Yes, yes it is.
Take as an example The Heritage Foundation’s “Radical OSTP Proposal Would Undermine American Research and Sacrifice American Intellectual Property,” a response to the Office of Science and Technology Policy’s 2020 request for information on Public Access to Peer-Reviewed Scholarly Publications, Data and Code Resulting From Federally Funded Research.
Central to Heritage’s opposition is that the OSTP proposal “would give away U.S. intellectual property.” A national public access policy, they argue, would undermine U.S. copyright, giving foreign competitors access to research conducted through U.S. government offices.
However, this opposition retreads territory familiar to folks who’ve worked in the open access space. Primarily, Heritage conflates intellectual property with availability, arguing that anyone who can access an article may use it in any way they choose. Neither public access not open access offers carte blanche for using another’s intellectual property; instead, both these modes of publishing maintain that authors retain their copyright regardless of the article’s availability. Readers of public access articles cannot claim the work as their own, and they cannot republish those articles in other venues without author permission.
The second open access myth is around the economics of publishing. Heritage claims that public access undermines the investment that publishers have made in developing peer review networks that support a robust research ecosystem. Instead, publishers have made significant profits through public access by shifting production costs from readers who pay for subscriptions to authors who pay “article processing charges” to make the research publicly available. Earning reports show that open access and public access are not causing publisher any sort of financial pain.
A third area of concern in these articles is simply a misrepresentation of access to scholarly research. It is true that a public access policy would make freely available these research articles to anyone with an internet connection, regardless of their citizenship. However, articles published in subscription journals are still available regardless of citizenship— as long as the reader or their institution pays the fees. A national public access policy, whether developed by executive order, executive memorandum, or act of Congress, would not significantly change the demographics of readership. Baseless fears of international (i.e., non-U.S.) researchers co-opting U.S. research willfully ignore the efforts and outcomes of robust international research communities, as well as researchers whose small labs have minimal access to such strong research programs. A focus on international competition minimizes the significant progress made through international cooperation.
Dispelling myths of open access and public access has been and continues to be an important part of scholarly communication work. Opposition to public access is rooted in these myths, and the work done by proponents of a national public access policy has been a strong effort to weaken the positions of the fearmongers.
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