Public Knowledge has issued a press release on the NIH public-access policy. Excerpt: 'Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt today announced his department’s policy on open-access publishing of government-funded research. The policy requests the authors of scientific papers to make their work available for free, online as soon as possible and within 12 months of the official date of publication. Statement of Peter Suber, director of Public Knowledge’s Open Access Project: "I regret that the National Institutes of Health has scaled back its open-access policy. It is a retreat from the version the agency first proposed and for which public comment was overwhelmingly favorable. The chief problem with the new rule is that it could significantly delay public access to publicly-funded medical research. It could even mean that the public will never have access to some of it at all....This policy is a step backward from the House of Representatives' wishes that NIH 'require' free online access after six months. In the end it looks like the publishers had more clout with NIH than scientists or taxpayers. The policy is better than nothing, but is a lot less than taxpayers deserved."'
Posted by
Peter Suber at 2/03/2005 08:19:00 PM.
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.
