Legislation Introduced to Overturn NIH Public Access Policy

September 16, 2008 – Some members of Congress have begun examining the National Institutes of Health (NIH) public access policy with regard to copyright law. The current policy requires NIH-funded researchers to submit articles derived from their research to PubMed Central.

Earlier this week, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) introduced legislation (H.R. 6845, The Fair Copyrights in Research Act) to prevent any federal agency – including NIH – from "requiring the transfer of intellectual property rights from researchers expressly in cases where there are non-federal financial or other contributions made toward the advancement or dissemination of science." Such non-federal contributions would include time and money spent by publishers on peer review and production.

Though the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property held a hearing on the bill and public access on September 11, no further congressional action is expected this year.

ASH had serious concerns with the originally proposed NIH Open Access Policy because of the impact on authors and publishers. The Society worked with NIH to develop an agreement in which Blood submits the final article on behalf of its authors to PubMed Central, and NIH respects and maintains Blood's publisher embargo period of 12 months. Therefore, as a result of ASH's participation in this agreement, all Blood authors who have NIH-funded research articles have no obligation to submit manuscripts to the NIH archive because Blood will do this on their behalf.