Anti-Open Access Bill Dies

Legislators have dropped the Research Works Act, which would have nixed policies that require federally funded research findings to be deposited in public databases.

Written byBob Grant

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WIKIMEDIA COMMONS, KMCCOY

Just hours after publishing giant Elsevier withdrew its support of the Research Works Act (RWA)—a bill introduced into the US House of Representatives late last year that would do away with federal policies like the National Institutes of Health's public access policy that require grantees to post their peer-reviewed manuscripts online in open-access forums—its sponsors pronounced the bill dead.

Representatives Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), who introduced the legislation last December, said on Monday (Feb 27) that the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee would drop the RWA, officially known as HR 3699. "We will not be taking legislative action on HR 3699, the Research Works Act," they said in a statement.

Open-access advocates are hailing the move as a victory, and it ...

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Meet the Author

Bob Grant
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From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.
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