RE: NIH issues

["T Scott Plutchak" <tscott@uab.edu>]

I suspect that Kevin is right on the strict limits of the 
copyright issue.  The underlying dilemma remains -- is it "fair" 
(and I use the term here in the colloquial, rather than the 
technical, sense) for the government to take advantage of the 
investment that publishers put into peer review, while 
diminishing the value of the publishers' version of articles by 
making competing copies freely available?  If it is reasonable, 
what is the justification for it?  It's fine to say that 
taxpayers have the right to easily get to the results of 
government-funded research; on what basis do they also have the 
right to the fruits of a peer review process that is managed by 
non-governmental entities?

Incidentally, I wouldn't want to be misinterpreted as defending 
or supporting HR 801.  Kevin's account of its genesis and likely 
future is probably accurate. The point of my post was that it is 
a gross mischaracterization to label it as simply "anti-open 
access" when the underlying issues are more complex.

Scott

T. Scott Plutchak

Director, Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences
University of Alabama at Birmingham
tscott@uab.edu
http://tscott.typepad.com
http://beardedpigs.net


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Kevin L Smith
Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2009 4:46 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: RE: NIH issues

I have a hard time understanding just what kind of interest a
"third party agency" could acquire here, assuming that the
"substantial value added" refers to peer-review.  In the process
of peer-review no one adds any original expression to the article
itself except the author, who holds the copyright anyway until he
or she is foolish enough to transfer it.  The author makes
whatever changes are recommended by the peer-reviewers, thus
creating the final author's manuscript, which is what must be
deposited in PMC.  No copyright interest has been acquired by
anyone else through this process; the author still owns the full
interest, or else has transferred it to the publisher subject to
the prior NIH license.  Nothing is taken from the publishers that
they have any rights in in the first place.

Nothing that I can think of would more upset academic authors
than the claim that publishers are making substantive changes to
the expressive contents of their articles; that claim, if made
and substantiated, might really put an end to the wholesale
transfer of copyright for academic publications.

In any case, from I what I hear about H.R. 801, I think there are
two things that are true of it.  First, it is very unlikely to
pass the House and absolutely DOA in the Senate if it does.
Second, Mr Conyers, who introduced it, does not care one whit
about the NIH policy or some alleged unfairness to publishers; he
is simply miffed that this policy was included in a
appropriations bill instead of going through his committee
(Judiciary).  H.R.801 is a weapon in a turf war between
appropriators and those who think of themselves as the policy
experts, and the ironic product of that war is a piece of very
bad policy indeed.

Kevin L. Smith, J.D.
Scholarly Communications Officer
Perkins Library, Duke University
Durham, NC  27708
919-668-4451
kevin.l.smith@duke.edu
http://library.duke.edu/blogs/scholcomm/