Publishers Welcome Legislation to Protect Copyright in Research Works
Wednesday, 04 February 2009
Publishers Welcome Legislation to Protect Copyright in Research Works
Washington, DC, February 4, 2009: The Association of American Publishers welcomed the re-introduction of legislation to safeguard the rights of authors and publishers of copyrighted, peer-reviewed scientific journal articles, and praised House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-MI), Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL), Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) and Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) for their bipartisan leadership and continuing support in protecting the rights of the scientific and scholarly publishing community.
The Fair Copyright in Research Works Act, HR 801, was re-introduced in response to a government mandate that allows the National Institutes of Health to make the content of publishers’ value-added, peer-reviewed journal articles freely available online within 12 months of publication. The legislation would recognize the importance of the added value in quality assurance controls that journal publishers contribute to ensure the integrity of such articles as key components of the nation’s record on scientific research, and would help keep the Federal Government from undermining copyright protection for journal articles where private-sector publishers have added such significant value. The legislation would address serious concerns that the mandate is inconsistent with policies underlying U.S. copyright law and undermines our nation’s ability to comply with international copyright treaty obligations.
Allan Adler, AAP Vice President for Government and Legal Affairs commented: “While the Government may fund the research, not-for-profit and commercial publishers together invest hundreds of millions of dollars each year conducting peer review, editing, publishing, disseminating, and archiving scientific and scholarly journal articles to inform the research community and the general public about the results of such research. This legislation would enable the government to disseminate research funded by the government while ensuring copyright protection and preserving the incentives for the private-sector investments in the journal publishing community.”
For additional information contact PSP Executive Director John Tagler (jtagler@publishers.org or 212-255-1407).
About AAP/PSP
The Association of American Publishers (AAP) is the national trade association of the U.S. book publishing industry, with more than300 members that include most of the major commercial publishers in the United States, as well as many smaller and non-profit publishers, university presses and scholarly societies. Members of AAP’s Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division (PSP) include more than 100 professional societies, commercial publishers and university presses that publish the vast majority of books, journals, computer software, databases and websites that are used in the U.S. by scholars and professionals in the fields of science, medicine, technology, business, law, reference, social science and the humanities.