American Anthropological Association opposition to Open Access: a letter from the AnthroSource Steering Committee on FRPAA

The Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006 (FRPAA), if passed, would mandate that research by Federal government agencies (publicly funded research) automatically go into publicly accessible open access repositories. The library community and most of the academic community is in favor of this bill as a way of protecting the information commons.

Scholarly publishers are, understandably, opposed, as they stand to lose many many opportunities as exclusive publishers of these publicly funded studies.

The American Anthropological Association also opposes the bill, perhaps indicating the extent to which publishing interests are represented in their leadership.

AnthroSource is the full text database of journals published by the American Anthropological Association. The AnthroSource Steering Committee has come out in opposition to AAA’s official position and in support of FRPAA.

There is some worthwhile discussion of these developments on blogs: Eric Kansa from SAA’s Digital Data Interest Group is where I would point you.