Elias Zerhouni, NIH Public Access Policy, Science Magazine, December 10, 2004 (accessible only to subscribers). Excerpt: 'A new National Institutes of Health public access draft policy is raising a tremendous amount of interest in the scientific, patient, and publishing communities. I would like to clarify what the proposed policy is, describe its rationale, and explain why the NIH thinks this is a reasonable, balanced policy that will serve all interests....Some are concerned that grantees or smaller or not-for-profit publishers will be harmed. This is why NIH elected to leave the decision to submit the author’s copy to PMC in the hands of the investigators and their publishers. We believe that this aspect, combined with the 6-month window, will preserve the critical role of journals and publishers in peer review, editing, and scientific quality control....The Internet is used increasingly to search for health-related information. For example, about 93 million Americans searched for at least 1 of 16 health topics online within the past year (4). In a 2003 survey, 58% of Internet users said they brought information obtained from the Internet to their doctor’s office (5). Now, research information is largely available only to scientists, clinicians, patients, and educators through personal subscriptions or at academic and hospital libraries. It is important for NIH to provide the public access to an electronic archive of the findings resulting from publicly funded research.' Elias Zerhouni is the Director of the NIH.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/09/2004 05:31:00 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.
