Legislation and Government Regulation

“Affordable College Textbook Act Reintroduced in U.S. Congress”

The Affordable College Textbook Act was introduced today in the U.S. Senate by Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL), Angus King (I-ME), Tina Smith (D-MN), and Ron Wyden (D-OR), with companion legislation sponsored by Representative Joe Neguse (D-CO) expected in the U.S. House. Although the bill’s prospects are tied to the broader Higher Education Act reauthorization process, its sponsors have worked to deliver immediate results for students by securing annual funding for the Open Textbook Pilot grant program. Distributed by the U.S. Department of Education, the Open Textbook Pilot has funded 28 projects since 2018, which are projected to save students an estimated $250 million—a substantial return on federal investment.

https://tinyurl.com/25vnn9r5

“News & Views Special Edition: How Much Scholarly Publishing Is Affected by Us Presidential Executive Orders?”

If federal agencies are being instructed to withhold or withdraw submissions, then, to quantify what this might mean to publishers, we have estimated the volume of output from a few key federal agencies? . . . .

The data span the previous 5 years.

The US accounted for around 15% of global output.

The CDC accounted for a tiny share: 0.1% of global output and 0.6% of US output.

The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), of which the CDC is a part, accounted for just under 6% of global output, but just over 40% of US output.

The NIH produces around 95% of DHHS output.

https://tinyurl.com/yr44kt7k

“Open But Hidden: Open Access Gaps in the National Science Foundation Public Access Repository”

Introduction: In 2022, the U.S. government released new guidelines for making publicly funded research open and available. For the National Science Foundation (NSF), these policies reinforce requirements in place since 2016 for supported research to be submitted to the Public Access Repository (PAR).

Methods: To evaluate the public access compliance of research articles submitted to the NSF-PAR, this study searched for NSF-PAR records published between 2017 and 2021 from two research intensive institutions. Records were reviewed to determine whether the PAR held a deposited copy, as required by the 2016 policies, or provided a link out to publisher-held version(s).

Results: A total of 841 unique records were identified, all with publicly accessible versions. Yet only 42% had a deposited PDF version available in the repository as required by the NSF 2016 Public Access Policy. The remaining 58% directed instead to publisher-held versions. In total, only 55% of record links labeled “Full Text Available” directed users to a publicly accessible version with a single click.

Discussion: Records within PAR do not clearly direct users to the publicly accessible full text. In almost half of records, the most prominently displayed link directed users to a paywall version, even when a publicly available version existed. Records accessible only through the CHORUS (Clearing House for the Open Research of the United States) initiative were further obscured by requiring specialized navigation of publisher-owned sites.

Conclusion: Despite having a repository mandate since 2016, NSF compliance rates remain low. Additional support and/or oversight is needed to address the additional requirements introduced under the 2022 memo.

https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.17767

NIH Plan to Increase Findability and Transparency of Research Results Through the Use of Metadata and Persistent Identifiers

In this Plan, NIH presents a combination of efforts that are already underway and planned efforts that will increase the findability of research outputs and promote transparency in the research process, ultimately bolstering the impact of NIH’s research while fostering trust in the research that NIH supports. This Plan also addresses expectations from the fourth section of the 2022 White House Office of Science and Technology (OSTP) Memorandum on Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research (the 2022 OSTP Memo) and is an update to section IV, “Mechanisms to Increase Findability and Transparency of Research” of the NIH Plan to Enhance Public Access to the Results of NIH-Supported Research. Specifically, NIH is outlining how researchers and institutions should use metadata to consistently identify themselves and their research outputs, as well as requirements for NIH-supported (i.e., both NIH-funded and NIH-managed) repositories to collect and make relevant metadata publicly available and searchable. These efforts are informed by NIH’s experience in managing and hosting repositories and are intended to increase the findability and usability of all NIH research.

https://tinyurl.com/3xbrpw2r

2024 NIH Public Access Policy

This document is scheduled to be published in the Federal Register on 12/18/2024 and available online at https://federalregister.gov/d/2024-29929, and on https://govinfo.gov. . . .

The Policy includes relevant language about NIH’s rights to make Author Accepted Manuscripts available in PubMed Central without embargo upon the Official Date of Publication. NIH reiterates that this does not mean that NIH has rights to the Final Published Article, as defined in the Policy, but only to the Author Accepted Manuscript, as defined in the Policy.

