Tax-funded research should be made available to those in need

Guest Column

By: Sami Lange

Posted: 11/15/06

Ever wonder where your tax dollars are going? Well, about $55 billion are going to basic and applied research. Some of the major agencies that use federally funded money include the National Institute of Health, National Science Foundation, NASA, the Department of Energy and the Department of Agriculture.

Since taxpayers are helping to fund the research, why are they restricted from accessing scholarly publications based on research they paid for?

Some of the barriers to retrieving articles include being at a university with no access, outrageously high article purchase fees or an institution that refuses to send an article because of the time involved and tells you to try another institution or go through interlibrary loan.

A professor of microbiology at the University of Vermont is allowed access to about 66-75 percent of his required journal articles.

He then has to rely on inter-library loans and only requests articles that are exactly what he needs and misses out on discoveries he might have made by browsing through other relevant articles in the entire journal.

For parents of children with rare diseases who have no access to information on their children's illness and scientists and academics unable to get the latest information in their field because their institution doesn't subscribe to an unusual journal, the need for access is not only a desire, but of vital importance.

Our fast-paced, need-it-now society demands immediate access to information. Heather Joseph, of Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, said, "whether it is speeding a response to a potential flu pandemic, developing energy alternatives, or putting the brakes on global warming, access to publicly funded science is more critical than ever."

The National Institute of Health accounts for about one-third of all tax-funded research and produces about 65,000 peer-reviewed journal articles annually.

The public access policy of the institute was implemented in May 2005 and was voluntary for researchers. It has been considered a failure, with about 4 percent of the research articles making it to public access.

A Harris interactive poll showed that more than 80 percent of Americans felt tax-funded research should be made publicly accessible. Several major organizations are behind the open access idea, including the American Library Association, which is a member of the Alliance for Taxpayer Access.

The recent and most groundbreaking issue is the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006, which requires agencies who have a research budget in access of $100 million to implement online access to articles within six months of publication.

When describing the act, Nobel Prize laureate Richard Roberts said, "as a scientist and a taxpayer, I support this bill because it lifts barriers that hinder, delay or block the spread of scientific knowledge supported by federal tax dollars."

The policy excludes classified, copyrighted or patented materials. Publishers of the scholarly journals are concerned that open access will precipitate the cancellation of many library subscriptions. However, built into the act is a six-month delay in the release of completed manuscripts that may help to address this concern.

In a Washington Post article Patricia S. Schroeder, president and chief executive of the Association of American Publishers, promised a fight and said the lack of success in explaining the cost of performing a peer review, editing the accepted articles, and putting the articles into a reader friendly form, is frustrating.

For those interested in voicing an opinion about the act, the Alliance for Taxpayer Access has displayed action steps in support of the policy on their Web site. The list includes phoning, faxing or e-mailing your senator to support the bill, faxing a letter of support to Senators John Cornyn and Joe Lieberman, the sponsors of the bill, and issuing a public statement of support.

This issue is of grave importance, not only in supplying citizens with information that could help them, but also in propelling and advancing science and research.

Sami Lange is a graduate student in the Library and Information Science program at San Jose State University.