Government budgets for scientific research and knowledge repositories have come under increasing pressure in recent years, which raises an important question: Why would a government engaged in cutting budgets for such things seek to use taxpayer money to duplicate a function that is already performed and paid for by the private sector?

That is what some are proposing the government do. Efforts to impose a mandatory requirement that articles reporting on government-funded research be provided to the federal government, would require the government to create and expand a repository for these articles. This would involve spending additional tax money to archive digital articles that are already being archived by private sector publishers.

In times when government has to scale back its commitment to scholarly research it makes no sense for that same government to siphon dwindling resources away from research funding to accomplish a task already well done and paid for by private sector publishers. Click here to learn more about publisher efforts to preserve the scholarly record through on-going archival efforts.