In this week’s news, the bill H.R. 3699 proposed in the US House of Representatives would roll back the National Institute of Health’s Public Access Policy. “Science Around the Blog” features the reactions of scientists, educators and advocates to the bill.

Read the bill 3699 (pdf)
Read the current NIH Public Access Policy
Read HIVe' primer on Open Access

• Sandra Porter posted two entries that highlight the negative effect the bill would have in STEM education:
  • Raising the barriers: restricting access to scientific literature will hurt STEM education; and
  • How much does it cost to get a scientific paper?
• The Alliance for Taxpayer Access released a Call to Action: Oppose H.R. 3699, a bill to block public access to publicly funded research
• From Care2, Open Access Under Threat: HR 3699 dissects who exactly will be affected by the rules proposed in the bill
• On Open Access, open science and Congress – the summary of the Twitter discussion between Tim O’Reilly (a leader in Open Source movement) and Darrell Issa (one of the sponsors of the bill)
• Research Works Act H.R.3699: The Private Publishing Tail Trying To Wag The Public Research Dog, Yet Again – an article by Stevan Harnad (University of Southampton), a proponent of Open Access, says that in considering the bill the gains or losses from it should be weighed for the scientific community as a whole, not just for scientific publishers
• Our scientific societies need to quit the Association of American Publishers – Michael Eisen (UC Berkley) urges scientists to call on scientific societies to withdraw support of the Association of American Publishers, which came out in favor of the bill