Re: New US Bill re. Copyright/Federal Funding

["Mary Ann Jones" <MJONES2@mail.mcg.edu>]

Ann,

The simple explanation is that this bill will not further protect the 
rights of authors; it will only protect the publishers who are behind the
introduction of this bill.

In fact, the NIH Public Access Policy does not require that an 
author transfer copyright to the government, only that the author 
deposit the final peer-reviewed article and grant a license to 
the government to distribute the article after 12 months.

Let's not forget it is the publishing industry that routinely requires 
authors to transfer their copyright as a stipulation for publishing an 
article.  Basically, this bill would prevent the government from doing the
very thing that publishers routinely do to authors, so in essence the 
publishing lobby is not protecting authors, they are protecting themselves.

Mary Ann Jones, MLIS
Assistant Professor
Electronic Resources Management Librarian
Robert B. Greenblatt, M.D. Library
Medical College of Georgia
mjones2@mcg.edu