The U.S. National Institutes of Health is holding a public meeting on the implementation of its recently-adopted OA mandate, on March 20 at the NIH offices outside Washington, D.C. The agency had solicited online comments in advance of the meeting for those unable to attend; that comment period closed yesterday. The comments received are now available online.
It doesn't appear to be possible to link to individual comments, but the page includes comments by SPARC, the Alliance for Taxpayer Access, ARL, Medical Library Association, Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries, ACRL, Genetic Alliance, Wiley, AAP, STM, PLoS, and a number of other libraries, universities, societies, publishers, advocacy organizations, businesses, and individuals: 433 in total.
Update. The Alliance for Taxpayer Access has posted its comment on its own Web site.
Update. Also see the short article on publisher responses in Library Journal Academic Newswire. The AAP/PSP still wants a formal hearing, still complains about "copyright concerns", and still hints at the possibility of a lawsuit.
Update. The Professional/Scholarly Publishing (PSP) Division of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) has released a March 17 letter to NIH Director Elias Zerhouni, elaborating its objections to the NIH policy, and a March 20 call for more publisher consultation on the policy.
Update. The NIH has released a 2 hour, 41 minute video of the meeting, and three slide presentations:
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.
