The (Un)Fair Copyright in Research Works Act

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is an agency of the US Department of Health and Human Services, and is primarily responsible for doling out funds for biomedical and health-related research. The recipients of this funding include it's own organizations that put the plural in Institutes (for a total of 20 institutes and 12 centers) and everyone else outside the NIH umbrella. But you probably knew all that already.

According to the NIH's Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tool, in 2008, NIH handed out 45,887 research grants to 2,538 institutions for a total of over $20 billion of government (i.e. taxpayer) funds. The total awards, which include training and construction grants, fellowships, etc., are upwards of $21 billion.

I know that the recent bailing out of several of our nation's major banking institutions makes $20 billion seem like chump change, but let's pretend like we don't have anything to compare it to. That is A LOT of money. And we're handing out to people who are doing really fantastic and cutting-edge research that will benefit all of mankind in the long run (hopefully). However, a bill introduced by US Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich, threatens to limit public access to the findings from all that research, unless you pay a fee.

HR 801, also known as The Fair Copyright in Research Works Act, would prohibit the government from requiring scholarly journals to make federally funded studies accessible to the public. Supporters of the bill include 5 cosponsors and obviously, the guys set to lose money, the publishers. Currently, the NIH has an "open access" policy for all manuscripts to be made available via PubMed Central.

The concept of open access seems obvious, but it's not. The NIH's policy was just put in place a mere 12 months ago! Seriously. Already people have been excited and the content on PubMed has increased substantially, according to this great article at Science Progress.

The NIH's open access policy is a good start, but it's not amazing. First, the policy states that manuscripts have to be submitted to PubMed no more than 12 months after being accepted for publication. Which means there will be a delay for many studies to be made available. Second, the nature of scientific study is such that only studies that get positive results are published. If some people do a study thinking they're going to find something fantastic, and then they get nothing or something very small, they're not required to make that public knowledge. I'm sure they report it to the NIH (all funds come with many strings attached), but since their non-results won't get published in a peer reviewed journal, we'll never find out about it. Maybe this isn't a huge deal, but I just hope someone somewhere is keeping track of money the NIH has spent on "statistically insignificant" research, aka crap.

But wait a second, you say. Maybe I don't care to know about current research, because I'm not a student. Maybe I prefer to get my scientific information from the local news at 11 and, I don't know, MY DOCTOR!

Well sure, your primary care physician is probably a great source of information. However, due to the VAST and VARIED amounts of research being conducted, it is virtually impossible for any one person (MD or not) to be 100% up to date on the latest and greatest research. Especially if your doctor is seeing upwards of 20 patients a day. When do you think he/she has time to peruse the last 10 studies regarding your weird foot fungus? And that is even assuming that he/she cares enough to do so. Ideally, doctors and specialists stay up to date with new findings, but they're only human and they only have 24 hours in the day, like the rest of us slackers.

So, you think this "Fair Copyright" Bill is BS too? What is one to do? There are several options.

1. Follow the progress of the bill here.
2. Check out the Alliance for Taxpayer Access here.
3. Look at this huge list for ways to promote open access for faculty, universities, foundations, journals, etc.
   

In any case, it's somewhat mind-boggling that open access is just now being achieved to some extent. The need for transparency and accountability in our nation's research centers should not be underestimated, as well as other areas of government. Clearly, we don't want people wasting time studying, oh I don't know, Moon Robots or something. Let's just leave that one to Japan.

Resources:
Research copyright bill would end access to free health info(3/5/09)
Open Access News blog
Open Access Overview by Peter Suber
Open Access Directory