A bill aimed at undoing the NIH's mandate to make federally-funded research manuscripts freely available on PubMed Central within a year of publication was re-introduced in the US House of Representatives on Tuesday night (Feb. 3).

The legislation claims that the NIH policy breaches existing copyright laws that protect academic publishers. If passed, the bill would stop federal agencies from requiring the transfer of copyright as a stipulation of investigators receiving taxpayer-backed grants.

The details of the bill, HR 801, have not yet been made public, but the Library Journal reports that those who have seen the legislation say it reads along the same lines as last year's version, dubbed the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act (HR 6845). That bill, which was championed by John Conyers (D-Mich), the chairman of the US House Committee on the Judiciary and an avowed critic of the NIH's public access mandate, was the focus of a spirited debate at a House Judiciary Subcommittee last September as supporters in the publishing industry squared off against advocates of open-access.

The Association of American Publishers welcomed the bill's reintroduction, and said in a statement that the legislation "would help keep the Federal Government from undermining copyright protection for journal articles where private-sector publishers have added such significant value."

The Copyright Alliance, an advocacy group, also backed the measure. "This bipartisan bill ensures that research works fully funded by the federal government with the intent of public publishing will receive that treatment, but also preserves the rights of other research funders and publishers," said executive director Patrick Ross in a statement.

Peter Suber, an open-access proponent at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, wrote on his Open Access News blog yesterday that he dismisses the bill's premise and the arguments of the two publisher groups as "false and cynical."

"If the NIH policy violated copyrights, or permitted the violation of copyrights, publishers wouldn't have to back this bill to amend US copyright law. Instead, they'd be in court where they'd already have a remedy," he wrote.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated Peter Suber's affiliation. The Scientist regrets the error.


Related stories:

Open access recall?
[12th September 2008]

Hearing on open access mandate?
[5th September 2008]

Publishers object to OA mandate
[4th January 2008]