Don Marti

Fri 03 Feb 2012 07:20:06 AM PST

Stop H.R. 3699

(Finally. I really need to move my "blog to Congress" script over to ikiwiki.)

Dear Representative Stark:

I am writing to ask you to oppose H.R. 3699, the Research Works Act.

If Rep. Darrell Issa came to you and said, "Let's give our grant recipients permission to steal taxpayer-funded equipment from the lab and resell it on the Internet," you would say he was nuts. But this is exactly what H.R. 3699 would do with those scientists' research results.

The Public Access Policy at the National Institutes of Health has been a success, and makes original papers available to health professionals, patients, and their families. Open access to research also encourages follow-up research in the public and private sectors.

H.R. 3699 would throw away these benefits for no gain. The foreign publishing companies that would benefit from this bill are not publishers in the usual sense. They do not provide the same editing and selection functions that a typical magazine does in-house. Our Federally funded researchers already do the work of reviewing and editing at no charge.

Please do what you can to stop H.R. 3699.

Sincerely,

Donald B. Marti Jr.