Jocelyn Kaiser, NIH Revises Public Access Policy, Science Magazine, January 18, 2005 (accessible only to subscribers). Excerpt: 'The National Institutes of Health (NIH) wants to wait up to 1 year after publication before posting a free copy of articles based on NIH-funded research on the web. That's double the length of time it proposed last fall in the wake of congressional pressure to give the public greater access to such research....Scientific societies are "pleased" with the revised NIH proposal, says Martin Frank, executive director of the American Physiological Society, noting that it is consistent with the policies of many not-for-profit journals (including /Science/). But he maintains that the archive isn't necessary, and that having both the archived manuscript and the published article on the Web will be confusing. Groups that pushed for quicker public access also had mixed reactions: "NIH punted," says Rick Johnson, director of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Research Coalition. But he thinks the policy's impact "could be positive."'
(PS: One important correction. The NIH permits a year's delay but does not "want" a year's delay. On the contrary, at the same time that it permits a longer delay, it will encourage authors to deposit their articles as soon as possible. Rick Johnson got it just right: The NIH shouldn't have permitted a longer delay, but if authors do deposit their work in PubMed Central sooner than six months after publication, then the result will be positive.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/19/2005 10:32:00 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.
