The Fight For Open Access

I’ve earlier blogged here on open access issues; here’s a chance to make your voice heard.  As Slashdot notes,

Congress is expected to vote this week on a bill requiring investigators funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to publish research papers only in journals that are made freely available within one year of publication. Until now, repeated efforts to legislate such a mandate have failed under pressure from the well-heeled journal publishing industry and some nonprofit scientific societies whose educational activities are supported by the profits from journals that they publish.

Here’s a Chronicle of Higher Education story by JJ Hermes on a “nonprofit scientific society” whose policies on open access have come under fire:

 An anonymous e-mail message accusing the American Chemical Society of opposing open-access publishing in order to preserve the profitability of its journals — and, in turn, the bonuses that its top executives receive — has prompted a public defense from the chair of the society’s Board of Directors. . . . Madeleine Jacobs, executive director of the society, made $883,818 in 2005, according to the society.

Hmmm….I wonder why they might be worried about open access?