The National Institutes of Health held a public meeting on Thursday, March 20, 2008, for the purpose of hearing broad comment on the implementation...of the NIH Revised Policy on Enhancing Public Access to Archived Publications Resulting from NIH-Funded Research....
NIH is applying 21st-century technology to its investment in research, becoming more transparent and accountable, and ensuring that NIH and the Department of Health and Human Services can better promote the science and health benefits derived from NIH-funded research, Zerhouni explained.
"We believe that public access after a reasonable embargo period of up to a year to research funded by NIH will help advance science and improve human health while preserving peer review and the value of scientific publishing," said NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D. He explained that the improved access will be a "dynamic resource to not only research publications and display publications, but to link them to all sorts of knowledge that NIH has invested in making research more efficient for all scientists."
The meeting was held to ensure the policy's implementation will work as successfully as possible for all involved....
If the policy remained voluntary, Zerhouni said, about new 64,000 journal articles arising from NIH funds would not be available to the public each year....
The meeting was a listening session, and supported by 451 comments collected in advance of the meeting. Preliminary analysis indicates over 60% of these pre-meeting comments expressed support of the Policy as implemented, but approximately 15% thought the 12-month delay period was too long and 15% had concerns that a mandatory policy will be detrimental to scientific publishers....
The public may view the video cast and pre-meeting comments [here].
NIH is also planning a Request for Information (RFI), to be announced in the Federal Register, asking for comments on the policy's implementation. NIH's report on the meeting, pre-meeting comments and the RFI will be issued by September 30, 2008....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 3/28/2008 01:29:00 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.
