Research Works Act
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| Long title | "To ensure the continued publication and integrity of peer-reviewed research works by the private sector." —H.R. 3699 |
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The Research Works Act, 102 H.R. 3699, was a bill that was introduced in the United States House of Representatives at the 112th United States Congress on December 16, 2011, by Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA) and co-sponsored by Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY). The bill contained provisions to prohibit open-access mandates for federally funded research and effectively revert the United States' National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy, which requires taxpayer-funded research to be freely accessible online. If enacted, it would have also severely restricted the sharing of scientific data. The bill was referred to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, of which Issa is the chair. Similar bills were introduced in 2008 and 2009 but have not been enacted since.
On February 27, 2012 Elsevier, a major publisher, announced that it was withdrawing support for the Act. Later that day, Issa and Maloney issued a statement saying that they would not push for legislative action on the bill.
The bill was supported by the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and the Copyright Alliance.
The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, the Alliance for Taxpayer Access, the American Library Association, the International Society for Computational Biology, the Confederation of Open Access Repositories and prominent open science and open access advocates criticized the Research Works Act, some of them urging scholarly societies to resign from the AAP because of its support for the bill. Several AAP members, including MIT Press, Rockefeller University Press, Nature Publishing Group, American Association for the Advancement of Science stated their opposition to the bill but signaled no intention to leave the association. Other AAP members stated their opposition to the bill as did the Association of American Universities (AAU) and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities. Several public health groups opposed the bill.
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