Dee Ann Divis, The push for public access to journals, Los Angeles Times, January 17, 2005. Excerpt: 'Most medical journal articles are not freely available to the public in print or over the Internet. Access often is limited to subscribers, who must pay hefty fees. And most public libraries are more likely to carry People magazine than the Archives of Internal Medicine....The NIH is considering a proposal that would ask researchers to provide a copy of each journal article they write about NIH-supported projects. Those articles, which often are copyrighted and tightly controlled by the journals, would be made available for free on the Internet through a permanent archive....Should NIH decide to ease access, the range of what would become available is enormous. Though it is often thought of as a center for studying rare disorders, NIH funds research on subjects such as wisdom tooth extraction, vitamin supplements and the use of acupuncture for lower back pain. Nearly 10% of U.S. health and medical research receives NIH funding. Roughly a third of NIH-supported research consists of clinical trials. A shift toward public access would come at a time when more people than ever are searching online for health information....Pat Furlong, executive director of the Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy and a proponent of the NIH plan, also says more access would help doctors stay on top of developments. She told attendees at an NIH meeting on Aug. 31 how her son, a teenager with muscular dystrophy, died when he was given an inhalational anesthesia in the hospital. Her family lived in a rural town and had limited access to a library with the latest medical studies. "The physician did not have the access to the information he needed for my son to survive," Furlong told the panel.'
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/17/2005 08:27:00 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.
