8,200+ Strong, Researchers Band Together To Force Science Journals To Open Access

Academic research is behind bars and an online boycott by 8, 209 researchers (and counting) is seeking to set it free…well,  more free than it has been. The boycott targets Elsevier,  the publisher of popular journals like Cell and The Lancet,   for its aggressive business practices,  but opposition was electrified by Elsevier’s backing of a Congressional bill titled the Research Works Act (RWA). Though lesser known than the other high-profile,  privacy-related bills SOPA and PIPA,  the act was slated to reverse the Open Access Policy enacted by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2008 that granted the public free access to any article derived from NIH-funded research. Now,  only a month after SOPA and PIPA were defeated thanks to the wave of online protests,  the boycotting researchers can chalk up their first win: Elsevier has withdrawn its support of the RWA,  although the company downplayed the role of the boycott in its decision,  and the oversight committee killed it right away.