH funded research. I have just

learned of two last-minute amendments to this bill (#3416 and #3417)

proposed by Sen Inhofe (R-OK). The first of these amendments would

eliminate the relevant portion of the bill altogether, and the

second would cripple it.

I write now to urge you to oppose both of these amendments, which

are likely to be presented to you as compromises aimed at avoiding a

Presidential veto. They will do nothing of the sort: the President's

primary objection to the bill, as a recent Statement of

Administration Policy (1) makes clear, is the $9 billion in spending

over and above the Administration's topline. The NIH recently

estimated (2) the cost of implementing the mandatory public access

requirement of S.1710 at less than $3 million per year -- hardly a

significant reduction in a $9 billion overshoot!

As I wrote in my earlier letter, traditional scientific publishing

sees the taxpayer pay for the research, pay to have it published,

and then pay again to access it (or for the same researchers to

access it!) through subscriptions to privately owned journals (3).

Legislators have a practical, legal and moral obligation to end this

inefficiency and waste, and the way to do that is through Open Acess

to publicly funded research. Open Access maximizes research

efficiency (and thus the return on research investment) by removing

obstacles to the acquisition of new results by researchers (4), and

is essential for realizing the vast and virtually untapped potential

of automated data- and text-mining (5,6).

Since the current voluntary policy has achieved only a 5% compliance

rate in the two years since its instigation, a mandate is clearly

required to fulfil Congress' obligation to maximize the return on

public investment in research. The current language of S.1710

contains just such a mandate, and Sen. Inhofe's amendments #3416 and

#3417 would eliminate it. Please oppose these amendments and approve

without change that portion of the appropriations bill which changes

the language of the NIH deposit policy from voluntary to mandatory.

Sincerely,

me.

-----references-----

(1) http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/legislative/sap/110-1/s1710sap-

s.pdf

(2) http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-05-

022.html

(3) http://www.earlham.edu/%7Epeters/fos/newsletter/09-04-

03.htm#taxpayer

(4) http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10713/01/timcorr.htm

(5) http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13028/01/AS-OA-final.pdf

(6) http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/full/26/38/9606