Should taxpayers pay to read the results of public funded research or do they have the right to those. This issue is the center of hotly contested debate in the House of Representatives as a part of the Research Works Act. The Research Works Act would forbid the National Institute of Health to require, as it now does, that its grantees provide copies of the papers they publish in peer-reviewed journals to the library. If the bill passes, to read the results of federally funded research, most Americans would have to buy access to individual articles at a cost of $15 or $30 apiece, making citizens pay for research already funded by them.

Publishers of journals such as Cell, Science, and The New England Journal of Medicine, who are backing the bill, argue that they add value to the finished product and that requiring them to provide free access to journal articles within a year of publication denies them their fair compensation and makes it difficult for them to generate profits comparable to the profits in the industry. Furthermore, they claim that while the research may be publically funded, the journals are not, claiming that they add significant value in the peer review process that makes the published articles worthwhile.

But in fact, these journals receive billions of dollars in subscription payments, a good portion of their revenue today that is derived largely from public funds. Moreover, even the peer review process, which the journals claim is their primary value add, is funded by public funds. The researchers who volunteer their time to review their peers’ work come primarily from universities and research organizations that are funded by taxpayers’ dollars.

Rather than rolling back public access, Congress should move to enshrine a simple principle in United States law: if taxpayers paid for it, they own it. This is already the case for scientific papers published by researchers at the N.I.H. campus in Bethesda, Md., whose work has been explicitly excluded from copyright protection since 1976 because it was funded by the public. It would be easy to extend this coverage to all works funded by the federal government.

1. The primary purpose of the passage is to

A. Demonstrate how the publishing industry is misusing the time of Congress for their own financial benefit.
B. Illustrate a moral dilemma facing the House of Representatives.
C. Evaluate the pros and cons of passing the Research Works Act.
D. Discuss and disprove the claims put forth by the backers of Research Works Act.
E. Advocate all publically funded research to be made open source.


2. Which of the following if true would undermine the claims of publishers of Cell, Science, and The New England Journal of Medicine?

A. Publishers such as Cell and Science that are backing the Research Works Act already have higher revenues than their European counterparts.
B. Publishers such as Cell and Science that are backing the Research Works Act are much more profitable than publishers who publish independent research works and do not provide free access to public.
C. The government agencies are able to negotiate serious discounts because they argue that they are paying only for priority access for research that would be made public anyway.
D. While the overall revenue of the publishing industry in general has gone down due to the rise of internet, the overall revenue of the publishers backing the Research Works Act has been remained largely unchanged.
E. There is little risk to the overall profitability of the Cell, Science, etc. even if the Research Works Act is not passed.


3. The third paragraph performs which of the following functions

A. It summarizes the discussion thus far and suggests additional reasons why the publishers may have been unfairly compensated.
B. It refutes the claims made by the publishers of Science, Cell, and The New England Journal of Medicine.
C. It discusses a scenario in which the arguments of publishers of Science, Cell, and The New England Journal of Medicine may not hold ground.
D. It puts forward new evidence to distract the focus of the House of Representatives.
E. It cites a specific case to illustrate the inconsistency in the claims made by the publishers of Science, Cell, and The New England Journal of Medicine in the previous paragraph.