[Taxacom] Access to US Federally funded data?

[Edwards, James]

Schindel's post skirts a much larger, more fundamental concern:  under
the US "federal purpose" doctrine, all agencies that fund the creation
of a copyrighted work must reserve a "royalty-free, nonexclusive right
to reproduce, publish, or otherwise use the work" for any federal
purpose. Current NIH policy relies on this principle to require
researchers to post any papers resulting from their NIH-funded research
on PubMed Central within 12 months of their date of publication. If the
Congress overturns this rule, it could bring into jeopardy the whole
federal purpose doctrine, which is part of why open-source advocates are
so concerned about HR6845, the so-called "Fair Copyright in Research
Works Act". PLoS states that the bill would "severely limit the ability
of U.S. federal agencies to use works that they have funded to support
and fulfill agency missions and to communicate with and educate the
public".

            --  Jim
 
Dr. James L. Edwards
Executive Director
Encyclopedia of Life
National Museum of Natural History
Smithsonian Institution
P.O. Box 37012, MRC 106
Washington, DC 20013-7012
 
Phone:  1 202 633 8730
Mobile:  1 571 230 4098
Fax:      1 202 633 8742
Email:   edwardsjl at si.edu
-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
[mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Schindel, David
Sent: Saturday, September 20, 2008 9:16 AM
To: Weitzman, Anna; Jim Croft; Neal Evenhuis; TaxaCom
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Access to US Federally funded data?

An important point is being overlooked in this debate.  Researchers who
work for government agencies cannot sign away ownership rights to
publishers when they publish articles written as part of their
employment.  The government owns the copyright and has a policy
supporting wide dissemination.  Government researchers routinely sign
publishing agreements but they are required to make their papers
publicly available.  They can post pdfs on websites or submit them to
PubMedCentral.  I've been told that government researchers sometimes add
provisions to publishing agreements that reflect this government policy.
There are plenty of government researchers on Taxacom and it would be
interesting to hear about their experiences.

So the distinction at the center of this debate should be whether or not
there is a significant difference between publishing as a government
scientist versus publishing as as a scientist supported by a government
grant.

Since the DNA barcodng community is trying to create a public library of
reference records in GenBank linked to voucher specimens and taxonomic
names, participants are generally either publishing their papers in open
access journals or are paying extra for online access.  This enables
them to link their publications to the underlying data in GenBank, GBIF,
museum catalogs and other data repositories.

David E. Schindel, Executive Secretary

Consortium for the Barcode of Life

202/633-0812; fax 202/633-2938; portable 202/557-1149

Email: SchindelD at si.edu <blocked::mailto:SchindelD at si.edu>  

CBOL WEBSITE: http://www.barcoding.si.edu
<blocked::http://www.barcoding.si.edu/>  

 

Office and overnight delivery address:

National Museum of Natural History

Room CE-119

10th & Constitution Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20560

Postal mailing address

National Museum of Natural History 

Smithsonian Institution

P.O. Box 37012, MRC-105

Washington, DC 20013-7012



-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
[mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
<mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu> ] On Behalf Of Weitzman,
Anna
Sent: Friday, September 19, 2008 11:22 PM
To: Jim Croft; Neal Evenhuis; TaxaCom
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Access to US Federally funded data?

The drivers are clear.  But those of us who are US citizens (for better
or worse, to be decided in early November ;-)) should do what we can to
further open access....

cheers,
Anna

Anna L. Weitzman, PhD
Botanical and Biodiversity Informatics Research National Museum of
Natural History Smithsonian Institution

office: 202.633.0846
mobile: 202.415.4684
weitzman at si.edu

________________________________

From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu on behalf of Jim Croft
Sent: Fri 19-Sep-08 11:14 PM
To: Neal Evenhuis; TaxaCom
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Access to US Federally funded data?



ah, it is about access to published journal articles.    now it all
makes sense...

no it doesn't, but at least the drivers are clear...

jim

On Sat, Sep 20, 2008 at 12:33 PM, Neal Evenhuis <neale at bishopmuseum.org>
wrote:

> An article on this just appeared in this week's Science.

--
_________________
Jim Croft
jim.croft at gmail.com

"Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality."
- Joseph Conrad, author (1857-1924)

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