The Association of American Publishers (AAP) has warned that government mandates requiring free access to journal articles published by the private sector would seriously undermine scientific communication, as well as US jobs, exports and copyright protection. In testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Allan Adler, AAP's Vice President for Legal and Government Affairs, stressed that efforts to impose mandates were based on lack of understanding of the distinction between the 'research' that is funded by the Federal government and the private-sector journal articles that validate and document the process, findings and significance of that research.
The AAP testimony described the inevitable unintended consequences of mandated public access. Policies that require publishers' work to be made freely available online enable foreign governments, corporations and others to use US publishers' output without compensation. Companies in China, for instance, are even re-selling the peer-reviewed manuscripts and articles that publishers are now required to post on the NIH's PubMed Central database.
According to AAP, the subscription revenues that pay the cost of scientific publishing are seriously compromised when articles are available free on a government website. Mandates diminish the copyright protection that allows publishers to invest in publishing. This kind of government intrusion into the free market, the association noted, creates a harmful precedent for many other US industries whose viability depends on the ability to develop and protect their intellectual property.
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