[Upd-discuss] U.S.A: URGENT support for NIH public access policy, before 16 Nov 2004

[Zapopan Martin Muela-Meza]

>From the American Scientist Open Access Forum.
----------------------------------------------

Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 03:02:15 +0000 
From: "Harold Varmus" <haroldvarmus@plos.org> 
Add to Address Book 
Subject: URGENT support for NIH public access
policy 
To:
AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM@LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG


    
Dear Open Access Supporter,
 
On September 3, 2004 the NIH posted for comment
an "Enhanced Public 
Access Policy." This policy would require the
recipients of NIH research 
grants to provide to the National Library of
Medicine a digital copy of 
the final accepted manuscript (or the published
version itself) of every 
published report resulting from NIH-funded
research, so that the 
research results can be made freely available to
scientists and the 
public through PubMed Central within six months
of publication.
 
We are writing now to urge you to submit a
comment in support of this 
proposal right away.   The deadline for comments
is just a few days away 
- November 16th.
 
The text of the proposal is available at:
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-04-064.html
 
You can post comments here: 
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/public_access/add.htm
 
A powerful lobby of publishers and scientific
societies is trying to 
block this plan.  They claim that this is an
unwarranted government 
intrusion on their business practices.  In fact,
the NIH policy has no 
authority over publishers - its rules apply only
to the scientists who 
voluntarily accept grants from the NIH. The
publishers remain free to 
operate their businesses as they always have and
to compete in the free 
market to provide the best service and value to
their authors and 
readers.  But the publishers are wrong in arguing
that they are entitled 
to monopoly control over access to the results of
research that American 
taxpayers have paid for. On the contrary, the
taxpayers who fund the 
research, and the scientists who carry it out,
have every right to ask 
the grant recipients to provide open access to
the published results. 
And they have every right to expect that the
benefits of the research 
will be amplified by making it freely and widely
available for others to 
use and to build on.
 
Let the NIH know that you support this policy
proposal. Even better 
would be to tell the NIH that you would prefer an
even stronger policy 
that requires full and immediate open access to
all papers resulting 
from NIH-funded research. It is important that
the NIH and other 
policymakers understand that this is not (as some
publishers would have 
them believe) a radical proposal destined to
destroy scientific 
publishing, but a thoughtful compromise that
balances the desire for 
better access with the commercial interests of
scientific publishers.
 
More information about the policy is available at

http://www.nih.gov/about/publicaccess/index.htm
http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/
 
 
Notable statements of support for the plan
include:

An open letter to the US Congress signed by 25
Nobel Laureates: 
http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/bof.html

The Council of the National Academy of Sciences: 
http://www4.nationalacademies.org/news.nsf/isbn/s09162004?OpenDocument
 
Please let us know if you have any questions.
 
Harold Varmus
Patrick Brown
Michael Eisen


=====
Vorwärts!

Zapopan Martín Muela Meza
PhD student Information Studies
Department of Information Studies
University of Sheffield, United Kingdom
http://www.shef.ac.uk/is/research/phd.html
http://www.geocities.com/zapopanmuela/index.html


		
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