Senator questions progress on federal spending Web site
Senator questions progress on federal spending Web site, By Gautham Nagesh, NextGov, 09/11/08. Law requires the Office of Management and Budget to maintain a site (USAspending.gov) listing organizations that receive more than $25,000 in federal funds.
The law requires agencies to submit every 30 days a report listing the groups issued grants and the amount of the grant. USASpending.gov's data quality page shows, however, that some agencies, including the Homeland Security, Labor, Transportation and Veterans Affairs departments have not updated grant information since last year.Continue reading
Hearing on bill that would block NIH Public Access policy
The Bill: Fair Copyright in Research Works Act (HR 6845)
The Hearings: Hearing on: H.R. 6845, the "Fair Copyright in Research Works Act" Thursday 09/11/2008 - 1:00 PM House Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property. [streaming RealPlayer video]
News Reports:- New Bill Would Forbid Copyright Transfer as a Condition for Federal Funding Library Journal Academic Newswire, September 11, 2008. "If passed, measures like the recently enacted NIH public access policy, which requires investigators who accept taxpayer funds to deposit their final papers in the PubMed Central repository and give the agency a non-exclusive right to offer free access within a year, would be prohibited."
- At Hearing, Witness Says NIH Policy Will “Destroy” Commercial Scientific Publishing Library Journal Academic Newswire, September 11, 2008. "Not only was the legislation motivating the hearing barely discussed, the testimony and the questions asked by committee members looked far more to the economic future of science publishing than to public access to taxpayer funded research." Former Register of Copyrights Ralph Oman bluntly told lawmakers that in his opinion, the NIH mandate would “destroy the market” for commercial scientific journals, and cause a “dilution” of copyright.
- Congressional Hearing Over Public Access Filled With High Drama By Jennifer Howard , The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 12, 2008 [subscription required, but freely available here for a short time.] A life-and-death battle is going on over public access to federally financed research—life for taxpayers and many scientists, and death for publishers. Or so each side claims. That battle, whose outcome will affect many university researchers, kicked into high gear on Capitol Hill yesterday, as the combatants debated the merits of a bill that would curtail the National Institutes of Health's public-access policy.
New WMD Report Card Released
Yesterday, the Partnership for a Secure America released a new WMD Report Card. The report gives our defenses against a WMD terrorist attack as a grade "C," a slight upgrade from the 9/11 Public Discourse Project's 2005 grade of "D." Former 9/11 Commissioners Rep. Lee H. Hamilton (D-IN) and Sen. Slade Gorton (R-WA) were present at the press conference. In related news...
- President Bush spoke this morning at the dedication of the Pentagon Memorial.
- The Flight 93 Memorial is underway; NPR has a story about visiting the site.
- And the memorial at the World Trade Center site is still under construction; Mayor Bloomberg demanded yesterday that it be completed by 2011. Continue reading
More Problems with the “Foreign Relations of US” Series
FRUS Volume on Eastern Europe, 1973-1976, Elicits Dismay, by Steven Aftergood, Secrecy News, Sept. 10, 2008.
While every FRUS publication is of interest, the latest E-volume reinforced concerns about diminishing quality control in the venerable series. “I was taken aback by how skimpy it is,” said Mark Kramer, director of the Harvard Project on Cold War Studies. In principle, the major advantage of a softcopy-only volume is that it permits publication of a greatly expanded collection of records, unlimited by the production constraints of a hardcopy volume. But that advantage has gone unrealized in the new FRUS volume.Continue reading
BEA Digital Library Expands
U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis Digital Library
The BEA digital library of seminal documents related to the history of the U.S. national economic accounts. The library includes key Survey of Current Business articles from the 1930s through the 1990s, early reports by the Department of Commerce on the measurement of national income and product, volumes from the Conference on Research in Income and Wealth, Annual Review articles through 1974, and selected other documents.... The Digital Library has recently undergone a major expansion. It was first launched in June 2006, and now includes 1,141 articles from the Survey of Current Business, spanning from 1934 to 1992. The latest update, brought online May 14, 2008, introduces 111 new articles from the 1980s, adding some of the most recent content to the Digital Library yet available. ...The Digital Library now contains a total of 1,158 documents, including those that were not originally published in the Survey of Current Business.See also: more about the Digital Library Expansion. Continue reading