The RWA would also prevent other federal agencies from imposing similar requirements on their funded researchers. As such, it poses a serious threat to the Open Access ( OA ) movement. The bill is backed by the Association of American Publishers ( AAP ) and its Professional and Scholarly Division (PSP), which last December published a press release describing the bill as, "significant legislation that will help reinforce America's leadership in scholarly and scientific publishing in the public interest and in the critical peer-review system that safeguards the quality of such research." One one member of the AAP that does clearly support the RWA is Amsterdam-based Elsevier , and a few days ago the company emailed me the following statement explaining why: Our support for the Research Works Act comes down to a question of preferring voluntary partnership with government agencies and other funders to promote access to research works, rather than being subjected to inflexible government mandates like the NIH policy, which don't take into account the needs of different journals. One of Elsevier's primary missions is to work towards providing universal access to high-quality scientific information in sustainable ways. We support the bipartisan bill, which seeks to prevent US government policies, like the one imposed by the NIH, that mandate the dissemination of journal articles published and funded by the private sector. Elsevier and other publishers have embraced and nurtured a whole range of access options to ensure broad dissemination -- author pays journals, delayed access, manuscript posting,