I try to steer clear of politics or legislation of any sort on the HealthLINE blog, but I have been seeing a lot posted on the Research Works Act published on library, medical and science blogs over the last week or so. And as it directly relates to what most of us do as medical librarians, I wanted to put a few links out there so those of us not up to speed on this issue can learn more about it.
The Research Works Act is a bill that was introduced into the US House on December 16, 2011, and it appears to be another attempt (the third since 2008) to circumvent the NIH's open access policy. The Association of American Publishers is a supporter (of course) and here is an excerpt from their website:
"The Research Works Act will prohibit federal agencies from unauthorized free public dissemination of journal articles that report on research which, to some degree, has been federally-funded but is produced and published by private sector publishers receiving no such funding. It would also prevent non-government authors from being required to agree to such free distribution of these works."
More Information:
