Hardin Scholarly Communication News

The Internet doesn’t scare Carol Brey-Casin, president of the American Library Association, and neither does Google. As part of its effort to make offline information searchable online, Google announced in December that it is working with the libraries of Harvard, Stanford, the University of Michigan, and the University of Oxford as well as The New York Public Library to digitally scan books from their collections so that users worldwide can search them in Google. Asked if librarians should feel threatened by Google’s initiative, Brey-Casin responds, "We had this conversation when the Internet began to get popular, and what’s happened is that library visits have doubled in the last decade to 1.2 billion." Outsell, a research and advisory firm for the information industry, agrees, stating that, "This isn’t a death knell for libraries; it’s another shove to get librarians out from behind the stacks and harness their expertise, including subject-matter expertise, and to enhance users’ ability to find, use and access information in any format. Getting out of the business of simply storing books should be a welcome goal." (Information Today, Inc. 27 Dec 2004) <http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb041227-2.shtml>

[RLG ShelfLife, No. 188 (January 6, 2005)]

With news of the potential scuttling of the NIH proposal buzzing among librarians at the ALA Midwinter Meeting, perhaps the most compelling speaker at the SPARC forum on the NIH proposal was Sharon Terry, now president and CEO of the Genetic Alliance, and a leading voice in the Alliance for Taxpayer Access. Terry sought to illustrate what’s at stake regarding access to scientific literature.

Years ago, she earned a modest living as a college chaplain and her husband, without a college education, worked in construction. The couple’s two young children were diagnosed with a rare cancer, and given few options for treatment. For years, the parents took turns attempting to learn more, but were barred from libraries or charged fees to visit. They resorted to "stealing passwords" and finding other ways to access research and educate themselves. Years later, Terry and her husband had helped isolate the gene that caused the rare cancer afflicting their children, were able to help doctors devise a treatment, published two research articles in the prestigious journal NATURE, patented the gene–and even started a biotech company. Today, the children are doing well. The story moved some to tears. As for the publishers who told her that her crusade to open up medical research could cause harm, she said, "We live in a new age. We can’t be held back by a model that is hundreds of years old."
[Library Journal Academic Newswire, January 18, 2005]

“Beginning May 2, 2005, NIH-funded investigators will be asked to submit voluntarily to PubMed Central (PMC) the author’s final manuscript upon acceptance for publication, resulting from research supported in whole or in part, with direct costs1 from NIH. PMC is the NIH digital repository of full-text, peer-reviewed biomedical, behavioral, and clinical research journals. It is a publicly-accessible, permanent, and searchable electronic archive available on the Internet at http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/.”

To read more, go to: http://www.nih.gov/about/publicaccess/index.htm

Seven months after the National Institutes of Health (NIH) proposed an ambitious policy to offer free access to medical research, the final policy, released February 3, leaves the issue pretty much where it started. Although the draft policy would have "required" NIH-funded authors to deposit their final papers in the NIH’s PubMed Central database for access within six months, the final policy makes submission voluntary. The policy "requests" that, beginning May 2, NIH-funded scientists submit an electronic version of their final manuscripts, defined as the final version accepted for journal publication, including modifications from the peer review process, for deposit in PubMed Central "as soon as possible, and within 12 months of final publication." The NIH said it would "strongly encourage" scientists to make their articles available as soon as possible. To communicate the policy, the NIH will establish a Public Access Advisory Working Group, as a subgroup of the National Library of Medicine’s Board of Regents. The Working Group will include patient’s rights advocates and members of the scientific, library, and publishing communities; it will provide advice on implementation issues and assess progress in meeting the new policy’s stated goals.

NIH Director Elias Zerhouni, who initially defended the original draft of the policy in meetings with concerned publishers, put a positive spin on the new policy. "In developing this policy, we made a concerted effort to balance the importance of this archive to NIH’s public health mission, with the need to provide flexibility for authors, their institutions, and publishers in those cases where immediate release is not possible," he said in a statement. "Nevertheless, we expect that only in limited cases will authors deem it necessary to select the longest delay period." Although the policy falls far short of what open access advocates sought, it does represent a step forward. "It is important that we be diligent now and see how the policy works," said SPARC (Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition) Director Rick Johnson. "We’ve got the ball rolling, even if we’re not pleased with the speed at this point." Johnson added that the debate has also called greater attention to the issue.

Still, he said the final proposal is "neither what we hoped for nor proposed." The release of the final policy follows months of intense debate and consideration of more that 6,000 public comments. For more information, visit http://www.nih.gov/about/publicaccess/index.htm. Or read the entire policy at: http://www.nih.gov/about/publicaccess/publicaccess_imp.pdf
[Library Journal Academic Newswire (TM), February 8, 2005]