Summary: Contrary to the recent suggestion of NIH Director Elias Zerhouni, the primary and urgent purpose of open access to NIH research is definitely not so that "scientists have access to [NIH's] portfolio of research so they can see what [NIH] has funded." It is so that scientists can use and apply the research findings, immediately, for the benefit of the public that funded it for that very purpose ("CURES"). Dr. Zerhouni is right that it "is also important that at some point the public, which pays for 99.5% of this research, is not prevented from having access to it" -- but the primary purpose of open access is immediate scientific usage and applications, for the benefit of the public. NIH can have its portfolio by requiring immediate deposit without even necessarily requiring that the articles be made publicly accessible immediately. Individual scientists who need to know and use the deposited findings immediately could have immediate access through the simple expedient of the EMAIL-EPRINT-REQUEST button that is now being implemented in researchers' own institutional repositories -- if, that is, the immediate deposit of the full text is systematically mandated. (Otherwise email eprint requests are a hopelessly time-consuming, uncertain and low-yield strategy.) Hence the "happy medium" is to require immediate deposit in the researchers' own institutional repositories and to harvest the deposits into PubMed Centralafter whatever embargo period NIH judges necessary (a priori) to insure that this is not "done at the expense [of the] of peer-reviewed scientific publishing."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 7/10/2006 08:53:00 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.
