Scientists want to do science. To do science, they need to demonstrate to funding sources that the science they do is useful and solid. They demonstrate this by showing that peer review committees think their paper is worth touting, and by bragging about citations their paper has gotten from other working scientists.

The journal companies charge scientists to publish papers because they are providing the service of “vetting” the paper, making it more valuable. Citations, though, come only after other scientists have read the paper, and the more who read it, the more who might cite it.

The scientist has no use for copyright. Only the journal company that wants the right to impede the progress of science until someone hands them money they did not earn would complain about the government serving the common good in this instance.

There certainly is merit to papers resulting from government-funded research being available to the public, and you are right that there are many publishing models out there. No one is saying that any one model should be superior to another. But in this case, one model was singled out.

Journals are of course available to the public for free in libraries or generally at small cost per paper at journal web sites, but I acknowledge this is not as widely available as the general public.

Still, it’s apparently good enough for NSF. If you read the National Science Foundation Authorization Act, you’ll see NSF must “provide the public a readily accessible summary of the outcomes of NSF-sponsored projects,” along with “citations to journal publications” in which funded researchers have published articles regarding such research. In other words, NSF — the largest government sponsor of scientific research — can serve the public good by summarizing papers and guiding the curious to the original source of those papers.

NIH isn’t taking for posting every paper written by a funded scientist. They aren’t even taking for posting every paper that has gone through a journal peer review process. They are only taking for posting papers that have survived a peer review process AND have been accepted for publication. That means NIH is not taking the vast majority of papers resulting from their funding. The journals are serving as the filters for NIH, assuring the agency only gets the best science. The thanks the journals get for that service is being able to profit from the works for one year, a very short copyright term indeed.

BTW, copyright has nothing to do with this issue. Whether your work gets published by the NIH or by a journal, the results are the same, your name is on the paper, you are recognized as the author and copyrighted owner of the information, and you did not get a DIME from this publication. Whether your work gets published in an open, or closed access journal, no one’s going to pay you for using the work unless you have a separate and independent patent/licensing scheme worked out, in which case, you patent before you publish. Once you publish, the work is in public domain, and will be used by others without compensation to you whether it is open or closed. Publishing preserves your copyright, however you chose to do it.

Open access to scientific information cannot possibly chill the expression of this information. The only people who benefit from closing access to publicly funded research are the journal companies, who act as gatekeepers collecting toll from everyone involved in the process, the author, the referees and the public while not paying ANYONE for this work. Why should government subsidize their existence?

There are several alternatives to the traditional publishing model, like PLOS that respect copyright, and fully follow the peer review system while providing open and free access to the world. As someone who grew up in a poor country and had to do research, the availability of journal articles due to cost considerations was always limited and this absolutely chilled our capacity to do research. I, for one, will never wish that problem on anyone.