Shirley Haley, Omnibus conferees support NIH public access publishing plan; NIH asking for time, Washington Fax, November 29, 2004 (accessible only to subscribers). Excerpt: 'Wild claims about the cost of the project have been part of the misinformation out there about the plan, Zerhouni said. "The investments in capital, people and experience all have already been made." The cost will be "incremental, minimal," he said, recalling estimates of $2 million to $4 million the agency already has made public. "We're comfortable with the projections," he said....It's all about archiving, not publishing, the NIH director stressed. Zerhouni said he finds it unacceptable that in this day and age, with the electronic capabilities of the Web, the Internet and so on, that five or 10 years from now "NIH would not have a comprehensive archive, a portfolio" that it can share with scientists to see what's been done and what hasn't and with the public...."We do not want to be a publisher." In fact, he noted, journals come to the agency asking for help in preserving their publishing history...."We want to achieve the goal of public archival access," Zerhouni said, stressing that the agency wants to find a model that provides a "collaborative, cooperative win-win for science" that covers journal publishers of all sizes and on all publishing schedules....Responding to comments that placing pre-publication manuscripts on PMC will result in confusion among versions and possibly exposing the public to wrong and harmful information that will be corrected too late in the published article, Zerhouni noted that "the quality is there" by the time a manuscript is peer-reviewed and accepted for publication....Besides, he pointed out, "The published copy is going to appear first." If there is a "dangerous difference" between the manuscript and the published article, it will be discovered before the manuscript is opened up to the public six months after the published article appears, he explained.'
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/30/2004 01:42:00 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.
