Scholars, publishers battle over access to agency research

A lobbying battle that has gone on for nearly a decade between academia and the publishing industry over public access to taxpayer-funded research is now at the White House’s front door. In a matter of weeks, open-access advocates have gathered more than 26,000 signatures for a petition on the White House’s “We the People” website — above the threshold that triggers an automatic response from the Obama administration. The petition calls on President Obama to “require free access over the Internet to scientific journal articles arising from taxpayer-funded research” for all federal agencies.

Publishers and many in the science and health research fields have been tussling over the issue since 2004, when the National Institutes of Health (NIH) began looking at releasing to the public peer-reviewed scientific journal articles that used agency-funded research. Both sides have been engaging with Congress since then, often hoping to negate the other with targeted legislation. “The only way the taxpayers can get access to this information is to pay again to get access to these journals to see research they have already funded,” said Heather Joseph, executive director of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC).

In 2008, Congress required NIH to release the articles, and the agency has since created an online database for the public. Supporters of the NIH policy want to see it adopted elsewhere in the federal government. “Let’s get this expanded to other federal agencies. It seems easy, right? Not so much with the publishing lobby,” Joseph said.