US Representative John Conyers (D-MI) is on the defensive regarding legislation that would prevent the public posting of taxpayer funded scientific research on the Internet. Opponents argue the bill is a step back for science and that the powers that be behind it are shilling for the paper publishing industry.
Conyers has been sparring against Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford professor with a lot of digital clout, on the Huffington Post about the measure. He argues the bill, as the title of it implies, protects copyrights and peer reviews while repealing a provision slipped into another bill in the middle of the night that wouldn’t receive proper debate.
That provision, backed by Lessig, 33 Nobel prize winners, and the National Institutes of Health, would ensure the public has open access to all taxpayer funded research. While Conyers is crying foul on procedural grounds and arguing that late-night addition can’t be supported just because one happens to like the intent, Lessig and company are noting that the cosponsors of the bill all have received twice as much money in campaign contributions from the paper publishing industry than others.
At the same time, Lessig is promoting his donor strike, a movement to get donors to withhold contributions until Congress reforms the campaign finance system.
Conyers’ opponents on this issue argue that disallowing public posting results in taxpayers paying for research twice, and that opening up that research will exponentially increase the rate of scientific growth while helping the medical industry access the latest research on treating illnesses.
Conyers has argued that publishers rely on subscriptions to fund the peer review process that creates better, more credible collections of research. Scientific journals typically reward good science with publishing (e.g., the researchers typically are paid with a publishing credit, not money).
Conyers has come out swinging on this from a defensive viewpoint, but his argument isn’t holding water. Besides that the public shouldn’t have to pay for something twice, nothing bars scientists from waiting a year to publish research publicly. Further, the argument that publishers would no longer have incentive to peer review and publish research collections is specious at best. The peer review is what creates the value of the research, not the copyright, and presumably nothing would prevent publishers from selling their own peer-reviewed packages, which would create value for the science consumer in that he wouldn’t have to sift through the masses of poor research out there.
