National Institutes of Health, National Library of Medicine Begin Public Access Policy

"Greg Rienzi, NIH Begins Public Access Policy, The Johns Hopkins University Gazette, April 18, 2005. Excerpt: 'The published findings of some of the nation's leading health researchers will soon be a click away for the masses... A chief aim of this new public access policy, announced on Feb. 3, is to make NIH-funded research more readily accessible to the public and to scholars. It is also intended to create a stable, searchable and permanent online archive of peer-reviewed research resulting from NIH funding, of which Johns Hopkins is the largest recipient... While the scientific publishing community has concerns about how this will impact journal viability, many groups have hailed the policy's ratification as a historic step in giving taxpayers free access to discoveries for which they paid... "I, for one, will be very interested to see how the system works and the level of participation," said [Chi] Dang [vice dean for research at the School of Medicine and The Johns Hopkins Family Professor in Oncology Research], who has five manuscripts on track to be published in the next six months. "Ultimately, frankly, it's a laudable and honorable thing to do. Information should be made as freely accessible as possible. What will go online is not someone's opinion. It's real peer-reviewed science."...Timothy Hays, NIH's project manager for the public access policy implementation, said that both author and publisher will hold copyrights of the manuscripts and that use terms will be clearly stated on the PMC. As to the long-term economic impact of the policy, publishers are making individual assessments and will likely retool their business models accordingly, according to [Kathleen] Keane [director of the JHU Press]. The JHU Press, which publishes more than 50 journals, has followed this issue very closely. Keane adds that the Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers, of which JHU Press is a member, has been working with officials at the NIH to have their concerns addressed. Hays said that NIH will be listening to all "stakeholders" in the coming months in an effort to further refine the policy.'"

Source: Peter Suber. More on the NIH policy. OA News (18 April 2005) [FullText]