Because of this, NIH demands that all of its papers also be submitted to Pubmed central, an open access forum.  Thanks to the internet, we can find all these papers for free.  No trudging through libraries.  No paying scads of money because you think the paper might be useful.  Everything's just a click away.  Sounds like a great idea, right?  Of course, the other journals still exist, and that's fine.  Other people don't have to submit to PubMed, and it's convenient for those who can afford the journals to have them all in one nice easy package.  But now there's an option to make your work available, for free, to anyone who wants it.  Full transparancy, in other words.

Transparancy, now where have I heard that one before?  Ah yes, the government.  We like our government to be transparant.  And some research institutions within the government, such as the NIH (they aren't the only ones, but they seem to have sparked this), seem to agree.  They argue that, since their research is wholly funded by we the taxpayers, then we the taxpayers should not have to pay yet again to see what they do.  Much like we expect to be able to get any other information from the government through the FOIA, we should be able to get scientific information from them as well.

Sounds like a great plan, doesn't it?  Conyers doesn't think so.  His act will basically eliminate this stipulation from the NIH.  Work fully funded by the government and done by government employees will be placed behind an extremely hefty price wall.  I'm guessing the justification is that this gives the scientists more control over their work, but that doesn't fly.

Scientific research is expensive.  Very expensive.  While the ideas and discoveries of that researcher are his and his alone, the fact remains that it took an awful lot of backing to get him there.  And those backers have a right to that knowledge.  Anyone who works on research knows this.  If you're in a private company, you can't just give your ideas to their competitors.  If you work in a university, they have a certain right to your patents.  And if you work in the government, you also owe some rights to the funders of your work, which is all Americans.  It's not unreasonable to ask that we get to see what you learned.

Besides, their work is still getting published.  So why should the scientist care that it's also available for free?  They don't.  Trust me, all they care about is publishing and other people citing their work.  And if their work is available to everyone, that means more people can cite it!  So really, they can't complain about this.  The only ones that might complain are the journals themselves.

Conyers claims that the cost of these journals is justified due to the peer review process, and so NIH's requirements are harming the quality of their researcher's papers.  That's bull.  I've reviewed plenty of papers in my short time in the research world so far, and I haen't been paid a dime for it.  We don't get paid to review papers; it's all part of the honor code.  Scientists don't expect to get all their papers peer reviewed without reviewing others' papers in return.  So does the money go to overhead for the peer review process?  Nope.  There is no "Peer Review" editor or anything.  It's just the normal editor.  There's no extra staff, virtually no extra paperwork (almost all of it is handled electronically these days), and only a modest amount of additional time on the part of the editor.

But wait, you say!  Isn't Conyers only reversing political meddling in science?  After all, this whole thing was the creation of a government act!  Well, maybe.  But there's no reason to reverse this, and good reasons not to.  My rebuttals:

 - Open access are more in the true spirit of science than subscription journals, as they are by definition more open.  Science is built on the backs of other scientists.  The more freely available this data is, the better scientists can interact and refine their own thinking.  By requiring this of their researchers, NIH is actually doing a favor to science overall, regardless of one's political persuasion.  One can hardly claim that choice was politically motivated.

 - Open access vs subsciption journals does not hurt the science in ANY WAY.  The same research is getting done, the same discoveries are being made.  NIH isn't controlling the science, but rather how that information gets disseminated.  And since they chose in a way that is more open as opposed to restrictive, that's hardly a crushing burden.

 - I don't know what Conyers' scientific background is, but I'm willing to bet he couldn't the difference between an isomer and an isotope.  So tell me, what business is it of his on how this works?  Does he truly care?  

If not, why does he try this?  Well, according to some people, there's a very good reason.  You guessed it, money.  Conveniently enough, all the co-sponsers of this bill got much higher donations from publishing companies than the average Congesscritter.  And even more conveniently enough, Conyers got even more than they did.  Sure, it's a pretty measly sum, $9000 or so, so some are claiming it's not enough to influence him.  But please.  This is Congress.  If there's even the slightest chance of corruption, chances are corruption exists.

Given the state of Detroit these days, don't you think Conyers has more important things to do?  Shouldn't he be worried about matters that are important to his constituents as opposed to his donors?

(h/t - Discover magazine)