NIH is still struggling to make open access policy effective

NIH is still struggling to make open access policy effective

The public-access policy of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) marked its first anniversary last week. Consensus is that the policy has fallen far short of the goal of creating free online access to the biomedical literature. Proponents of open access believe NIH will have to strengthen the policy, while opponents (such as publishing groups who stand to lose revenues) are pushing for status quo.

The current NIH policy requests, but does not require, that grantees upload manuscripts resulting from NIH-funded research to an online repository no later than 12 months after publication. But in the past year, very few scientists complied. NIH estimates less than 4% of eligible manuscripts were uploaded.

In November 2005, an NIH working group suggested that the policy be made mandatory. By a slim majority, the group also called for a six-month deadline. In February, the Board of Regents of the National Library of Medicine, which is part of the NIH and runs the repository, made the same recommendations to NIH director, Elias A. Zerhouni.

The current conventional wisdom is that the policy will become mandatory, but the time period may remain at 12 months. Debate in the field focuses on when and whether open access contributes to decreased subscriptions. Some point to data indicating that a 6-month vs. 12-month delay in open access contributes to a decline in subscription rate, whereas others claim that 2 months of restricted access is sufficient to protect revenues and may even boost subscription rates. Practically the only point of agreement is that the journals and their respective subscriber bases vary tremendously and their experience may not be comparable across the board.

Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 11, 2006