[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 121 (Thursday, July 26, 2007)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1632-E1633]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  DEPARTMENTS OF LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, AND EDUCATION, AND 
               RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                        HON. CAROLYN B. MALONEY

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, July 19, 2007

       The House in Committee of the Whole House on the State of 
     the Union had under consideration the bill (H.R. 3043) making 
     appropriations for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human 
     Services, and Education, and related agencies for the fiscal 
     year ending September 30, 2008, and for other purposes:

  Mrs. MALONEY of New York. Madam Chairman, I rise today in support of 
the FY08 Labor, Health, and Human Services, Education Appropriations 
Act. This legislation includes valuable funding for the health care 
needs of the heroes and heroines of 9/11. I commend Chairman Obey for 
his effort to include $50 million for their treatment.
  H.R. 3043 will make college more affordable by increasing the maximum 
Pell Grant by $390 while providing $2 billion more than last year for 
No Child Left Behind programs. It expands access to health care for the 
uninsured and provides and increases funding for the National 
Institutes of Health by $750 million over last year.
  However, I do oppose a policy provision contained in H.R. 3043 which 
concerns the National Institutes of Health public access policy. The 
act would change the current voluntary policy by mandating that final 
manuscripts reporting on NIH-funded research be submitted to the NIH 
National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central for worldwide 
distribution. This change would set a dangerous precedent for 
government action, by infringing on the rights of the copyright holders 
of these articles. I believe strongly that the policy is best left in 
its current voluntary form to provide flexibility and allow copyright 
holders to manage their investments in scientific research while 
maintaining the accuracy of this data.
  Publishers in my district invest hundreds of millions of dollars to 
ensure that the results of scientific research are peer reviewed, 
published and disseminated as widely as possible. Although public 
dollars are used to fund the research, the peer review and publishing 
process is completely funded by private sector non-profit and 
commercial publishers. A unilateral requirement that these articles be 
posted for free on PubMed Central, ignores the critical role that 
publishers play in the scientific process. This requirement also 
ignores a longstanding principle that the government should not be 
involved in the taking of copyrighted works--and in this case, without 
providing any compensation. That is exactly what a mandated policy 
would do.
  Moreover, once manuscripts are deposited in PubMed Central, these 
copyrighted works would be available for anyone to download the 
material, free of charge and without any geographic or time 
restrictions. Under the current policy publishers still retain control 
and voluntarily make their articles available for free public access 
while retaining their copyright.

[[Page E1633]]

Under a mandatory policy authors and publishers would be required, as a 
matter of practical effect, to give up any reasonable prospect of 
protecting their copyrights.
  Madam Chairman, I believe that the NIH can achieve the laudable goals 
it has set by implementing the public access policy without infringing 
on publishers' copyrights. However, this can only be done if the policy 
is left in its current form and not mandated. I urge my colleagues who 
will be conferencing on the Labor/HHS Appropriations bill to take these 
issues into consideration when they finalize the legislation so that 
the copyright protections that are so critical to the continued 
advancement of science and scientific knowledge will be fully 
preserved.

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