Open Access supporters have two reasons to feel cheerful after the US Senate voted in favour of open access and the American Chemical Society was accused by an employee of being a profit-driven not-for-profit publisher that shuns open access in favour of high bonuses for executives.

The Senate has approved the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations Bill, which requires scientific research funded by the National Institutes of Health to be available on open access (OA) sites such as PubMed Central within 12 months of first publication. President Bush has pledged to veto the bill.

The Senate vote indicates that the Partnership for Research Integrity in Science and Medicine (PRISM), a lobby group founded by the Association of American Publishers (AAP), has failed in its objective.

PRISM appointed famed PR man Eric Dezenhall to design an attack campaign against the OA publishing model. The aim was to influence the Senate with a campaign that described OA as “junk science” that was destroying the foundations of peer review.
Meanwhile, prominent US scientific publisher the American Chemical Society (ACS) bore the brunt of a complaint from one of its employees this week, when an anonymous email was circulated to publications, including the Scientist, accusing the non-for-profit publisher of following a profit-led agenda.

The email was sent to college librarians, ACS administrators and an online forum for science writers. It questioned the salaries and bonuses paid to the CEO as well as senior editors and the president, claiming that the bonus structure was based on the profits of the publishing division. The email claimed the bonus structure dictated ACS policy towards open access.

Judith Benham, chair of the ACS board of directors told the Scientist: “The anonymous author makes erroneous and misleading claims about the compensation of these employees.”