Given the significant impact that online technology has had on improving research, proponents contend that expanding the use of that technology to increase global access would no doubt have a positive effect on scholarship; however, the legislation has sparked a fierce debate. At the heart of that debate lies questions of how the policy will impact peer-review, challenge current publishing policies, and impact the budgets of the federal agencies.

Continue reading "Inside FRPAA: A Good Idea, So Why the Debate?" »

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At its core, FRPAA aims to expand access to research in order to improve information exchange between researchers, help prompt new advancements, broaden impact of discoveries, avoid duplications, and support a greater return on taxpayer investment. The bill impacts federal agencies with an annual research budget of more than $100 million. This includes the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services (which houses the NIH), Homeland Security, Transportation, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Aeronautics and pace Administration, and the National Science Foundation.

Continue reading "Inside FRPAA: Key Features of the Bill" »

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Advances in technology, combined with a desire for researchers to broaden the impact and scope of their work, and the public outcry for access to research funded from their own pockets have spurred advances in open access to federally funded research. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), whose $28 billion budget accounts for one-third of all federal dollars spent on research and which funds an estimated 65,000 peer-reviewed journal articles each year, adopted an open access policy in May of 2005. The NIH policy requests and strongly encourages all investigators to make NIH-funded research available to other scientists and the public through the NIH National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central (PMC) database immediately
after the final date of peer-reviewed journal publication. The NIH has developed a password protected, Web-based NIH manuscript submission system that requires a simple uploading of a PDF version of final manuscripts;
however, only 3 percent of researchers have participated in this program.

Continue reading "Inside FRPAA: The Voluntary Experiment" »

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The use of Prozac to treat depression in teenagers is a prime example of the kind of information arising from government funded research that the public needs and wants to know. In 2002, 11 million antidepressant prescriptions were written for U.S. children. However, no large scale study had been conducted on the impact of using those drugs in the younger population. Fortunately, a team of researchers at Duke University Medical Center conducted a study of adolescents taking antidepressants and found overwhelmingly that Prozac combined with talk therapy was the most effective means to substantially improve teen depression. However, the federally funded research study also revealed an increased likelihood for teens on Prozac to engage in harmful behaviors, including suicide attempts.

Continue reading "Inside FRPAA: What Every One Should Know" »

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Coupled with the strain on researchers is a growing movement to grant taxpayers access to research that is funded with taxpayer dollars. Led largely by the Alliance for Taxpayer Access , an organization in which CSU is a founding member, the movement insists on developing open, online access to federally funded research. Its main advocates include universities, libraries, consumer groups, and perhaps most notably a long list of patient advocate groups including the Genetic Alliance , a coalition of 600 disease-specific organizations that advocates for better healthcare treatments.

Continue reading "Inside FRPAA: Public Access Denied" »

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After his experiences on the battlefields of World War I, Alexander Fleming made a shocking discovery--bacteria could be an even deadlier force than enemy artillery. In the startling conditions of trench warfare, infection caused 15 percent of war-related fatalities, or roughly 5.5 million out of 37 million total deaths. Fleming returned to his London laboratory driven to find some way to prevent these deaths. His pursuit eventually led to the discovery that mold, specifically penicillin, could kill bacteria. Today, penicillin has become one of our most successful defenses against infectious disease; however, when Fleming published his findings in the British Journal of Experimental Pathology in 1928, his work raised little interest and was nearly lost to scientific obscurity.

Continue reading "Inside FRPAA: If Only Someone Else Had Heard" »

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Comment on this issue
Who should have access to federally funded research? Researchers? Professors? Students? Taxpayers? Should research findings be freely available on the Internet? What would be the impact if colleagues in all fields could exchange information with the click of a mouse and without the barriers of membership, subscriptions,
or dues?

These questions have recently been brought to the forefront by the introduction of the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA), a bill that would have eleven federal agencies, funding research across a broad spectrum of disciplines, require grant recipients to publish their work, online and free, within six months of publication elsewhere. Introduced in May by Senators John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Joseph Lieberman (D-Connecticut), the legislation aims to answer the growing concern that scholars, researchers, professionals, and the taxpaying public have limited access to significant research discoveries funded by federal agencies.

Last year alone, Colorado State University received more than $159 million in research funding from federal sources, leading to important advances in veterinary medicine, infectious disease, the treatment of debilitating illnesses, and more. Now, as the 2006 legislative session draws to a close, legislators on both sides of the aisle may push this bill to a floor vote. Advocates of the legislation see this bill as an opportunity to facilitate open exchange among researchers and rapidly increase the impact of research findings. Opponents have attacked the bill, claiming it is bad for research. This issue of Library Connection explores the fundamentals of the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) and asks: Who should have access to publicly funded research? And what would be the impact of this bill's passage on the CSU campus and beyond?

Posted by Judea Franck at 05:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)