Forum Post: Steal This Research Paper! (You Already Paid for It.)

The year after PLOS ONE went online, open-access advocates scored another victory: Congress passed a bill forcing life-science publishers to send NIH-funded papers to PubMed Central within 12 months of publication. The papers could only be read online and not downloaded, but it was a start.

Still, the industry has engineered at least two attempts to gut the NIH policy, including the Research Works Act, introduced in 2011 by Reps. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and Darrell Issa (R-Calif.). Elsevier, the bill's main supporter, backed off after mathematicians boycotted the company and Eisen publicized a bunch of interestingly timed donations from company execs to Maloney. "The Elsevier people were referring to the bill as their bill—they're just so dumb!" he says.

Read the rest here