[Senate Report 114-224]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
Calendar No. 384
114th Congress } { Report
2d Session } SENATE { 114-224
_______________________________________________________________________
FAIR ACCESS TO SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH ACT OF 2015
__________
R E P O R T
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND
GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
TO ACCOMPANY
S. 779
TO PROVIDE FOR FEDERAL AGENCIES TO DEVELOP PUBLIC
ACCESS POLICIES RELATING TO RESEARCH CONDUCTED BY
EMPLOYEES OF THAT AGENCY OR FROM FUNDS ADMINISTERED BY THAT AGENCY
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
March 8, 2016.--Ordered to be printed
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin, Chairman
JOHN McCAIN, Arizona THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware
ROB PORTMAN, Ohio CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri
RAND PAUL, Kentucky JON TESTER, Montana
JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin
MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming HEIDI HEITKAMP, North Dakota
KELLY AYOTTE, New Hampshire CORY A. BOOKER, New Jersey
JONI ERNST, Iowa GARY C. PETERS, Michigan
BEN SASSE, Nebraska
Keith B. Ashdown, Staff Director
Christopher R. Hixon, Chief Counsel
Patrick J. Bailey, Chief Counsel for Governmental Affairs
Gabrielle D'Adamo Singer, Deputy Chief Counsel for Governmental Affairs
Drew C. Baney, Professional Staff Member
Gabrielle A. Batkin, Minority Staff Director
John P. Kilvington, Minority Deputy Staff Director
Mary Beth Schultz, Minority Chief Counsel
John A. Kane, Minority Senior Governmental Affairs Advisor
Laura W. Kilbride, Chief Clerk
Calendar No. 384
114th Congress} { Report
SENATE
2d Session } { 114-224
======================================================================
FAIR ACCESS TO SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH ACT OF 2015
_______
March 8, 2016.--Ordered to be printed
_______
Mr. Johnson, from the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental
Affairs, submitted the following
R E P O R T
[To accompany S. 779]
The Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental
Affairs, to which was referred the bill (S. 779) to provide for
Federal agencies to develop public access policies relating to
research conducted by employees of that agency or from funds
administered by that agency, having considered the same,
reports favorably thereon with an amendment and recommends that
the bill, as amended, do pass.
CONTENTS
Page
I. Purpose and Summary..............................................1
II. Background and Need for the Legislation..........................2
III. Legislative History..............................................3
IV. Section-by-Section Analysis......................................3
V. Evaluation of Regulatory Impact..................................4
VI. Congressional Budget Office Cost Estimate........................5
VII. Changes in Existing Law Made by the Bill, as Reported............6
I. PURPOSE AND SUMMARY
S. 779, the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research
Act of 2015, would require Federal agencies with annual
research expenditures of over $100 million to develop policies
that provide for free public access to the manuscripts
resulting from Federally-funded research or the peer-reviewed
published journal articles if the publisher consents to free
publication, within one year after publication. The bill is
prospective and only applies to research projects for which
Federal funding is awarded after the date of enactment.
II. BACKGROUND AND THE NEED FOR LEGISLATION
Each year the Federal Government funds billions of dollars
in basic and applied research.\1\ As part of the research
process, researchers generally summarize their results in
articles that are peer-reviewed by relevant scientific experts.
The end product of this process is typically published in an
academic journal. Usually, to gain access to these articles
consumers must pay a one-time fee or have a subscription to the
academic journal publishing the article.\2\
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\1\NIH Budget--About NIH--National Institutes of Health (Jan. 20,
2016), http://www.nih.gov/about-nih/what-we-do/budget.
\2\Ian Sample, Harvard University says it can't afford journal
publishers' prices, The Guardian (Apr. 24, 2012, 12:45 PM), https://
www.theguardian.com/science/2012/apr/24/harvard-university-journal-
publishers-prices.
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Because American taxpayers fund this research, it is
important that they have free access to the results of the
research. Over the past decade, there has been an accelerating
recognition of the opportunity to increase the social and
economic return on research by expanding the free accessibility
of scientific articles to the general public.\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\The Committee for Economic Development, The Future of Taxpayer-
Funded Research: Who Will Control Access to the Results, 9 (2012),
available at https://www.ced.org/pdf/The-Future-of-Taxpayer-Funded-
Research.pdf.
