Open Access News

Question: But why are you proposing that making research results accessible to the public is "recommended?" If this is such a good idea – and I think it is - why isn't it required?

Answer: The voluntary nature of the Policy was established to encourage investigators to deposit their manuscripts in NIH's public archive. We believe this approach will ultimately result in broader participation. The Policy-related submissions will directly benefit NIH-supported investigators because recent studies have shown that freely available articles get cited more in other research publications. An increase in the number of citations helps improve the professional standing of investigators. Due to these benefits we anticipate that authors will decide to participate and to choose the earliest release dates. I also believe that the voluntary nature of the final policy permits sufficient flexibility to accommodate the needs of different stakeholders and leaves the ultimate decision in the hands of scientific investigators who are in the best position to judge the circumstances and the time frame under which their work may be made accessible to the public at large. Therefore, we believe that by having a Policy that provides maximum flexibility, authors will respond with maximum participation.

Question: A year's delay after publication in a journal strikes me as a very long time, given the pace of biomedical developments today. How much time do you expect most participating researchers to let go by between publication and release of the study publicly?

Answer: The Public Access Policy strongly encourages all NIH-funded researchers to make their peer-reviewed author's final manuscripts available to other researchers and to the public at the National Library of Medicine's (NLM) PubMed Central (PMC) immediately after the official date of final publication. At the time of submission, authors are also given the option to release their manuscripts at a later time, up to 12 months after publication. NIH expects that only in limited cases will authors deem it necessary to select the longest delay period. [...]

Question: What rates of participation and time delays would you consider a success?

Answer: [...] Rather than specifying a particular target number, we will be looking for an increasing number of manuscripts to be submitted over time and a decreasing delay period. [...] We hope that secondary effects of the Policy might also be viewed in terms of "success." Since the Proposed Policy's release in September 2004, we have heard that an increasing number of publishers, within and outside of the United States, are considering changes to or adoption of Open Access publishing models. For example, in January the Nature Publishing Group altered its open access model to increase accessibility to its publications.

Comment. Kudos to Sen. Durbin for asking just the right questions. Unfortunately, the NIH responses are very inadequate. (1) If the criterion is still "maximum participation", then requiring deposit will clearly bring us closer to the goal than making deposit discretionary. (2) It's true that early OA will increase author impact and authors have this incentive to deposit their work and to request early release. But the NIH is ignoring the evidence that nearly every publisher with a policy on NIH-funded authors requires authors to demand a six or 12 month embargo on public access. (3) The NIH is ignoring the fact (shown by the same evidence) that publishers are taking steps to control author decisions. The NIH request is addressed to authors, but publishers can refuse to publish any article unless the author agrees to the publisher's terms. (4) While many publishers have responded to the NIH policy, virtually none have supported it in the ways the NIH claims here. They agree to let their authors deposit their postprints in PubMed Central, but only the American Diabetes Association (among non-OA publishers) lets its authors comply with the NIH request to deposit the postprints "as soon as possible" after publication. All the rest so far insist on embargoes, including the new policy of the Nature Publishing Group cited here by the NIH.)