STM Responds to signing of America COMPETES Act Public Access Provision

["Janice Kuta, STM" <kuta@stm-assoc.org>]

Press Release: 6 January 2011

STM responds to signing into law of America COMPETES Act Public 
Access Provision

STM applauds the efforts of US legislators in crafting the 
charter of the Interagency Public Access Committee (the 
"Committee") established in the America COMPETES Reauthorization 
Act of 2010 just signed into law by President Obama. The 
Committee is charged, inter alia, with coordinating Federal 
agency policies concerning stewardship and dissemination of the 
results of research, including digital data and peer-reviewed 
scholarly publications, supported by funding from the Federal 
science agencies.

Key provisions of the Committee's charter call for it to identify 
specific objectives and public interests that need to be 
addressed by any policies considered and solicit input from, and 
collaborate with, non-Federal stakeholders such as publishers. 
The charter also directs the Committee to take into account key 
factors such as the economic impact of public access polices on 
science and engineering stakeholders, as well as the role that 
scientific publishers play in ensuring the integrity of the 
scientific record - including the investments and added value 
that they contribute.  The Charter further recognizes the 
inherent differences among Federal science agencies and 
scientific disciplines.  The Act also notes important areas of 
inquiry such as the distinctions between data and scholarly 
publications and practices and procedures with respect to 
research reports.

The Act specifically directs that nothing in its charge to the 
Committee shall undermine any rights under copyright.

The legislation requires the Committee to report back to Congress 
on the specific objectives and public interest that need to be 
addressed by any government policies considered by the Committee; 
the impact that they have had on science and engineering 
stakeholders, including the financial impact on research budgets; 
and how any policies developed or being developed incorporate 
input from non-Federal stakeholders.

"Taken together these provisions demonstrate a clear call for 
U.S. Federal agencies to craft archiving and public access 
polices with appropriate care for the concerns of all 
stakeholders and the dangers of 'unintended consequences,'" said 
Michael Mabe, Chief Executive Officer of STM. "They avoid the 
pitfalls of unfunded mandates and 'one size fits all' policies 
and call for US officials to clearly identify the specific goals 
they are trying to achieve and how they have incorporated input 
from key stakeholders like publishers."  Mabe noted that similar 
underlying issues are being investigated by the European 
Commission-supported PEER research project, which STM is 
coordinating with the active collaboration of the other key 
stakeholders (funders, repositories, learned societies and the 
scholarly community).


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STM is an international association of over 100 scientific, 
technical, medical and scholarly publishers, collectively 
responsible for more than 60% of the global annual output of 
research articles, 55% of the active research journals and the 
publication of tens of thousands of print and electronic books, 
reference works and databases. We are the only international 
trade association equally representing all types of STM 
publishers - large and small companies, not for profit 
organizations, learned societies, traditional, primary, secondary 
publishers and new entrants to global publishing. 
http://www.stm-assoc.org

PEER (Publishing and the Ecology of European Research), supported 
by the EC eContentplus programme, is a research project 
investigating the effects of the large-scale, systematic 
depositing of authors' final peer-reviewed manuscripts (so called 
Green Open Access or stage-two research output) on reader access, 
author visibility, and journal viability, as well as on the 
broader ecology of European research. The project is a 
collaboration between publishers, repositories and researchers 
and will last from September 2008 to May 2012. 
http://www.peerproject.eu

Contact:
For further information, contact

Kim Beadle, STM, Prama House,
267 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 7HT, UK
tel: +44 1865 339324/fax: +44 1865 339325
e-mail mailto:beadle@stm-assoc.org

Janice E. Kuta
Director of Membership & Marketing
STM - International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical 
Publishers
332 E. 18th Street, #12
New York, New York 10003
E-mail: kuta@stm-assoc.org
Tel: 212-533-0832
Fax: 212-420-8407
www.stm-assoc.org