| JWissmille 2004-09-21, 2:36 am |
| NIH Proposes Free Access For Public to Research Data
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 6, 2004; Page A21
The National Institutes of Health has proposed a major policy change that
would require all scientists who receive funding from the agency to make the
results of their research available to the public for free.
The proposal, posted on the agency's Web site late Friday and subject to a
60-day public comment period, would mark a significant departure from
current practice, in which the scientific journals that publish those
results retain control over that information. Subscriptions to those
journals can run into the thousands of dollars. Nonsubscribers wishing to
get individual articles must typically pay about $30 each -- fees that can
quickly add up for someone trying to learn about a newly diagnosed disease
in the family.
Although patient advocacy groups and other organizations have been lobbying
hard for the proposed shift, the scientific publishing industry and related
interests are crying foul. The move could drive some journals out of
business, they say, and bankrupt some scientific societies that are
dependent on journal profits to fulfill their research and education
missions.
Whatever the outcome, both sides agree change is inevitable, given society's
rising expectations of easy access to information from the Internet and the
enormous interest in health -- a topic that NIH officials say accounts for
about 40 percent of all Internet queries.
"The status quo is not an option," NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni said last
week at a meeting on the agency's Bethesda campus.
Pressure to make publicly financed research results more available to the
public has been building for years but gained new momentum this summer with
report language by the House Appropriations Committee.
"The committee is very concerned that there is insufficient public access to
reports and data resulting from NIH-funded research," it read. "This
situation . . . is contrary to the best interests of the U.S. taxpayers who
paid for this research."
The report called upon NIH to devise a system that would ensure that
NIH-funded research results be "freely and continuously available no later
than six months after publication."
Although the language was nonbinding -- especially given the lack of similar
pressure from the Senate -- it gave the NIH the political backing the agency
needed to craft a system it had been leaning toward for more than a year. It
brought a quick and panicked response from scientific publishers. If
contents of their publications are to be made available for free, they
argued, people will stop subscribing. And without journals, who would do the
expensive work of selecting, peer-reviewing and editing research results
into the clean and scientifically reliable products upon which scientists
and the public have come to rely?
"The House has held no hearings and has established no evidentiary record,"
wrote Patricia S. Schroeder, a former Democratic House member from Colorado
and now president and chief executive of the Association of American
Publishers. Her recent letter was directed to Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.),
who heads the Senate appropriations subcommittee overseeing NIH. "Publishers
feel steamrolled."
Other critics raised concerns about costs to citizens. "If the NIH has to
increase the size of its grants or make other major expenditures to
implement a new, open-access system, taxpayers will end up paying more money
for less research," said Roberta E. Arnold of the Radiological Society of
North America, which supports its scientific activities in part from its
journal profits.
Supporters see things differently. "There's lots of free junk and
advertisements for snake oil on the Internet, but people can't get the good
research unless they pay for it. That does not seem right," said Richard J.
Roberts, a research director at New England Biolabs in Beverly, Mass., and o
ne of 25 Nobel laureates who recently signed a letter supporting a shift to
open access.
Many doctors and other health professionals in the nation's smaller
communities, where major medical libraries do not exist, could also benefit,
he said.
Zerhouni heard those and other arguments in three meetings for scientists,
publishers and patient advocates in the past six weeks. Last week he said he
had concluded that publishers' estimates of how much such a system would
harm them or cost the government were "way out of line" with reality.
Indeed, Zerhouni said, open access might enhance business for many
journal-publishing companies and societies. By giving the journals a bigger
audience, he said, the scientific impact of those journals would increase.
Because a journal's "impact factor" is a big determinant of where scientists
submit their work, those with greatest access should be able to attract the
best papers.
Although about 60,000 articles are published each year as a result of NIH
funding, they make up only about a third of all the biomedical literature
appearing in journals.
"Do you really think people are not going to subscribe to a journal because
they can read 30 percent of the articles in it for free?" Roberts asked.
Besides, he said, many journals offer other features such as news and
commentary sections that are available only with a subscription.
The NIH proposal calls for researchers to submit their papers to the agency
after they have been accepted for publication and edited by the accepting
journal. By placing the responsibility on researchers, the policy avoids the
prospect of the NIH trying to tell the journals to share those papers.
Articles would not be made public by the NIH for six months -- "a compromise
position," Zerhouni said, to give the journals time to profit from the work.
After that, they would be available for free on the NIH's Web-based
database, PubMed Central.
In an interview Friday, Specter said that because of his concerns about the
ramifications of open access, he would not add supportive language to the
Senate appropriations bill. But he said that he generally likes the
open-access principle and that he hopes a reasonable policy will emerge with
public input in the next two months.
Alan I. Leshner, president of the American Association for the Advancement
of Science, which publishes the journal Science, said the NIH proposal
appeared to address "some of the concerns" of publishers and "appears to be
a reasonable compromise." Like some other journals, Science makes its
articles freely available 12 months after publication.
Several experts predicted that if the NIH proposal is implemented, other
major funders around the world will follow suit, triggering a global
open-access revolution.
One person who will be celebrating is Debra Lappin of the Open Access
Working Group, which has been lobbying for the change. She told Zerhouni
last week that she had been part of a federal study of an experimental AIDS
vaccine but had been unable to find out the study's results without paying.
"I paid twice for these results," she said. "I paid with my taxes and I paid
with blood. I feel like I'm being asked to pay for a third time. I think
that's outrageous."
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