Elsevier Abandons Anti-Open Access Bill

The publishing giant withdraws its support of the Research Works Act, which would eliminate open-access requirements on federally funded work.

Written byBob Grant

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Publishing company Elsevier has backpedalled on its support of the Research Works Act (RWA), a bill that proposes to stop federal agencies from requiring that their grantees deposit federally funded research findings in open access databases.

Elsevier, which publishes a slew of highly cited science journals such as The Lancet and the Cell series, said in a statement yesterday that it decided to cease rallying for the legislation after hearing from "Elsevier journal authors, editors and reviewers who were concerned that the Act seemed inconsistent with Elsevier’s long-standing support for expanding options for free and low-cost public access to scholarly literature."

US Representatives Darrel Issa (R-CA) and Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) introduced the RWA into the House of Representatives last December, and the Association of American ...

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Meet the Author

Bob Grant
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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