Dee Ann Divis, NIH moves closer to open access, United Press International, December 6, 2004. Excerpt: 'The House also would have required researchers to submit their articles, not just request a copy, as NIH plans to do. The distinction makes little difference, said Howard Garrison, director of the Office of Public Affairs at the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. Though not all FASEB societies feel strongly about the NIH proposal, many oppose it. "Certainly 'request' is much better than 'require,'" Garrison told United Press International. But "when you are dealing with your funding agency, it is hard to see that as a request." Some members of Garrison's organization and others in the community are worried the landscape will continue to change. Many are concerned other research funding organizations will follow NIH's lead and mandate open publication of their affiliated journal articles. NIH funds only 10 percent of biomedical research, but policy changes at a handful of key organizations could put large swaths of research into open forums. As far Sharon Terry is concerned, that would be fine. Terry, president and CEO of the Genetic Alliance, is a leading advocate of free access. Though she now is a high-profile patient advocate, and has been promised access to any article by publishers, she still has trouble, she said. "[The publishers] claim that anybody with a personal need would get the article," Terry told UPI. "When I talk to the people in the support groups I work with, they are surprised at [the promise of access], because that is not an obvious thing on any of these Web sites ... The few times that we did try that we did not hear back." Terry said the current process creates "huge problems. In the last week I've tried 30 times the access articles I couldn't get ... It's over and over a problem for us."'
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/07/2004 11:08:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
