Opposing the Research Works Act

There is a new bill that was introduced in Congress and referred to the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform called the Research Works Act. I strongly oppose this bill and welcome others to form opinions and take action (e.g. contact your representative in Congress).

Currently, all research in the U.S. funded through public dollars is required to be made available to the public – open access with no paywall to read research publications. The Research Works Act would like to introduce a paywall for the public to read all research that was publicly and privately funded. Essentially, the public would end up paying for publicly funded research twice.

To learn more about  this bill, read ProPublica’s story and check out Harvard’s Open Access Project Notes on the Research Works Act (thanks, Peter Suber for the G+ share).