NIH Stakeholder Meeting on Implementation of the Public Access Policy


On March 20, 2008, the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) convened an open meeting to listen to stakeholders’ concerns regarding implementation of the Public Access policy made mandatory by the FY 2008 consolidated appropriations package. 

The Public Access policy requires research funded in whole or in part by NIH to be submitted to the agency’s PubMed Central website within 12 months of publication for free online access.  The policy was voluntary prior to the FY 2008 consolidated appropriations legislation, but to the dissatisfaction of Congress, only 7.9 percent of NIH supported manuscripts were voluntarily submitted.

Over 450 written comments were submitted to NIH prior to the meeting and approximately 30 verbal comments were delivered onsite by attendees.  The majority of the written comments were supportive of the policy, whereas the meeting attendees were generally more critical.  Prevalent concerns and arguments discussed by these stakeholders include:

  • There was a lack of formalized communication between the NIH and publishers prior to development and implementation of the policy.  Many stakeholders would like to see the policy go through a formal rulemaking process with increased public participation.
  • The NIH’s manpower and resources should be dedicated solely to supporting research—not publishing it.  Already established private industries, such as HighWire Press, provide more manuscripts for free than PubMed Central.
  • There are limited data mining and statistical reporting capabilities for those publishers and researchers who submit manuscripts to PubMed Central.  This makes it difficult to tell if they are reaching new audiences.
  • There are lingering questions regarding legal and copyright issues.  Additionally, some publishers of journals with long distribution periods (quarterly or bi-annually issues, etc.) are concerned about the financial impact of public access.
  • With researches able to submit manuscripts to PubMed Central outside and independent of the respective journal’s peer-review process, there are some concerns about potential discrepancies between the official published manuscript and the manuscript posted on PubMed Central.

Supporters of the Public Access policy maintain that U.S. taxpayers should be able to access the product of government funded research without needing to subscribe to various scientific journals.  Additionally, they believe that open access to this literature will increase general knowledge and acceptance of scientific innovations and new methodologies.

Please visit http://publicaccess.nih.gov to view additional information regarding the Public Access policy and the March 20 stakeholder meeting.