NIH recently issued a statement on the implications of the NIH Public Access Policy.
Sections in two page document:
What is at stake under the Public Access Policy
Support from the publishers
No harm to publishers is evident
PubMed Central (PMC)
Key facts about PMC
Points:
NIH provides 32 billion dollars in support of biomedical research each year
Over 2.4 million articles are now in PubMed Central
Every weekday, one half million users access the database, retrieving over 1 million articles
An estimated 25% of users are from universities, 17% are from companies, and 40% from the general public
(identified by Cathy Sarli at Becker)
Link is located on the NIH Public Access Training and Communications page.
.
.
This statement is likely in direct response to the proposed Research Works Act (noted in a January blog post).
The most recent response may be the bill introduced yesterday (2/9/12) by U.S. Representative Mike Doyle (D-PA), Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) of 2012. It would require federal agencies with an “extramural” research budget of $100 million or more to “make federally-funded research available for free online access by the general public, no later than six months after publication in a peer-reviewed journal,” according to a statement on Doyle’s website.
Bill would require public access to taxpayer-supported research
Chronicle of Higher Education, February 9, 2012
Additional discussion may be found at the DigitalShift blog post by Michael Kelly.
Tags: NIH, open access