[GOAL] Rockefeller University Press director opposes RWA

[Peter Suber]

[Forwarding from Mike Rossner, Executive Director of Rockefeller University
Press.  --Peter Suber.]


January 13, 2012

Representative Carolyn Maloney
2332 Rayburn HOB
Washington, DC 20515-3214

Dear Representative Maloney,

I am the Executive Director of The Rockefeller University Press, a
nonprofit organization that publishes three biomedical research journals.
I am contacting you as a publisher and as your constituent in the 14th
Congressional District of New York to express my strong opposition to the
Research Works Act (H.R. 3699), which you and Representative Issa
introduced into the House on December 16, 2011.

I want to state emphatically that I support the NIH Public Access Policy
and think it should be expanded to other federal funding agencies.  All
publishers of biomedical research understand several truths: 1) that their
content is generated in large part through federally funded research,  2)
that the peer review process is carried out in large part by federally
funded individuals, and 3) that a significant portion of their subscription
revenue is obtained from government funded institutions.  Although
publishers' content may technically be considered "private-sector research
work" as described in the text of H.R. 3699, its very existence depends on
public funding.

Some publishers believe they have an obligation to give back to the public
that has provided those funds, and, even before the NIH mandate, they made
their online content free after a short delay under subscription control.
However, a few large, highly profitable publishers refused to do this
voluntarily and thus forced the NIH into the position of mandating
deposition of NIH-funded research publications in PubMed Central to make
them available to the public.

At The Rockefeller University Press, we have released the content of our
three journals to the public six months after publication since January,
2001, and our subscription revenues have grown since then.  All of the
content in our journals is released to the public, regardless of funding
source.  We are not aware of any data indicating that subscription revenues
of biomedical research journal publishers have been directly and negatively
affected by the NIH mandate.

Enacting a law that prohibits federal funding agencies from mandating
public access to the results of the research they fund will deprive the
public of important information that is rightly theirs.  Although this Act
has been supported by the Association of American Publishers (AAP), it is
vital that members of Congress know that not all members of this
Association agree with their position.  The Rockefeller University Press is
a member of the AAP, but we strongly oppose H.R. 3699.

Yours sincerely,

Mike Rossner, Ph.D.
Executive Director
The Rockefeller University Press

*These comments are the opinion of the author and do not necessarily
reflect the position of The Rockefeller University.


*
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