During the last weeks the opposition of the Research Work Act has been forming up. The bill is currently for Committee Consideration in the US congress and would prohibit open access mandates for public funded research institutions.

The bill is appointed to the lobby organization Association of American Publishers, but the protest is focusing on the Dutch publisher Elsevier, which publishes over 2600 magazines and is one of the world’s leading scholar publishers. Elsevier is beside the Research Work Capital Act under heavy criticism because of their pricing policy and the sale of magazines in bundles.

Timothy Gowers has announced his boycott of Elsevier in January and started a small ...