Yesterday the Publishing Research Consortium announced a study of NIH grantees, what they understood about the NIH public access policy, and why they were not complying with it in greater numbers. From the announcement:
Scientific, technical and medical publishers called today for an increase in communications to science and medical authors in light of a new survey that finds low understanding of the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Public Access Policy for posting peer-reviewed articles to PubMed Central (PMC), NIH’s online database. The online survey, conducted in January of this year by the Publishing Research Consortium (PRC), shows that although most authors are aware of the NIH policy, many authors do not post on PMC because they do not understand the process, nor do they identify clear benefits for posting their work. Of the NIH-funded authors who responded to the survey, 15% have never heard of the policy and a further 23% have heard of the policy, but know nothing about it. The survey found awareness of NIH-funded authors is only marginally higher than of all life sciences and medicine authors. “As publishers, we are committed to working with the NIH in improving dissemination of and enhancing access to scientific and medical research,” Robert Campbell, Chairman of the PRC. “Publishers remain willing and prepared to work with the National Library of Medicine to advance the goals of the NIH’s Public Access Policy as currently construed, and to aid the NIH in facilitating voluntary compliance by NIH-funded authors.” The PRC survey also revealed authors have limited understanding of the benefits of the NIH policy for the scientific research community, the public or existing journals. However, approximately 42% of survey respondents reported that they intend to post in the future and just 3% responded that they are not planning to post.
Comment. Those who want to strengthen the NIH policy and those who want to keep it weak or even repeal it agree that the compliance rate is dismally low. Just last month the NIH reported to Congress that the rate was below 4%. I interpret the PRC report as an attempt to boost voluntary compliance and head off mounting pressure on the NIH to adopt an OA mandate. This pressure is coming from the NIH's own Public Access Working Group and the NLM Board of Regents, not to mention the original directive from Congress and the pending CURES Act. Whether or not the NIH adopts a mandate, I support the call for greater outreach to grantees and education about the policy. (I was going to link to a 12/9/05 message I posted to the SSP list, showing that I support this kind of outreach, but it seems to have disappeared from the archive.) However, I strongly support a mandate and do not believe that the NIH policy can meet its goals or the goals of Congress without one.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 3/03/2006 08:07:00 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.
