The Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006

Sens. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) yesterday introduced their proposed Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006. The Act, if passed into law, would require researchers to provide free public Internet access to any publication of U.S. federally sponsored research within six months of its publication in a peer reviewed journal. The proposed law would apply to research funded by all 11 federal agencies that provide at least $100 million in outside funding per year -- including the departments of Agriculture, Commerce and Homeland Security as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, NASA and the National Science Foundation.

Read:

* Senator Lieberman's Office's press release on the Act.

* The FAQ's published on the Senate website on the Act.

* The article by Rick Weiss in today's Washington Post on the legislation.

As one would expect, the publishers of journals are concerned with this legislation. I suspect that it is a step in the social change that the Internet and World Wide Web are creating. The system of professional journals is itself a product of technological improvements in printing and publishing. But professional journal articles are very limited in their distribution. We need to get the information from federally funded R&D on the web -- more quickly and more fully.

On the other hand, there have to be significant efforts made to organize that information and to provide users with vetting which warrants the content. To some degree this can be done through automation, and through volunteer work using open content approaches. Still there will be costs involved, and I suspect they would be better financed via public subsidies than through advertizing or fee-for-publications. I hope that the Congress will consider the financial implications of its actions to free knowledge. We may already have paid for its production via our tax supported public R&D funding, but we need also to pay for the distribution of the knowledge and understanding!