Rick Weiss, NIH Grant Recipients Are 'Asked' to Post Data, Washington Post, February 4, 2005. Excerpt: 'The highly anticipated "public access" policy -- which aims to make it easier for Americans to see the results of research they paid for with their tax dollars -- represents a compromise between competing forces that had lobbied the agency intensely during the past year. On one side were the publishers of highly profitable scientific journals who feared that free access -- even months after paper publication -- would undermine their subscription base. They were joined by some not-for-profit scientific societies that count on revenue from their print journals to support their research and training programs. On the other side were patient advocacy groups and others who argued that taxpayers should not have to pay subscription or per-article fees to see the results of federally supported medical research....Both sides expressed irritation with the decision....Proponents of quick access complained that the policy marks a retreat from an earlier version, floated by NIH in September, which had called for public access within six months. Even the 12-month deadline is voluntary, they noted....Former NIH director Harold Varmus, now president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and a longtime proponent of public access, called the new policy "a significant move" but echoed others' disappointment that it does not use stronger language....But the publishing industry's campaign to oppose NIH's efforts -- spearheaded by former House member Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.), who is now president of the Association of American Publishers -- also fell short of its goals. The AAP yesterday said it is "concerned" about the outcome. Not-for-profits also complained. "It's wasteful and duplicative of what we're already doing," said Martin Frank, chairman of the DC Principles Coalition for Free Access to Science and executive director of the American Physiological Society, one of several not-for-profit science organizations that Frank said already make their articles available to the public relatively quickly after publication. "The $2.5 million to $4 million that the NIH is going to spend on this could be better spent on biomedical research," he said....Both sides had at least one complaint in common: The policy leaves it up to scientists to decide when to make their articles public. That puts scientists in an awkward position of wanting to release them quickly to please the NIH -- their funding source -- and slowly to please their paper publishers -- upon whom they are equally dependent for professional prestige.'
Posted by
Peter Suber at 2/04/2005 11:09:00 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.