The Policy also requires that those depositing Author Accepted Manuscripts in PubMed Central agree to a revised Manuscript Submission Statement reiterating NIH’s right to post such Author Accepted Manuscripts without embargo upon the Official Date of Publication. The language for this statement, as included in the Guidance on Government Use License and Rights, has been modified from the Draft Public Access Policy to remove the phrase “create derivative works.” Because NIH had not intended the language to convey what comments suggested regarding the potential to compromise scientific integrity, NIH has removed the phrase. NIH will, however, continue using features, existing or to-be-developed, that ensure accessibility and usability. NIH also reserves the right to, in the future, reasonably interpret statutory and/or regulatory language to permit uses of content that are consistent with copyright law, that provide value to users, and that are considered to be in line with practices of the time.

Regarding comments that proposed NIH should provide the public with full reuse rights through explicit language about reuse of the work for any purpose with attribution, NIH notes that such language is akin to authors providing NIH with a particular license. As stated in the NIH Draft Public Access Policy, NIH does not believe that a particular license is needed to achieve the Policy’s goals.

Finally, NIH clarifies that the Policy does not prevent authors from depositing their Author Accepted Manuscripts into institutional repositories, as long as Author Accepted Manuscripts are also deposited in PubMed Central per the Policy.

https://tinyurl.com/5948sv6n

"Beyond the Minimum: New Rule Requires Web Content (I’m Looking at You, LibGuides) to Meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA Standards "

In April 2024, the Department of Justice finalized a rule updating regulations for Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which requires that all state and local governments make their services, programs, and activities accessible, including those that are offered online and in mobile apps. The final rule dictates that public entities’ web content meet the technical standards of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Version 2.1, level AA, an industry standard since its creation in 2018.

Libraries that receive federal funding will be required to follow this rule for any web content they create, including LibGuides. Springshare’s LibGuide platform is one of the most widely used among libraries for web content creation, from complete websites to pedagogical and research guides. While Springshare may develop plans to make sure its clients are in compliance with this new rule, there are more important questions that LibGuide creators need to consider to move beyond the bare minimum of following the rule. The authors explain what WCAG 2.1 AA compliance requires, how LibGuide authors can use accessibility principles to ensure compliance, and offer available tools to check existing guides, as well as discuss alternatives to LibGuides.

https://tinyurl.com/yc64vrjm

"ISPs Tell Supreme Court They Don’t Want to Disconnect Users Accused of Piracy"

The Altice/Frontier/Lumen/Verizon brief [https://tinyurl.com/58yzp4z4]said the 4th Circuit ruling “imperils the future of the Internet” by “expos[ing] Internet service providers to massive liability if they do not carry out mass Internet evictions.” Cutting off a subscriber’s service would hurt other residents in a home “who did not infringe and may have no connection to the infringer,” they wrote.

The automated processes used by copyright holders to find infringement on peer-to-peer networks are “famously flawed,” ISPs wrote. Despite that, the appeals court’s “view of contributory infringement would force Internet service providers to cut off any subscriber after receiving allegations that some unknown person used the subscriber’s connection for copyright infringement,” the brief said.

https://tinyurl.com/2b5yw3m2

"Lawmakers Raise New Licensing Concerns over White House Open Access Mandate"

While Republican appropriators in the House have previously tried to entirely block the White House’s open access policy, now appropriators in both chambers of Congress have advanced legislation that would block federal agencies from limiting authors’ ability to choose how to license their work. . . .

This language used in the House report and Senate report regarding researcher choice is identical, though the House goes further by advising federal agencies not to “exert broad ‘federal purpose’ authority over peer reviewed articles” or “otherwise force use of an open license.”

House Republicans also propose that the White House be prohibited from using any funding to implement the policy, as they attempted in last year’s legislation.

https://tinyurl.com/46y42ecr

"Court Blocks Net Neutrality, Says ISPs Are Likely to Win Case against FCC"

Net neutrality, the judges wrote, “is likely a major question requiring clear congressional authorization,” and the “Communications Act likely does not plainly authorize the Commission to resolve this signal question. Nowhere does Congress clearly grant the Commission the discretion to classify broadband providers as common carriers. To the contrary, Congress specifically empowered the Commission to define certain categories of communications services—and never did so with respect to broadband providers specifically or the Internet more generally.” . . .

Even if the FCC loses, each US state would be allowed to regulate net neutrality because the Trump-era FCC lost its attempt to preempt state laws.

https://tinyurl.com/msjabp2n

"European Artificial Intelligence Act Comes into Force"

The AI Act introduces a forward-looking definition of AI, based on a product safety and risk-based approach in the EU:

Minimal risk: Most AI systems, such as AI-enabled recommender systems and spam filters, fall into this category. These systems face no obligations under the AI Act due to their minimal risk to citizens’ rights and safety. Companies can voluntarily adopt additional codes of conduct.

Specific transparency risk: AI systems like chatbots must clearly disclose to users that they are interacting with a machine. Certain AI-generated content, including deep fakes, must be labelled as such, and users need to be informed when biometric categorisation or emotion recognition systems are being used. In addition, providers will have to design systems in a way that synthetic audio, video, text and images content is marked in a machine-readable format, and detectable as artificially generated or manipulated.

High risk: AI systems identified as high-risk will be required to comply with strict requirements, including risk-mitigation systems, high quality of data sets, logging of activity, detailed documentation, clear user information, human oversight, and a high level of robustness, accuracy, and cybersecurity. Regulatory sandboxes will facilitate responsible innovation and the development of compliant AI systems. Such high-risk AI systems include for example AI systems used for recruitment, or to assess whether somebody is entitled to get a loan, or to run autonomous robots.

Unacceptable risk: AI systems considered a clear threat to the fundamental rights of people will be banned. This includes AI systems or applications that manipulate human behaviour to circumvent users’ free will, such as toys using voice assistance encouraging dangerous behaviour of minors, systems that allow ‘social scoring’ by governments or companies, and certain applications of predictive policing. In addition, some uses of biometric systems will be prohibited, for example emotion recognition systems used at the workplace and some systems for categorising people or real time remote biometric identification for law enforcement purposes in publicly accessible spaces (with narrow exceptions).

https://tinyurl.com/32jy9pat

"Tell Congress: Don’t Let Anyone Own the Law"

A large portion of the regulations we all live by (such as fire safety codes, or the national electrical code) are initially written—by industry experts, government officials, and other volunteers—under the auspices of standards development organizations (SDOs). Federal, state, or municipal policymakers then review the codes and decide whether the standard is good broad rule. The Pro Codes Act effectively endorses the claim that SDOs can "retain" copyright in codes, even after they are made law, as long as they make the codes available through a "publicly accessible" website — which means read-only, and subject to licensing limits.

https://tinyurl.com/bdrdfnr3

Updated Report to the U.S. Congress on Financing Mechanisms for Open Access Publishing of Federally Funded Research

This current report elaborates on:

Implementation to advance federal public access policies. Updated agency public access policies will go into effect by December 31, 2025, in accordance with the 2022 Memorandum.

Trends in scholarly publishing since the release of the November 2023 Report, including further discussion of business models to enable public access to federally funded research, as well as domestic and global developments in advancing public access to research results.

An expansion of the analysis of estimated article processing charges paid to publish federally funded research from 2016 to 2022, with further discussion of limitations associated with calculating these charges.

Efforts to advance research integrity, including through implementation of federal public access policies and open science practices.

Continuing trends in peer review as they relate to research integrity, equity, and sustainability.

https://tinyurl.com/yryw9ejv

"Towards an All-Ireland Diamond Open Access Publishing Platform: The PublishOA.ie Project—2022–2024quot;

The Government of Ireland has set a target of achieving 100% open access to publicly funded scholarly publications by 2030. As a key element of achieving this objective, the PublishOA.ie project was established to evaluate the feasibility of establishing an all-island [Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland] digital publishing platform for Diamond Open Access journals and monographs designed to advance best practice and meet the needs of authors, readers, publishers, and research funding organisations in Irish scholarly publishing. It should be noted in this context that there is substantial "north–south " cooperation between public bodies in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom, some of whom operate on what is commonly termed an "all-island " basis. The project commenced in November 2022 and will run until November 2024, with the submission of a Final Report. This article originated as an interim project report presented in September 2023 at the PubMet2023 conference in Zadar, Croatia. The project is unique in its mandate to report on the feasibility of a shared platform that will encompass scholarly publishing across the two jurisdictions on the island of Ireland, which are now, post-Brexit, inside and outside the European Union (EU): the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom. The project is co-led by the Royal Irish Academy (RIA), Ireland’s leading body of experts in the Sciences and Humanities, and the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts & Humanities Research Institute of Trinity College Dublin. There are sixteen partners and affiliates from universities and organisations from the island of Ireland. The feasibility study will be based on a review of the publishing practices in the island of Ireland, with gap analysis on standards, technology, processes, copyright practices, and funding models for Diamond OA, benchmarking against other national platforms, and specifications of the requirements, leading to the delivery of a pilot national publishing platform. A set of demonstrator journals and monographs will be published using the platform, which will be actively trialled by the partner publishers and authors. PublishOA.ie aims to deliver an evidence-based understanding of Irish scholarly publishing and of the requirements of publishers to transition in whole or in part to Diamond OA. This paper provides an interim report on progress on the project as of September 2023, ten months after its commencement.

