Since the bulk of academic research has been taxpayer-funded, it's become increasingly silly to allow private companies to take ownership of the results. Congress passed a law declaring NIH-funded studies must be put in a public repository and it withstood the onslaught of the Democratic House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers Jr. in 2008 but strong leadership by Elias Zerhouni at the NIH prevented them from overturning it.
Now more universities are taking it up on their own - Princeton University has banned researchers from giving the copyright of scholarly articles to journal publishers, except in certain cases where a waiver may be granted. Will the waivers be granted? Sure, Nature and Science are money-making machines because of their impact factors and researchers want to be in the big boys if they can, not be thrown to the wolves for advocacy. Open access has not really caught on yet but schools might be able to help with their own policies. Will it work? Maybe, maybe not. If researchers suddenly cannot publish in the best journals and taxpayer funding goes down as a result, that position will be reversed, but Princeton is to be applauded.
Publication, one of the four pillars of the Science 2.0 movement, is not the easiest (obviously, Communication has been) when huge corporations are at risk from changes in legacy models, but if the open access policy catches on, government will broaden the requirements to other funding agencies.
H/T Jonathan Eisen.
