MEREDITH WADMAN Director hits back at critics of free archive plan.
[WASHINGTON] The
director of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has hit back at
critics of his proposal for a freely accessible literature archive. In an interview with Nature, Elias Zerhouni accused
scientific publishers of floating "doomsday scenarios" in which the
archive causes widespread cancellations of journal subscriptions and
drives smaller publications out of business. He stressed that
submission of papers on NIH-funded research would be left to the
discretion of authors. But publishers rejected his assurances, saying
that researchers would feel pressured to submit their papers for fear
of losing out on future NIH grants. Zerhouni's comments came on 16 November, at the end of a 60-day
public discussion period that generated more than 6,000 comments on the
proposal (see Nature 431, 115; 2004).
The policy calls for all papers produced with NIH funding to be
submitted electronically to the agency after completing peer review.
Six months after publication, the papers would appear in PubMed
Central, the NIH's online public archive. Many scientific publishers oppose the proposal,
saying that offering
their articles for free could drive journals out of business. They add
that inaccuracies will be preserved in PubMed, because the policy
proposes that articles be posted before copyediting and correcting. But
patient-activist groups and librarians have been vocally supportive.
They argue that the archive would improve public education,
communication between scientists and the translation of biomedical
advances into healthcare. Zerhouni last week dismissed some of the publishers' fears, accusing
them of releasing "misinformation" about the impact on subscriptions.
He added that researchers would be free to opt out of the archive. "I'm
willing to take the risk of seeing the decision made not by government
fiat but by the scientists themselves," he said. "If they don't wish to
publish on the NIH website, that's their decision and the decision of
their publishers, not mine." Publishers say that the argument is disingenuous. They point out
that the policy requires authors and not journals to submit papers.
"Researchers would be concerned that if they did not comply with this
plan, they might be looked upon with less favour for awards of future
NIH grants," says Allan Adler, a lobbyist with the Association of
American Publishers. The NIH is scheduled to submit a final version of the policy to
Congress by 1 December, but Zerhouni says that the flood of comments
makes it almost certain that this deadline will slip. |
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