https://doi.org/10.3390/publications12030019

"Web and Mobile App Accessibility Regulations"

On April 24, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) published its final regulation on web and mobile application accessibility in the Federal Register. . . . The final regulation, promulgated under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), marks the first time that DOJ has issued formal regulations for accessibility in the digital realm. Title II of the ADA protects individuals with disabilities from being excluded from participating in or receiving the benefits of services or programs provided by state or local government entities. As such, the April 24 regulation applies only to public higher education institutions.

https://tinyurl.com/5ef3whn9

"Lawmakers Debate Ending Section 230 in Order to Save It"

E&C [House Energy and Commerce Committee] Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) and Ranking Member Frank Pallone (D-NJ) want to give Congress 18 months to come up with a new framework to replace Section 230 or risk losing it entirely. The idea is to force their colleagues to do something to change the law that’s been the subject of bipartisan ire for years. . . .

Republicans and Democrats often have very different ideas of how exactly the law should change. Republicans who support Section 230 reform often want platforms to have fewer protections for their content moderation decisions to combat what they see as censorship of conservative views, while Democrats who support reform tend to want platforms to moderate or remove more content, such as disinformation.

https://tinyurl.com/ykcf57ha

UC and Authors Alliance: "Outcomes, Questions, and Answers: ‘The Right to Deposit (r2d) Uniform Guidance to Ensure Author Compliance and Public Access’"

The United States Office of Management and Budget uniform guidance for grants and agreements contains the following language in 2 CFR §200.315(b):

To the extent permitted by law, the recipient or subrecipient may copyright any work that is subject to copyright and was developed, or for which ownership was acquired, The Right to Deposit (R2D)under a Federal award. The Federal agency reserves a royalty-free, nonexclusive, and irrevocable right to reproduce, publish, or otherwise use the work for Federal purposes and to authorize others to do so. This includes the right to require recipients and subrecipients to make such works available through agency-designated public access repositories.¹

This provision, the Federal purpose license, has existed in some form since at least 1976. Some federal agencies, including the Department of Energy (DOE), have already been relying on it in the implementation of their public access plans. The Federal purpose license applies upon creation of an article, overriding all subsequent terms and licenses. It provides a highly effective, non-disruptive, elegant and familiar solution for accomplishing the ends of the Nelson memo without having to rely on individual authors and institutions to protect this right or navigate differing institutional approaches. Leveraging the Federal purpose license could also provide consistency for articles and authors subject to policies from multiple granting agencies. . . .

If the Federal purpose license has already existed for a long time, and has new language clarifying that it can be used this way, does that solve the problem for authors?

It depends on the author’s funder. Agencies have rights in federally funded research publications, but they are not uniformly using them. Only some agencies are telling their grantees in agency guidance that the Federal purpose license covers sharing publications in agency-designated repositories. Other agencies aren’t relying on their own rights from the license, and instead advising grantees to work with their publisher and secure the rights to post their publications independently. The Federal purpose license does not help authors if they don’t know about it.

https://tinyurl.com/bdfks8pu

Paywall: "FCC Reinstates Net Neutrality, but It’s Not as Easy as It Once Was"

The Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 Thursday to put the internet back under “net neutrality” regulation, reprising Obama-era rules that prohibit internet service providers from discriminating against certain websites by throttling or blocking them. . . .

As the internet has proliferated, the question of precisely where it begins and ends has become murkier. Now, some mobile executives are arguing that an emerging 5G technology called "network slicing" should be considered to lie in the hazy realm beyond the internet’s borders, unconstrained by net neutrality.

The proposal has sparked controversy because these 5G "slices" are not just a small side show and may well be core to what the internet becomes in its next phase.

https://tinyurl.com/rheaejzk

"Even If You Hate Both AI and Section 230, You Should Be Concerned about the Hawley/Blumenthal Bill to Remove 230 Protections from AI"

Considering that AI is currently being built into basically everything, this "exemption" [from Section 230] will basically eat the entire law, because increasingly all content produced online will involve "the use or provision" of generative AI, even if the content itself has nothing to do with the service provider.

