NUL Copyright and Scholarly Communication

News from the publishing world: NIH policy and open textbooks

Two interesting news items from the world of publishing during the last week.

On September 11, the House Committee on the Judiciary held a hearing on the "Fair Copyright in Research Works Act," H.R. 6845 (introduced on 9/9/08), which would have rolled back the National Institutes of Health (NIH) mandate that results of publicly funded research be deposited in the open access database PubMed Central within 12 months of publication. Read Library Journal's account of the high drama that unfolded: "At Hearing, Witness Says NIH Policy will "Destroy" Commercial Scientific Publishing." The full hearing is also available via video cast from the Committee's web site.

And in the September 15 issue of the New York Times, an interesting article about the growth of online textbooks, including a couple of healthy open access textbook projects. Don't buy that textbook, download it free.

Updated: looks as though the proposed copyright legislation (see NIH item above) has been shelved for now