Publishers and research librarians are facing off over a new policy announced by the National Institutes of Health that will provide free public access to all government-funded science research. The announcement spurred mixed reactions of support from librarians and a somewhat muted response from the Association of American Publishers.
During the commentary period, the AAP was very vocal, claiming to be "blindsided" by the proposal, threatening to lobby Congress against it and describing the policy as government "mandate and control" of the business model for scientific publishing.
Under the new policy (which is available at www.nih.gov), scientists who have received any NIH funding are "requested" to provide a digital copy of their peer-reviewed research papers to the NIH for posting on PubMed Central, an online NIH archive, within the 12 months following the material's scheduled publication date. The new policy will go into effect in May.
The free-access policy pits academic and research librarians against the AAP and its scientific and technical publisher-members, who are adamant that the new policy will damage their commercial publishing interests. The NIH plan is also opposed by a coalition of small scientific associations that publish research material commercially to fund their activities.
On the other side are librarians, who cite the high cost of scientific journals as one reason for supporting the free-access initiative. Librarians supported the NIH, but complained that the policy falls short of immediate and complete access to government-funded research. They are also critical of the policy's voluntary nature, which they claim puts authors in an "untenable position"—smack in the middle of a contentious dispute between their publishers and the government.
Rick Johnson, director of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, which supports free access, said his group would be monitoring participation by authors. "We're not convinced this is the optimal way to do this, but we sincerely hope the NIH is successful."
Perhaps mindful of its aggressive opposition in the past, the AAP offered a measured response. Barbara Meredith, v-p of the AAP's professional and scholarly publishing division, said the new NIH measure "left a number of open questions, and we remain concerned about some aspects of the policy." Meredith said the AAP will be "carefully reviewing the final adopted policy in order to fully consider its implications for our publishing activities."
