RE: Sabo Bill: Measure Calls for Wider Access to Federally Financed Research

["Lavoie,Brian" <lavoie@oclc.org>]

The OECD released a report in March that is relevant to the issues raised
in the Sabo bill. The report advocates the principle that "publicly funded
research data should be openly available to the maximum extent possible.
Availability should be subject only to national security restrictions;
protection of confidentiality and privacy; intellectual property rights;
and time-limited exclusive use by principal investigators." Also:
"publicly funded research data are a public good, produced in the public
interest. As such they should remain in the public realm."

The report recommends that national governments actively promote public
access to publicly-funded research, by incorporating this principle into
the terms of research grants provided by government funding agencies, and
by maximizing access to research produced by government entities.

The report is (freely!) available at:
http://dataaccess.ucsd.edu/Final_Report_2003.pdf

Regards,
Brian Lavoie
OCLC Research

-----Original Message-----
From: Ann Okerson [mailto:ann.okerson@yale.edu]
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2003 8:32 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Sabo Bill: Measure Calls for Wider Access to Federally Financed
Research 

Re. the article below:  More details about the Sabo bill and a citation to
it, when it is presented, will be helpful in understanding its aims and
how they can be realized.

For example, is not clear how this bill can provide or assure open access
to published journal articles.  Open access, as recently defined in the
journals context, is a not only an ideal, but it is also a business model.  
Open access would make articles available for free to all from moment of
publication because the costs of publication *and* permanent access have
been paid in advance behind the scenes, by authors, sponsors, foundations,
government grants, and the like, rather than thru customer subscription.  
So, it is not easy to see how letting authors keep copyright over their
works, or even ceding copyright to the US government, solves the problem
of supporting peer reviewed journals financially.  That has to happen
somehow, no matter who owns copyright.  There are real costs.

But maybe the bill is not intended to support open access for journal
articles so much as to encourage our ability to go to government agencies'
web sites and read accounts & results of government funded research
projects and their findings.  Those reports are not the same as journal
articles, for the most part. Ann Okerson/Yale Library