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In 2008, Congress directed the National Institutes of
Health (NIH) to require the deposit of manuscripts that
summarize the findings of research funded by NIH into PubMed
Central (PMC),\4\ a free, Internet-accessible archive of full
text articles from peer-reviewed biomedical journals.\5\ The
NIH is the world's largest funder of biomedical research,
funding approximately $30 billion per year in basic and applied
research.\6\ Approximately 100,000 articles are published each
year reporting on this research.\7\ The 2008 requirement is a
term and condition of extramural grants and contracts
awarded.\8\ Since this policy was implemented, an average of
6,500 NIH-funded articles per month have been added to the
database through a combination of author and publisher
submissions.\9\ The manuscripts are made freely available to
the public after an embargo period, which cannot exceed 12
months.\10\ This database, which now contains more than 3.6
million research articles and is used by more than 1 million
people per day,\11\ provides the NIH--and the public--with a
comprehensive collection of peer-reviewed articles summarizing
NIH-funded research.
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\4\Pub. L. No. 110-161, Division G, Title II, Section 218
(Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008).
\5\PMC Overview, Free Access: A Core Principle of PMC (Sept. 18,
2015), http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/about/intro/.
\6\NIH Budget--About NIH--National Institutes of Health (Jan. 20,
2016), http://www.nih.gov/about-nih/what-we-do/budget.
\7\National Institutes of Health, The NIH Public Access Policy
(Apr. 2012), http://publicaccess.nih.gov/
public_access_policy_implications_2012.pdf.
\8\National Institutes of Health, Plan for Increasing Access to
Scientific Publications and Digital Scientific Data from NIH Funded
Scientific Research (Feb. 2015), available at http://grants.nih.gov/
grants/NIH-Public-Access-Plan.pdf.
\9\NIHMS Statistics: Monthly Aggregate Submission Statistic (Jan.
20, 2016), http://nihms.nih.gov/stats/.
\10\Id.
\11\U.S. National Library of Medicine, PubMed Central (Jan. 20,
2016), http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/.
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With input from the National Science and Technology
Council, on February 22, 2013, the Office of Science and
Technology in the Executive Office of the President instructed
each Federal agency with over $100 million in annual research
and development expenditures to develop a plan supporting
increased public access to the results of Federally-funded
research.\12\ The directive set specific objectives for each
agency to follow while it developed its plan.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\12\Memorandum For The Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies,
from John P. Holdren, Director of White House Office of Science and
Technology (Feb. 22, 2013), available at https://www.whitehouse.gov/
sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/ostp_public_
access_memo_2013.pdf.
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The Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act of
2015 builds upon the 2013 directive and the 2008 requirement
for NIH by requiring all agencies with annual research
expenditures of over $100 million to develop policies that
provide for free public access to the manuscripts of research
generated from taxpayer-funded grants. If the publisher of the
research consents, the peer-reviewed articles are posted as
well.
Recognizing the different business models used by
publishers that manage the peer review process and the editing
and distribution of research articles, the legislation provides
for a maximum one-year embargo after publication before
articles resulting from Federally-funded research must be made
freely available online. It provides a process by which
stakeholders can petition to adjust the embargo period, and it
exempts certain types of research output from public release.
The bill also requires the Government Accountability Office
(GAO) to report to Congress on the new process for public
access to taxpayer-funded research.
III. LEGISLATIVE HISTORY
S. 779, the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research
Act of 2015, was introduced on March 18, 2015, by Senators John
Cornyn and Ron Wyden, and was referred to the Committee on
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Senators Ed Markey
and Brian Schatz were added as co-sponsors to this bill on July
22, 2015.
The Committee considered the bill at a July 29, 2015,
business meeting and ordered the bill reported favorably by
voice vote, as amended by a substitute amendment offered by
Senators Johnson and Carper. Members present for the vote were
Senators Johnson, Portman, Lankford, Ernst, Sasse, Carper,
Baldwin, Heitkamp, and Peters.
IV. SECTION-BY-SECTION ANALYSIS OF THE BILL, AS REPORTED
Section 1. Short title
This section provides the bill's short title, the ``Fair
Access to Science and Technology Research Act of 2015.''
Section 2. Findings
This section states five Congressional findings related to
the value of Federally-funded research to the general public
and the scientific community.
Section 3. Definition of Federal agency
This section defines the term ``Federal Agency''.
