NIH Open Access Recommendation Spurs Heated Debate
-- Library Journal, 8/30/2004
Calling a recent proposal by the National Institutes of Health to mandate open access archiving a “radical new policy” included “at the eleventh hour” by a U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Subcommittee, the Association of American Publishers (AAP) last week launched a counteroffensive. In separate letters, one from AAP President Patricia Schroeder and another signed by a trio of AAP members, the AAP urged a series of meeting with publishers, and put forth the broad strokes of its opposition. “The House has held no hearings and has established no evidentiary record,” Schroeder wrote, noting that, in the United Kingdom, Parliament recently held hearings on the issue.
The letter from three members of the AAP’s Professional/Scholarly Publishing Division raised tough questions and legitimate concerns about how the NIH policy would function practically, including a concern over whether the policy would be an “unfunded mandate” or whether Congress would make funds available to ensure compliance. It also attacked the NIH’s core argument: that taxpayers should have access to taxpayer-funded funded research. Meanwhile, a group of academic libraries and major library organizations joined a coalition to support open access to NIH-funded research. The Alliance for Taxpayer Access (ATA) is comprised of libraries, patient and health policy advocates, and others who will urge the NIH and Congress to move forward with plans to make the NIH’s publicly-funded research freely accessible online.
