A majority of NIH's Public Access Working Group suggested during their Nov. 15, 2005 and April 10, 2006 meetings thata the policy should be shifted from voluntary to mandatory and that the embargo period should be moved up from 12 months to six months....For those publishers that oppose either move, keeping the embargo period at 12 months appears to be the more important element. The publishers may be successful in retaining the 12-month period, as NIH seems to believe the more vital change is a move to a mandatory program....At the April 10 working group meeting, NLM Director Donald Lindberg, MD, said that mandating the policy "is much more important" than whether the embargo is six months or 12 months. David Lipman, MD, director of NLM's National Center for Biotechnology Information, also said he views moving to a mandatory policy as more important than the embargo time period. However, he also argued that a six-month embargo would not result in publishers losing subscriptions..."What scientist would write a grant or submit a paper and notn look at papers that are more recent than six months?" Lipman asked. "Nobody would do it."
In the remainder of the piece, Coleman quotes publishers who speculate that six and even 12 month embargoes would cost them revenue. She also quotes one, the American Society for Cell Biology, whose experience is that a short, two month embargo can trigger growth in subscriptions and revenue.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 4/18/2006 01:16:00 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.
