NIH Director on Public Access Policy

On 26 March 2008 NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni issued a statement regarding the 20 March public meeting about the impending implementation (beginning 7 April, 2008) of the new NIH Public Access Policy. Excerpts from the statement:

"We believe that public access after a reasonable embargo period of up to a year to research funded by NIH will help advance science and improve human health while preserving peer review and the value of scientific publishing," said NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D. He explained that the improved access will be a "dynamic resource to not only research publications and display publications, but to link them to all sorts of knowledge that NIH has invested in making research more efficient for all scientists."

The meeting was held to ensure the policy's implementation will work as successfully as possible for all involved. . . .

NIH established a voluntary public access policy in 2005, but only a small percentage of the manuscripts submitted were deposited under that policy. If the policy remained voluntary, Zerhouni said, about new 64,000 journal articles arising from NIH funds would not be available to the public each year. . . .

The meeting was a listening session, and supported by 451 comments collected in advance of the meeting. Preliminary analysis indicates over 60% of these pre-meeting comments expressed support of the Policy as implemented, but approximately 15% thought the 12-month delay period was too long and 15% had concerns that a mandatory policy will be detrimental to scientific publishers.

The public may view the video cast and pre-meeting comments at: http://publicaccess.nih.gov/comments.htm.

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The policy and supporting materials can be found at: http://publicaccess.nih.gov