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If passed, the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) and similar enactments by governments around the world will significantly change the way we share scholarly research. This act would require research organizations receiving public funding to publish results of their research for Open Access. Researchers will have six months from the time they publish in scholarly journals to post the information in an OA depository. National Institutes of Health (NIH) voluntarily implemented a policy requiring final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts from research it funded be published in PubMed Central.
According to the author, “The peer-review process helps to assure the integrity of the research process. But criticism has ensued over the process of publishing these research papers in journals that are often high-priced with limited availability.” (Pike) FRPAA is criticized by publishing groups who have a financial interest in maintaining control of this information. Supporters of this act include scholarly societies and librarians’ associations. Advocates for transparency and access to government records may also support this legislation.
As a school media specialist, I am very excited to facilitate my students' explorations of the research available on Pubmed and, hopefully, other open access depositories in the future. As a citizen and taxpayer, I appreciate having perpetual access to this information.
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I had never heard of the FRPPA prior to reading this article. After reading your post, I wanted to learn more about the specifics of the FRPPA. Here is a link which explains some background and requirements.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.arl.org/sparc/advocacy/frpaa/index.shtml
I am not sure what my opinion is on this topic. On one hand, I think it is fair that people have access if the research is being funded by taxpayers, but I can see reasons for arguing against as well.
Leah
I like the idea of open access so that people can retrieve research articles that they may not otherwise have access to. I feel lucky to be able to search in so many databases that IUPUI provides, but others may not have this luxury. I just hope that the rights of authors and researchers are maintained.
ReplyDeleteI use GoogleScholar often to figure out if an open access version exists for certain articles.
To me, it makes sense that if taxpayers are paying for this research, they should have some level of access to the final results as well.
ReplyDeleteIt will be interesting to see how the commercial publishers change their game if this legislation is passed. Obviously, if the research papers have to be published on an agency website and accessed for free, the commercial publishers will have to come up with some value-adding features to encourage institutions to continue to subscribe to the database. Whether it is better indexing or editor-created explanations of the complexities of any research paper, this act has the potential to improve access to this research for even those who continue to pay for it.
It does seem that publishers will have up to a six month window after the work is published before the open access version has to be filed. So they can still retain their benefits of being the initial publisher. But I'm sure they make more morning over time from users that access these articles through databases. Or maybe they don't. I'm not sure. Access to research especially if it is government funded is important. But it looks like the almighty dollar might be at odds with that right.
ReplyDeleteThe only problem that I see with this movement is what will happen to the EBSCO databases and others. These databases require funds to be supported and maintained. Open access is in principle a very good thing, but I don't want to lose these databases. I believe the taxpayer does have access, he can go to the IUPUI library, and get a guest pass, and access these databases to get scholarly articles. This is also true about other state funded universities.
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