ASH Successful in Revising NIH Access Policy Proposal

Last September NIH published a notice seeking comment on a proposal on public access to research information. The proposal would require all grantees to provide NIH electronic copies of all manuscripts upon acceptance for publication by a peer-reviewed journal. NIH would archive these manuscripts and any supplementary information in PubMed Central (PMC), the agency’s repository for biomedical research. Six months after a manuscript is accepted for publication in a journal – or sooner if the publisher agrees – the manuscript would be made available to the public at no cost.

ASH created a coalition of non-profit scientific and professional societies that publish peer-reviewed journals to evaluate and respond to NIH’s proposal. Although ASH and the other non-profit publishers shared NIH’s goal of providing Americans greater access to valuable biomedical information, the coalition identified several concerns with how NIH planned to accomplish this goal.

ASH led this coalition in an effort to have NIH recognize the concerns of non-profit publishers and to work with the Administration on a policy that increases access to NIH funded research without threatening the ability of non-profit professional societies to publish high quality scientific journals.

NIH is scheduled to release its revised policy concerning public access to research shortly. An article from the Washington Post describes some significant revisions to the original proposal and the fact that NIH is listening to the non-profit publishing community.