Open-Access

I recently received a copy of a letter the US Chamber of Commerce is circulating in opposition to H.R. 5037, the Federal Research Public Access Act. Since I decided to respond to the letter at length, I thought I would share my response with the community. Below I quote their letter in full with paragraph-by-paragraph responses to their argument. Dear Chairman Towns and Ranking Member Issa: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the world’s largest business federation representing the interests of more than three million businesses and organizations of every size, sector, and region, opposes H.R. 5037, the “Federal Research Public Access Act,” and urges you not to bring it before the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform for consideration. ...

As reported by the OA Librarian, Open Education News, and others, the Federal Research Public Access Act has been introduced in the US House. taxpayeraccess.org has more detail and information about how you can get involved. The awesome Govtracker is currently showing H. R. 5037 has having been referred to the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Government Reform. Go check and see if you have a congressman on the subcommittee. I do! I sent him this letter this morning. ...

Stevan Harnad takes issue with my Pay Twice argument. Since we’re both on the same team here, surely he won’t mind a response to his response. David Wiley’s version of the double-payment objection is only partly correct. To the extent that both research funding and research library funding are paid by the tax-payer, there is indeed some double-paying — but the one who gets the free ride is the publisher, who gets to charge for access to material most of which was funded by the tax-payer. (But not so for peer review, which the publisher manages, though the reviewing is again actually being done for free by the peers. Nevertheless, an honest broker is needed to manage the peer review, or else it’s vanity press. The cost of managing peer review is much less than the cost of publishing, but it will be an invariant expense that needs to be paid no matter what.) ...

Since my department at BYU has committed itself to open access publishing I’ve been able to get serious about putting my published writing in the university’s institutional repository called ScholarsArchive. So far I have 12 pieces in the collection, which are guaranteed to stay at these URLs for “a very long time” since the library is curating the repository. I’m happy as a clam that these pieces have permanent homes and that these pieces are freely available for the general public. ...

Two units at Brigham Young University have adopted open access policies - both the Harold B. Lee Library faculty and the faculty in my own department, Instructional Psychology and Technology, voted to adopt the policies earlier this month. IP&T’s policy was based on the HBLL policy, which was based on existing OA policies at other universities. I am giddy with excitement to see some of my own published articles beginning to appear in BYU’s institutional repository - they now have an open, permanent, curated home and I can link to them with confidence. And the whole world can and will be able to access and read them, legally, in perpetuity! This is the way science should work. ...

Students in my IPT 692R: Open Education Policy Seminar have finished the two policy backgrounders they worked on during our extremely compressed summer session. These reviews are written specifically for a BYU audience (with lots of references to BYU’s mission, institutional objectives, and appropriate scriptures), but I thought the information in these documents might be of interest to the broader open education community. So without further ado: Open Access Policy Backgrounder ...

Open Education News and Open Access News are running stories about a new OA mandate from the Institute of Education Sciences: Recipients of awards are expected to publish or otherwise make publicly available the results of the work supported through this program. Institute-funded investigators should submit final, peer-reviewed manuscripts resulting from research supported in whole or in part by the Institute to the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) upon acceptance for publication. An author’s final manuscript is defined as the final version accepted for journal publication, and includes all graphics and supplemental materials that are associated with the article. The Institute will make the manuscript available to the public through ERIC no later than 12 months after the official date of publication. Institutions and investigators are responsible for ensuring that any publishing or copyright agreements concerning submitted articles fully comply with this requirement. ...

I love to create stories to teach otherwise difficult to understand concepts. The Polo Parable has proven to be an effective way to help people see the madness involved in trying to “move” classroom teaching practices online and help them understand that different contexts call for different strategies. In the spirit of the Polo Parable, here is the “Trucker Tale.” Once upon a time there was an inventor. She was brilliant. All through the night and all during the day she dreamed, she schemed, she thought, she imagined. Then one day she had a “Eureka!” moment. She sketched out the design of her breakthrough product, and worked and reworked the design by showing it to friends and getting their feedback. ...

I thought I would share my most recent letter to John Conyers re: HR 801. Please consider something similar to john.conyers@mail.house.gov. John, Please let me very briefly explain the two reasons I oppose HR 801. First, as a member of the taxpaying public, if I pay for research to be conducted I don’t expect to pay a second time to gain access to the results of the research. When the public pays for research, the research belongs to the public. In a time when budget shortfalls are at historically high figures, the idea that HR 801 would create or continue a situation in which taxpayers pay TWICE for access to research is appalling. The people’s representatives in government should now be looking for any and every opportunity to be better stewards of the people’s money. To the extent that government represents the people’s interest, our representatives in government should act vigorously to strengthen and uphold the NIH mandate and similar initiatives that insure the public only pays once for research. ...

Gavin links to his great article on scienceprogress.org about how NIH’s New Open Access Policy Can Benefit Everyone. “The new policy is not only notable for its novelty and the whopping amount of research it will make available, but for its storied history.”