In short, this bill doesn’t just strip 230 protections from AI output, in effect it strips 230 from any company that offers AI in its products. Which is basically a set of internet companies rapidly approaching "all of them."

https://tinyurl.com/ykjx8v4t

"The Impact of Open Access Mandates on Scientific Research and Technological Development in the U.S."

Scientific articles subject to the mandate were utilized on average 42% more in patents
Articles subject to the mandate were not cited more frequently by other academic papers
Small firms were the primary beneficiaries of the increased knowledge diffusion
Scientific articles subject to the mandate were utilized on average 42% more in patents
Articles subject to the mandate were not cited more frequently by other academic papers
Small firms were the primary beneficiaries of the increased knowledge diffusion

https://tinyurl.com/bdekuf2j

Paywall: "AI Policies across the Globe: Implications and Recommendations for Libraries"

This article examines the proposed artificial intelligence policies of the USA, UK, European Union, Canada, and China, and their implications for libraries. . . . The article highlights key themes in these policies, including ethics, transparency, the balance between innovation and regulation, and data privacy. It also identifies areas for improvement, such as the need for specific guidelines on mitigating biases in artificial intelligence systems and navigating data privacy issues. The article further provides practical recommendations for libraries to engage with these policies and develop best practices for artificial intelligence use.

https://doi.org/10.1177/03400352231196172

"New at Dryad: Support for NIH-funded researchers"

Dryad provides a simple submission process that makes it easy for researchers to upload your datasets, apply metadata that makes them discoverable and reusable, and get a persistent identifier (DOI) you can use in grant reporting. Once submitted, datasets are made publicly accessible so they can be reused by others in order to advance scientific discovery and collaboration across disciplines. Dryad also provides an extensive library of existing datasets from various sources, including those funded by NIH grants, that are completely free to access and reuse.

https://tinyurl.com/4uu9tz2r

SPARC: "Oppose Section 552 That Will Block Taxpayer Access to Research"

The U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS) has released an appropriations bill containing language that would block implementation of the 2022 updated OSTP policy guidance (the Nelson Memo) that would ensure immediate, free access to taxpayer-funded research. If enacted, this will prevent American taxpayers from seeing the benefits of the more than $90 billion in scientific research that the U.S. government funds each year. . . .

Write to Congress

Look up contact details for your Representatives and Senators, then customize the text in this template letter.

Call Congress

Look up contact details for your Representatives and Senators, then call the office and tell them to remove Section 552 of the House CJS bill.

https://tinyurl.com/3mbbmwxw

| Research Data Publication and Citation Bibliography | Research Data Sharing and Reuse Bibliography | Research Data Curation and Management Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

"Diamonds in the Rough: Societies Shine under Pressure"

Overall, 18% of fully open journals appear to be sponsored [diamond], but their proportion and number have been decreasing. . . . Among society-run journals, sponsored titles account for more than double the market average, for non-society (commercial) journals they account for just under half. Societies’ greater proportion of sponsored titles and their not-for-profit status could therefore place them in a stronger position than their commercial competitors if we see a large scale move by funders to require publication in journals without publisher fees and — as some noises from European funders suggest — which are not for profit.

https://tinyurl.com/yc4k2j9m

"European Lawmakers Vote to Adopt EU AI Act"

European Union lawmakers have passed the EU AI Act that will govern use and deployment of artificial intelligence technology within the EU. . . . Changes introduced by MEPs to the original commission draft act include some top-level regulation of general-purpose AI tools such as ChatGPT. These foundation models will require mandatory labelling for AI-generated content and the forced disclosure of training data covered by copyright. . . . . Other changes include a fine-tuned list of prohibited practices, extended to include subliminal techniques, biometric categorisation, predictive policing, and internet-scraped facial recognition databases.

https://tinyurl.com/nhet5ckd

Congressional Research Service: Generative Artificial Intelligence: Overview, Issues, and Questions for Congress

The recent public release of many GenAI tools, and the race by companies to develop ever-more powerful models, have generated widespread discussion of their capabilities, potential concerns with their use, and debates about their governance and regulation. This CRS InFocus describes the development and uses of GenAI, concerns raised by the use of GenAI tools, and considerations for Congress. For additional considerations related to data privacy, see CRS Report R47569, Generative Artificial Intelligence and Data Privacy: A Primer, by Kristen E. Busch.

https://tinyurl.com/bdrpkzcj