Press Release - Academic Offices Express Concern About S.2695

["Martin Frank" <MFrank@The-APS.org>]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


Contact:     Christine Guilfoy 301-634-7253 (office)
                    cguilfoy@the-aps.org

                    Martin Frank, Ph.D. 301-634-7118
                    mfrank@the-aps.org

SENIOR ACADEMIC OFFICERS EXPRESS THEIR CONCERN ABOUT S.2695, THE 
"FEDERAL RESEARCH PUBLIC ACCESS ACT OF 2006"

(Bethesda, MD) - September 22, 2006 - Senior academic officers 
from 10 institutions issued a letter to Senators John Cornyn (TX) 
and Joseph Lieberman (CT) expressing their concerns about the 
provisions of S.2695, the "Federal Research Public Access Act of 
2006."  These institutions, which collectively make nearly $3 
billion in annual research investments, expressed their concerns 
that mandating a six-month public release of journal articles 
would negatively impact the academic community and the publishers 
that disseminate their work.

In signing the letter in opposition to S.2695, Dr. Robert Rich, 
Senior Vice President and Dean, University of Alabama at 
Birmingham School of Medicine, expressed his concern that "the 
legislation would damage the special relationship between 
scholarly societies and academic communities who work in 
partnership to ensure that these communities are sustained and 
extended, science is advanced, research meets the highest 
standards, and patient care is enhanced with accurate and timely 
information."  Rich also expressed concern that "S.2695 would 
divert scarce Federal dollars away from research in order to 
provide a service already provided to the public by society 
publishers."

The nonprofit publishers comprising the DC Principles Coalition
(http://www.DCPrinciples.org <http://www.dcprinciples.org/> ) are among
those who are able to provide public access to literature either
immediately or within months of publication without government mandate
through corporate and academic subscriptions.  According to Martin
Frank, Ph.D., Executive Director of the American Physiological Society
(APS) and a member of the Coalition, "a six-month release mandate may
force some journals to shift to a publication model requiring authors to
pay for their publications through their Federal grants, diminishing
funds available for research to benefit the public good."

Issued on September 22, 2006, the letter reads:

Dear Senators Cornyn and Lieberman:

The undersigned senior academic officers write to express our 
concerns about S.2695, the "Federal Research Public Access Act of 
2006."

We agree that the broadest dissemination of scientific literature 
is good for research.  However, mandating a six-month public 
release of journal articles would have negative unintended 
consequences for the academic community.  The free posting of 
unedited author manuscripts by government agencies threatens the 
integrity of the scientific record, potentially undermines the 
publisher peer review process, and is not a smart use of funds 
that could be better used for research.

Scientific publishers, in collaboration with academic 
institutions, scientists, and libraries, have been at the 
forefront of innovations that have improved and continue to 
improve access to research information.  As a result, more 
scientific papers are now available to more people than at any 
time in history.

Even when federal funds support the research reported in journal 
articles, these funds do not cover the costs associated with 
turning raw data into archived scientific manuscripts.  The cost 
of peer review, copy editing, formatting, printing, online 
publication, search engine development, and permanent archiving 
ranges from $2,500 - $10,000 per article.

At present, publishers cover these publication costs through the 
sale of subscriptions.  A Federal policy mandating public access 
after six months would threaten the financial viability of many 
of these journals through the loss of subscription revenues, 
forcing them to identify other means to cover costs.

One such means is to shift the costs to the scientists/authors. 
This is the business model currently used by the Public Library 
of Science, for example, which recently increased fees to $2,500 
per manuscript. These fees either come from the author's Federal 
research grant-thereby decreasing the amount available for 
research-or from the university, which could ultimately lead to 
higher institutional costs than those needed for journal 
subscriptions.

In fact, some studies have already shown that research intensive 
universities would have to pay considerably more to gain access 
to the same amount of research under an author- pays model than a 
subscription model.

Mandating free dissemination of scientific manuscripts within six 
months would significantly limit the ability of non-profit and 
commercial publishers to cover the upfront reviewing, editing, 
and production costs of creating these manuscripts.  Some 
journals would simply cease to exist.  Others would be much less 
able to support innovation in scientific publishing and 
archiving.  Ultimately, this could lead to a system in which NIH 
and other federal agencies must sustain a significant portion of 
the research publishing enterprise, maintaining 100+ years of 
archival journals, as well as producing new research articles.

As a member of the Senate Budget Committee, you are certainly 
sensitive to the various forces that shape and reshape the 
Federal budget from year to year.  Recently, for example, we 
learned that the Biomolecular Interaction Network Database-the 
world's largest free repository for proteomic data-lost its 
funding and curtailed its curation efforts. As leaders in our 
respective academic institutions, we are profoundly concerned 
that one unintended consequence of S. 2695 would be to put both 
our current research publications and our research archives in 
jeopardy.

Given the widespread access to the scientific literature that 
already exists and the negative unintended consequences this bill 
will have on the academic community, we urge you to reconsider 
whether S.2695 is needed.

Thank you for considering our request.

Sincerely yours,

Robert R. Rich, MD, Senior Vice President and Dean, University of
Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine, Birmingham, AL

Richard P. Saller, Ph.D., Provost, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL

John R. Sladek, Jr., Ph.D., Vice Chancellor, Research, University 
of Colorado Health Sciences Center, Denver, CO

Kenneth L. Barker, Ph.D., Provost and Vice President for 
Research, SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, NY

Mary J.C. Hendrix, Ph.D., President & Scientific Director, 
Children's Memorial Research Center, Northwestern University 
Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL

Bruce A. Holm, Ph.D., Senior Vice Provost, SUNY at Buffalo and 
Executive Director, NYS Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics & 
Life Sciences, Buffalo, NY

Leonard R. Johnson, Ph.D., Vice Chancellor for Research, 
University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, TN

Barbara A. Horwitz, Ph.D., Vice Provost-Academic Personnel, 
University of California, Davis, CA

Richard J. Traystman, Ph.D., Associate Vice President for 
Research, Planning, and Development, Associate Dean for Basic 
Science Research, Oregon Health and Sciences University, 
Portland, OR

David E. Millhorn, Ph.D., Vice President, Office of Research and 
Economic Development, University of Tennessee System, Knoxville, 
TN

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About the DC Principles Coalition for Free Access


The DC Principles for Free Access to Science Coalition 
(http://www.dcprinciples.org/) represents more than 75 of the 
nation's leading nonprofit medical and scientific societies and 
publishers. The not-for-profit publishers are committed to 
working in partnership with scholarly communities such as 
libraries to ensure that these communities are sustained, science 
is advanced, research meets the highest standards, and patient 
care is enhanced with accurate and timely information.

Martin Frank, Ph.D.
Executive Director, American Physiological Society
9650 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20814-3991 USA
Tel: 301-634-7118
Fax: 301-634-7241
E-mail: mfrank@the-aps.org
APS Home Page: www.the-aps.org
... Integrating the Life Sciences From Molecule to Organism

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