Previously I tried to get the word out on a change to the NIH policy for grant supported research that required researchers to transfer a copy of the final work to a repository (PMC) that provides free access to the article. My personally biased opinion is the policy was a great move, and that making scientific knowledge more highly available to everyone is a good thing.
Some publishers have already stepped up to embrace the new policy by transferring the paper to PMC for you, some well before the 1 year deadline. Others have no coherent plan and charge large fees for a paper to be transferred to PMC. For example, the American Psychological Society charges Wellcome Trust supported researchers $4,000 to send a copy of their paper to PubMed Central.
There already is controversy about the policy in Congress. House Bill HR 6845 was introduced (you can find it by querying ‘HR 6845′ here) as the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act. After glancing over it, it seems that the bill intends to reverse the NIH policy decision by making sure funding agencies can’t force the funded individuals to put their works in a public archive. While on the outset that may sound like it’s protecting the researcher by not ‘forcing’ them to make their work available, it seems to me it’s actually protection for publishers that don’t want to modify their business model. You publish with us, you transfer copyright to us, we get paid for others to view the work. That worked fine for a long time. But the world has changed. We now live in a world where information is instantly available. How about instead of reversing a policy that makes more information available to more people we try to work out a new publishing model?
Who knows where this whole thing will end up? I don’t have a clue. What I do know is that making scientific works available (even if after a waiting period) to a wider audience of researchers is a good thing that spurs more research and greater innovation. But that’s just my two cents.
September 17th, 2008 at 10:14 pm
Isn’t commercializing scientific innovation and work against the entire essence of scientific achievement and advancement? I think so, at least.
September 18th, 2008 at 6:02 am
Guess it depends on your perspective. In this specific issue the researchers aren’t commercializing the research, since they aren’t paid anything for the work by the publisher. In fact, usually you pay the publisher to print the article and sign away your rights so that they can print it. But on the publisher’s side scientific publishing has always been commercialized. Just consider the cost of a Nature or Science subscription.
Personally I’d like to see a move in the direction of open access so that in the end the information are available to everyone.
However, for people deep in a particular field I don’t think it matters one way or another. They can’t wait a year find out what people are doing so they or their institutions will keep their journal subscriptions anyway.
September 21st, 2008 at 11:02 pm
[...] NIH Public Access: The Battle BeginsPreviously I tried to get the word out on a change to the NIH policy for grant supported research that required researchers to transfer a copy of the final work to a repository (PMC) that provides free access to the article. … [...]