The US Research Works Act would allow publishers to line their pockets by locking publicly funded research behind paywalls, according to a Comment piece, Academic publishers have become the enemies of science, in today's Guardian.

The comment was written by Dr Mike Taylor, a research associate at the Department of Earth Sciences, at the University of Bristol.

Taylor says:

If passed, the Research Works Act (RWA) would prohibit the NIH's public access policy and anything similar enacted by other federal agencies, locking publicly funded research behind paywalls. The result would be an ethical disaster: preventable deaths in developing countries, and an incalculable loss for science in the USA and worldwide. The only winners would be publishing corporations such as Elsevier (£724m profits on revenues of £2b in 2010 - an astounding 36% of revenue taken as profit)...

The bottom line for scientists is that many publishers have now made themselves our enemies instead of the allies they once were. Elsevier's business does not make money by publishing our work, but by doing the exact opposite: restricting access to it. We must not be complicit in their newest attempt to cripple the progress of science.

PopVox, which allows the public to give the thumbs up/down on upcoming bills, currently registers a staggering 97% opposed to the bill.