[Q:] Was SPARC involved in promoting the NIH mandate for public access to the results of NIH-funded research?
Yes. The NIH Public Access policy is a crucial, landmark policy, and we have very actively supported both its creation and implementation for the past four years. It’s a great example of a funding agency that invests an enormous amount of public money into research (nearly $29 billion each year), stepping up and saying, “the best way to leverage this investment is to make sure that the results are available quickly to anyone who would like to use them.” Remember—it’s not just scientists to whom this information is valuable. This is crucial, health-related information that is of great interest to physicians, patients, health-care workers, and members of the public. ...
Do you think Congress will continue to support the mandate in the future?
I do. We find that the more policy makers delve into the issue and understand the benefits of the mandate for advancing science and improving public health, the more committed and supportive they become. The roadblocks we’ve run into have been largely the result of misinformation ...
As with all of the previous attempts to block or reverse the NIH policy, the most effective countermeasure is accurate in-formation. Members of Congress need to understand that researchers want greater access to the work of other researchers, and that they want other researchers to be able to access their results seamlessly as well. They need to know that journals such as the JCB thrive with access policies that do even more than what the NIH policy calls for, and in doing so effectively serve the interests of the scientific community and the public. ...
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 11/05/2008 10:05:00 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.
