Eighty-one US scholarly journal publishing organisations have expressed their strong opposition to the third introduction of the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA, H.R. 4004 and S.2096).
The Association of American Publishers' Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division (AAP/PSP) and the DC Principles Coalition sent letters - on behalf of a diverse cross-section of American non-profit, scholarly society and commercial organisations - to Sen. Joseph Lieberman, Chair, and Sen. Susan Collins, Ranking Member of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and Rep. Darrell Issa, Chair, and Rep. Elijah Cummings, Ranking Member, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
The 81 signatories' main points of opposition to FRPAA are that it requires that final manuscripts of researchers' journal articles that explain, interpret and extensively report the results of federally-funded research be publicly available online, worldwide, no more than six months after publication. The manuscripts undergo publishers' validation, digital enhancement, production, interoperability and distribution processes before publication.
The one-size-fits-all six-month deadline for every federal agency that funds research ignores well-known significant differences in how each research discipline discovers and uses individual articles, periods that can last several years before costs are recovered, it is argued. Further, the bill limits where government-funded researchers may publish their work. It also undermines publishers' investments in new business models that currently provide unprecedented access for the public to such works for free or at modest cost.
At a time when the US Congress is looking to cut unnecessary expenses in federal government and focus budgets on priorities, it is felt that FRPAA imposes additional costs on all federal agencies by requiring them to divert critical research funding to the creation and management of new databases, archives and infrastructure to handle dissemination of these articles. These are functions that are already being performed by private-sector publishers, it is pointed out.
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