The Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property of the House of Representatives' Judiciary Committee in the US held its scheduled September 11 hearing. The hearing sought to redress publishers' concerns that public access policies such as the recently enacted policy at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) conflict with copyright and intellectual property laws.
The House committee reportedly grilled NIH about the policy and floated a proposal that scientific publishers expect will protect their products. At a two-hour hearing, Representative John Conyers and others questioned the need for the policy when the public can already have access to the papers through a subscription or at a library. Moreover, most journals make their content free after 12 months.
A bill introduced by Conyers and two other members would bar any federal agency from requiring 'the transfer or license' to the government of a paper that has been produced in part with non-government funds. The Fair Copyright in Research Works Act (HR 6845) would mean that neither NIH nor any other federal agency could require grantees to submit accepted papers to a free archive.
There is no companion bill in the Senate, and Congress is not expected to act on the legislation before it adjourns later this month.
The legislative hearing follows the success of publishers in adding a key phrase to the NIH public access mandate just before the bill's passage in December 2007. The added clause calls for the NIH policy to be implemented 'in a manner consistent with copyright law.' Three years ago, NIH required grantees to make their accepted, peer-reviewed papers freely accessible in its PubMed Central archive within 12 months after they are published. Due to poor response the advocates of the idea convinced the House and Senate panels that set NIH's budget to make the policy mandatory.
According to NIH, compliance has risen to about 3300 papers submitted each month since the rule took effect in April 2008. Meanwhile, some commercial and society publishers, such as the American Physiological Society, have complained that the policy infringes on their copyrights and will put them out of business by cutting into their subscription base.
NIH Director Elias Zerhouni defended the policy, arguing that PubMed Central is enhancing the papers by linking to molecular databases and other papers. He also claimed that there is no evidence that the policy has been harmful to publishers.
