Elsevier withdraws support for the Research Works Act
The Research Works Act raised concerns that it threatened the NIH open-access policy and statements from many organisations expression opposition to it. Elsevier emerged as one of the key players behind the act.
Tonight Elsevier has put up a web page withdrawing their support for the Research Works Act. One would hope that this might signal the end of the RWA.
They note, however, that ’[…] while withdrawing support for the Research Works Act, we will continue to join with those many other nonprofit and commercial publishers and scholarly societies that oppose repeated efforts to extend mandates through legislation.’
I’m struggling slightly to read their specific meaning, but they seem to on one hand (claim to) want dialogue and to support open-access (their take on this, at least), provided they are part of it (that’s my reading of it), but will continue to oppose government mandates to ‘push’ open-access policies.
Given government is the major funder of the research, why should a publisher to oppose the government having a mandate for the research they fund? Surely if they paid for the research, they have a right to say how they’d like it to be distributed?
But at least it’s a step in the direction of leaving the open-access policy stand.
Update: Cameron Neylon has shared his initial thoughts, which run to similar lines as to my own but with a better understanding. (Neylon has followed this much more closely than me!) Note in particular his remarks about FRPAA, the Federal Research Public Access Act, which I did not mention.
(H/T Cameron Neylon, Fabiana Kubke and @openscience, via twitter.)
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Science and engineering librarian Christina Pikas has offered some thoughts on Why it’s not straightforward to extend NIH’s mandate and PMC to other areas of science and engineering.
It’s interesting to see here that Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council is to have it’s work open access from 12 months after publication, from July:
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/australia-to-open-publicly-financed-biomedical-research/35505?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
(More for the likes of Elsevier to fret over?)
News in from ScienceInsider is that the RWA has now been officially dropped. They write:
“Issa and Maloney released a statement saying that after hearing from both sides, “We have come to the conclusion that the Research Works Act has exhausted the useful role it can play in the debate.” The lawmakers “will not be taking legislative action on HR 3699, the Research Works Act,” the statement saysâ€
(Issa & Maloney were the representatives putting the Act forward.)
[…] After a big scholarly and scientific boycott the two Representatives who introduced the bill issued a statement saying that they would not push further for legislative action on the bill. Just hours later Elsevier also dropped its support for the Research Works Act. […]