CONTENTS
CONGRESSIONAL ISSUES
- AAU, APLU Endorse Goals of Three Open Access Bills
- AAU and APLU Respond to CEA Letter on Patent Reform
OTHER
- Public Invited to Event on Impact of Declining Federal Investment in Basic Research
CONGRESSIONAL ISSUES
AAU, APLU ENDORSE GOALS OF THREE OPEN ACCESS BILLS
AAU and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) have sent letters of support to the sponsors of three bills reintroduced in the House and Senate that would make articles generated from publicly funded scientific research freely available online.
The bills are: the Public Access to Public Science (PAPS) Act (H.R. 1426), reintroduced by Reps. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), and the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research (FASTR) Act of 2015 (S. 779/H.R. 1477), reintroduced in the Senate by Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) and in the House by Reps. Mike Doyle (D-PA), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), and Kevin Yoder (R-KS).
The association letters thank the bills’ sponsors for their efforts to reinforce the thoughtful public access policy promulgated by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. They add that the FASTR and PAPS bills are sound legislation that would “expand public access to the results of federally funded research and create the infrastructure to support a growing public-private network of interoperable repositories of research articles and data across all disciplines. Such a network would greatly increase access to and use of new knowledge by scientists and scholars.”
AAU AND APLU RESPOND TO CEA LETTER ON PATENT REFORM
AAU and APLU have sent a response to the letter that the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) recently sent to 145 university presidents and chancellors asking them to reconsider their active opposition to the Innovation Act (H.R. 9), currently pending in the House of Representatives.
OTHER
PUBLIC INVITED TO EVENT ON IMPACT OF DECLINING FEDERAL INVESTMENT IN BASIC RESEARCH
Members of the public are invited to attend the release of a report prepared by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on why the declining federal investment in basic research threatens to create a U.S. innovation deficit. The report will be released at an event on Monday, April 27, 9-11:00 a.m., in the AAAS Auditorium at 1200 New York Avenue, NW.
The report, The Future Postponed: Why Declining Investment in Basic Research Threatens a U.S. Innovation Deficit, was written by the MIT Committee to Evaluate the Innovation Deficit.
AAU is a cosponsor of the event, which will feature AAAS CEO Rush Holt, MIT Committee Chair Marc Kastner, and other industry leaders and MIT faculty members.