Interesting Bills in Congress

I just read this in PLOS. On Friday the Senate will go over a bill that has already passed in the House. The bill mandates that all research findings that are published in academic journals will be free to the public after 12-months of publication. It is about time, I hope this bill passes.

It does seem silly when you think about it; scientists do research with taxpayer money and submit their findings to the appropriate academic journal. They pay the journal, with taxpayer money, to have the article published. Then free of charge other researchers, whose salaries are paid for by the taxpayers, review potential publications to make sure they are scientifically sound. After the research articles are published, the journals are sold to other researchers and people that are interested in the research. The journals make profit off of work that the taxpayers paid for. The profit that they make from selling the journals is from, you guessed it, taxpayer money, because that’s how research institutions and universities get the information, through subscriptions paid for with taxpayer money.

What a racket, but I am not surprised that it has taken this long to get to congress. I did not know any of this until recently when I actually started working for a research institution. So why should anyone else. Many scientists are extremely busy doing science and don’t have time to make an impression on congress nor become a member of congress. On the other side, you potentially have a strong lobby working against any progress. All they would have to say to any busy congressman is that any change relating to science hurts science. This hypothetical lobby would obviously be funded by the journals profiting off of taxpayer money and thus the current situation.