Tue, 22 Jul 2003 14:22:22 GMT

The AAU has made public its reservations about the …. The AAU has made public its reservations about the Sabo bill. Excerpt: “AAU strongly supports what we understand to be the objective of this legislation: to enhance public access to the results of federally funded scientific research. However, we believe that the denial of copyright protection for publications resulting from federally funded research, the primary tool contained in the bill, not only is unnecessary for the achievement of this objective but also may prove quite harmful to the nation's research enterprise….” [Open Access News]

it is quite harmful for profits based on federally funded research which is more and more what underwrites the cost of major state universities, since the states would rather spend the money elsewhere, and not raise taxes to cover the expenses. However, just because bill will slow the corporatization and profit structure of higher education in relation to federally funded research, does not mean that it isn't a good thing for the U.S. in general. It would certainly require new strategies, but maybe one of those is to start arguing that education and higher education with research is important to the national and state economy and generates significantly more economic output than is usually recognized.