Section 4. Federal research public access policy
Section 4 requires Federal agencies with over $100,000,000
in extramural research expenditures to develop a Federal
research public access policy. Each policy must include the
following requirements: (1) submit an electronic version of the
final manuscript or original research papers to a digital
repository; (2) incorporate changes from the peer review
publication process; (3) replace the final manuscript with the
final published version if certain conditions are met; (4)
provide free online public access to the final peer-reviewed
manuscript or published version within an appropriate time
period; (5) allow members of the public and other stakeholders
to request to adjust the time period before a final peer
reviewed manuscript is made publicly available; (6) provide
research papers in a format that enable reuse of the research
and computational analysis; (7) improve the ability of the
public to locate and access research papers made accessible
under this policy; and (8) provide long-term preservation and
free public access to published research findings.
This section also specifies to whom agency public access
policies apply and provides for exclusions to certain types of
scientific information this policy shall not apply to,
including research progress reports and presentations at
professional meetings or conferences; laboratory notes,
preliminary data analyses, notes of the author, phone logs, or
other information used to produce final manuscripts; and
classified research, research resulting in works that generate
revenue or royalties for authors (e.g., books) or patentable
discoveries, and authors who do not submit their work to a
journal or works that are rejected by journals.
The bill expressly states that it shall not be construed to
affect any rights under Federal copyright, patent, or trademark
laws under the provisions of titles 17 and 35, United States
Code. The language in section 4(e) also ensures agencies
implement public access policies in a manner consistent with
copyright law.
Finally, section 4 provides for a GAO report to be
published no later than three years after the date of the
enactment and every five years thereafter. The report shall
include an (1) analysis of the period between the date on which
each paper becomes publicly available in a journal and the date
on which the paper is in the online repository of the
applicable Federal agency; and (2) examines the effectiveness
of the Federal research public access policy in providing the
public with free online access to papers on Federally funded
research. In doing so, the report shall provide an analysis on
whether the current legislation is effective at enabling
productive reuse of the research and computational analysis by
state-of-the-art technologies; and examine whether such
research papers should include a royalty-free copyright license
that permits the reuse of those research papers, on the
condition that attribution is given to the author or authors of
the research.
V. EVALUATION OF REGULATORY IMPACT
Pursuant to the requirements of paragraph 11(b) of rule
XXVI of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the Committee has
considered the regulatory impact of this bill and determined
that the bill will have no regulatory impact within the meaning
of the rules. The Committee agrees with the Congressional
Budget Office's statement that the bill contains no
intergovernmental or private-sector mandates as defined in the
Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA) and would impose no costs
on state, local, or tribal governments.
VI. CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE COST ESTIMATE
August 25, 2015.
Hon. Ron Johnson, Chairman,
Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs,
U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
Dear Mr. Chairman: The Congressional Budget Office has
prepared the enclosed cost estimate for S. 779, the Fair Access
to Science and Technology Research Act of 2015.
If you wish further details on this estimate, we will be
pleased to provide them. The CBO staff contact is Matthew
Pickford.
Sincerely,
Keith Hall.
Enclosure.
S. 779--Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act of 2015
S. 779 would require federal agencies that spend $100
million or more annually on extramural research activities to
make the results of such research freely available on the
Internet. The bill also would direct the Government
Accountability Office (GAO) to issue reports on the
effectiveness of this bill in making government research
available to the public.
CBO estimates that implementing S. 779 would not have a
significant federal cost. The bill could affect direct spending
by agencies not funded through annual appropriations;
therefore, pay-as-you-go procedures apply. CBO estimates,
however, that any net increase in spending by those agencies
would not be significant. Enacting S. 779 would not affect
revenues.
Most of the provisions of the bill would codify and expand
current policies and practices of federal agencies. A
memorandum from the Office of Science and Technology Policy
dated February 22, 2013, included a requirement that agencies
develop and implement plans to make research funded by the
federal government more widely available to the public.
Consequently, CBO estimates that implementing this bill would
not significantly increase the workload or administrative costs
of federal agencies.
S. 779 contains no intergovernmental or private-sector
mandates as defined in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act. Any
costs incurred by public entities, such as public universities
and research institutions participating in federal research
programs would be incurred as conditions of receiving federal
assistance.
The CBO staff contact for this estimate is Matthew
Pickford. This estimate was approved by H. Samuel Papenfuss,
Deputy Assistant Director for Budget Analysis.
VII. CHANGES IN EXISTING LAW MADE BY THE BILL, AS REPORTED
Because this legislation would not repeal or amend any
provision of current law, it would make no changes in existing
law within the meaning of clauses (a) and (b) of paragraph 12
of rule XXVI of the Standing Rules of the Senate.
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