Apr 19, 2010
The U.S. Congress last week formally re-introduced the
Federal Research Public Access Act of 2010 (FRPAA) in the U.S. House of
Representatives, a bill that would mandate public access to publicly-funded
research in the U.S.
The bill, modeled after a similar policy put in place by the U.S. National
Institutes for Health (NIH) in April, 2008, 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.
Movement on the FRPAA sets up something of a copyright
battle in Congress, as publishers, who bitterly oppose public access mandates,
have pushed a competing bill: the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act (HR
801). Introduced in February, 2009, that bill, would prohibit the federal
government from requiring any copyright transfer in connection with receiving
federal funding.
First introduced in 2006, FRPAA represents a broader,
more aggressive mandate for public access to taxpayer-funded than the NIH's
groundbreaking policy, which required NIH grantees to make their resulting
research publicly available within a year. The FRPAA would trim that period by
half, and would apply to all unclassified research funded by agencies including
the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Health and Human
Services, Homeland Security, Transportation, Environmental Protection, as well
as the National Science Foundation and NASA.
Publishers, however, have vowed to fight, claiming the
NIH mandate takes unfair advantage of their efforts, such as editing and
peer-review, and diminishes copyright. The AAP calls the bill "unnecessary and ill-considered."
After going nowhere in previous sessions, this time, supporters say, the FRPAA has support. It follows closely on the heels of a recent expression of interest in public access policies from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and syncs with the Obama administration's open government goals.
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