Congressional Hearing on Public (Open) Access to Federally Funded Research 1: a mixdown of Timothy Vollmer’s tweetfeed on the webcast 7/29/10

1. What follows is a Twitter feed  by Timothy Vollmer (http://twitter.com/tvol) on the 7/29/10 webcast of  “Public Access to Federally-Funded Research” held today by the Information Policy, Census and National Archives Subcommittee (of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform) in Congress.
2. For “Public Access” substitute “Open Access” to get a sense of what open access advocates are up against in commercial research publishers.
3. How to read this: start at the bottom (#22) and scroll up.
4. [End]
5. Lipman: there’s been doubling of use of pubmedcentral since 2008
6. Rep Clay: why doesn’t NIH just link to articles on publishers’ websites? Lipman: archiving & access is ensured by libraries, not publishers
7. Dr David Lipman from NIH National Library of Medicine: Canada and UK have open access infrastructures similar to biomedcentral
8. Maxwell: access only if you can afford it, or access only for experts is limiting–we need broad democratic access to make new discoveries
9. Rep Clay: will open access have negative affect on peer review? Witnesses: No. And, peer reviewers are not paid across the board 
10. Nancarrow: public access promotes creative reuse of content 
11. Catherine Nancarrow from PLoS: we’ve proven open access is high quality and financially sustainable
12. Dr Shulenburger from Assoc. of Public and Land Grant Universities: those students with least access are at community colleges (50% in US)
13. colamarino: it’s hard to tell our research funders that they’ll have to pay again to see the published results 
14. Dr Colamarino from Autism Speaks: families have access to info, but not the most scientifically rigorous because it’s locked up
15. Maxwell: making info more accessible and available can increase return on investment, reduce redundant research
16. Elliott Maxwell from center for economic development: rise of Internet has lead to greater openness. this openness is crucial for innovation
17. Sharon Terry from Genetic Alliance: not only scientists and academics need access to scientific info: patients, parents, students need it
18. Roberts: public access to publicly funded research would be beneficial to students at all levels 
19. Dr Roberts from New England Biolab: without comprehensive access to the literature, it’s impossible to know where the cutting edge is.
20. Now when the pro open access witnesses begin their testimony, all members save the chairman have left the hearing. 
21. Rep Maloney: We need more IP protection. We can’t even protect a song, much less a cure for cancer. 
22. the members (present) of this subcommittee have the only a cursory grasp on how scholarly publishing and peer review actually works
23. [Start]

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