Action in Wake of NIH Access Policy
On February 3, 2005, the National Institutes of Health issued its “Policy on Enhancing Public Access to Archived Publications Resulting from NIH-Funded Research,” available at http://www.nih.gov/about/publicaccess/index.htm. While recognizing the policy as a major step forward, the Alliance for Taxpayer Access (ATA), of which SPARC is a leader, said the NIH policy falls short of its expectations. The ATA has urged Congress to monitor the success of the policy and for NIH to adjust it if necessary to ensure full participation and timely access.
In a public a letter to Department of Heath and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Michael Leavitt (http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/docs/ATA_to_HHS.pdf) ATA outlined key concerns with the NIH policy:
• It is entirely voluntary. Although NIH research is funded with taxpayer dollars, the agency is leaving the decision up to each author whether to make their research results available.
• It does not assure timely public availability of research in PubMed Central. Authors can specify an embargo period of up to a year.
• It unnecessarily puts grant recipients in the position of trying to meet the contradictory expectations of their funding agency, which urges but doesn’t require deposit and timely public release, and their publishers, whose agreements with authors may not permit PubMed Central deposit.
To increase public education and action on this issue, SPARC has created information for use in campus education and advocacy campaigns to encourage PubMed Central deposit. Practical resources for NIH-funded researchers are available at http://www.arl.org/sparc/author/author.html. Information for librarians is at http://www.arl.org/sparc/author/librarian.html. General information on the policy is available at http://www.arl.org/sparc/author/index.html.
SPARC e-news, February-March 2005
