Dee Ann Divis, NIH proposes free research access, United Press International, September 6, 2004. Excerpt: "With two ill children facing blindness and early death from a rare genetic disorder, Sharon Terry needed information -- information her doctor could not provide her. Information on the disease was available, much of it paid for by federal research dollars, but it was out of reach in expensive, specialized medical journals. The journals had become so costly, closely held or difficult to access that the Terrys -- like many others desperately researching their family's health problems -- ended up using other peoples' passwords and getting students to obtain the material for them....The public can comment on the draft of the [NIH] policy for the next 60 days. It is likely some sort of policy will go forward, however, driven by the rationale that the taxpayer is entitled to access, as well as the NIH's desire to manage its portfolio of research better. 'When we do clinical trials, we would like to be able to link that to the paper that was published,' Zerhouni told UPI. 'The way to do that is to have an archive, an NIH research archive, and frankly we don't have that....It would allow us to also do peer review more effectively, do analysis of our portfolio more effectively so we can see what the entire production of agency is.'...Pat Furlong, executive director of Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy, just wants the papers posted on the Internet. Her son, a teenager with MD, died because he was given an inhalational anesthesia in the hospital. 'The physician did not have the access to the information he needed for my son to survive,' Furlong told the [August 31 stakeholder] meeting."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 9/07/2004 01:35:00 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.
