Open Access to Health Research

Future Directions for the NIH Public Access Policy
As part of Open Access Week 2012
In 2008, the NIH Public Access Policy became a statutory mandate, requiring “that all investigators funded by the NIH submit or have submitted for them to the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central an electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts upon acceptance for publication, to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication.” As a way to stimulate progress in health research and clinical practice, as well as relieve a financial burden on a public who must otherwise rely exclusively on highly expensive journal subscriptions to access tax-funded research, the NIH Policy has already been deemed a success. In the past 4 years, the mandatory NIH Public Access Policy has brought compliance rates up from 4% to roughly 75%, however, there is still work to be done. What are the strategies that institutions and researches should be considering to address that remaining 25% “non-compliance” with the NIH Public Access Policy? How can we further expand public access to tax-funded research articles, and support our faculty and students in this endeavor?
Institutional Open Access resolutions such as Harvard’s Open Access Policy have helped accommodate the NIH Public Access Policy requirements, but as yet, medical schools have been slow to adopt institutional level open access policies, including Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health – What have been the challenges? Furthermore, in May, the Harvard Library Faculty Advisory Council issued a public letter calling on faculty to promote open access scholarly publishing, noting “Many large journal publishers have made the scholarly communication environment fiscally unsustainable and academically restrictive”. How can we work together to help achieve each of these goals and expand Open Access to biomedical and health research?
In recognition of Open Access Week 2012, four distinguished panelists explored the challenges and opportunities for increasing NIH Public Access Policy compliance and open access efforts at Harvard:
- Peter Suber, Director of the Harvard Open Access Project, Berkman Center Fellow, author of Open Access
- Amy Brand, Assistant Provost for Faculty Appointments and Information
- Winston Hide, HSPH Professor of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
- Patrick Taylor, Assistant Clinical Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School; Director of Ethics Analysis and Applications in the Informatics Program and Staff Scientist, Children’s Hospital Boston, (Formerly Chief Counsel for Research Affairs at Children’s Hospital and Former Academic Fellow at the Petrie-Flom Center).
Moderators:
- Scott Lapinski, HMS Digital Resources and Services Librarian and Open Access Liaison
- June Casey, HLS Librarian for Open Access and Scholarly Communication
The panel was followed by two brief “101” sessions on individual-level implementation of both the NIH’s Public Access and Harvard’s Open Access mandates.
Co-sponsored by the Office of Scholarly Communications, the Right to Research Coalition & Universities Allied for Essential Medicines & HLS Advocates for Human Rights