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Many of the nation’s scholarly societies and associations are up in arms about a proposed law that would require research conducted with federal money to be made available to the public free of charge. The proposed Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) puts the scholarly society and associations in a contradictory spot. On one hand, they represent the interests of serious scholarship, which favors wide dissemination of research findings. But many of them also publish prestigious journals—and depend on the profits from journal subscriptions to underwrite their other activities—so a bill that might reduce journal revenues is anathema to them. In fields like medicine, most research depends on federal dollars and therefore would be subject to FRPAA’s open access rules.
There is some evidence that the public believes open access will have positive societal consequences. A solid majority of the public favors open access to publicly-funded research, according to a Harris poll released May 31, which said that that large majorities believe that open access would help advance medical care and scientific accomplishments in the civilian world. Whether open access is ultimately a salient enough issue like stem cell research for the public to weigh in, however, remains to be seen.
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