Government agencies are exploring new models for public access to the results of government-funded scientific and medical research. The SLA Government Information Division (DGI) hosted David Gillikin from the National Library of Medicine and Thomas Lahr from the Science.gov project to describe their efforts in this area. A third speaker, Selene Dalecky from the Government Printing Office, discussed GPO efforts to improve public access to government information with a new Future Digital System under development. The June 13th session was moderated by DGI Chair Richard Huffine.
David Gillikin focused on PubMed Central, the NIH digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature. Through PubMed Central, NIH seeks to expand free, public access to the results of NIH-funded research. Supported by Congress in appropriations report language for fiscal years 2004 and 2005, NIH developed a public access policy released in February 2005. Gillikin stressed that the NIH policy explicitly upholds copyright. NIH's "public access" is not "open access."
Authors are encouraged to submit manuscripts within twelve months of the publisher's official date of final publication. In soliciting and processing manuscript submissions, NIH's relationship is with the author, rather than with the publishing journal, and submission of NIH-funded research results is voluntary. NIH tries to work directly with publishers as well, but has not found a warm welcome in every case. The NIH repository got a boost when the British Wellcome Trust announced a requirement that Wellcome-funded researchers deposit their manuscripts with PubMed Central.
Voluntary author submission has netted a low rate of about four percent of what NIH estimates could have been submitted. Gillikin described several bills introduced in the 109th Congress to enhance the policy, such as the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 7/08/2006 09:40:00 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.
