Washingtonpost.com article: NIH

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Tuesday, 18 January 2005, p. A15

NIH Revises Plan for Quick,  Free Access to Study Results
 
By Rick Weiss
 
An ambitious proposal to make the results of federally funded medical
research available to the public quickly and for free has been scaled back
by the National Institutes of Health under pressure from scientific
publishers, who argued that the plan would eat into their profits and harm
the scientific enterprise they support.

The initial plan, encouraged by Congress and hailed by patient advocacy
groups, called for the results of NIH-funded research to be posted on a
publicly accessible Web site within six months after they are published in
a scientific journal. Most research results now are available only by
subscription to the journal -- at a cost that often reaches into the
thousands of dollars -- or on a pay-per-article basis that can cost $100
or more for two or three articles.

In the final version of the plan, however, the recommended six-month
deadline for posting results has been stretched to a year. That change has
angered many advocates of public access, who have argued it isn't fair
that taxpayers must either wait or ante up to see the results of research
they have already paid for.

A scheduled announcement of the policy was abruptly canceled last week by
the Department of Health and Human Services, of which NIH is a part. Two
sources within the department, speaking on the condition of anonymity
because they are not authorized to speak for the department, said the
announcement was delayed in order to keep it off the federal agenda until
after today's confirmation hearings for Michael Leavitt, President Bush's
nominee to become HHS secretary.

Sensitivities about the relationship between NIH and private industry are
especially high these days. The agency has been pilloried in the past year
by Congress and others for allowing many of its scientists to collaborate
with drug and biotech companies in lucrative deals that raise
conflict-of-interest issues. Several NIH-watchers said one reason for
canceling the rollout of the new plan might have been to avoid calling
attention to what could be perceived as another instance of the agency
failing to stand up to moneyed interests -- in this case scientific
publishers, the largest of which have enjoyed skyrocketing profit margins
of 30 percent or more in recent years.

"There's been so much embarrassment flying around about transparency and
the public interest at NIH, it's just coming to a head," said Bob Witeck,
a spokesman for the Alliance for Taxpayer Access, a coalition of groups
favoring easier access to publicly funded scientific findings.

Several business coalitions -- including the Association of American
Publishers, whose president is Patricia Schroeder, a former congresswoman
from Colorado -- had lobbied strenuously against the initial proposal,
which they said would jeopardize many journals' existence by undercutting
their paid subscriber base.

"The publishers were crawling all over the place," said Rick Johnson,
director of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, an
alliance of academic and research libraries trying to change the current
system. He and others have argued that few scientists or libraries would
cancel their subscriptions just because NIH-funded content was available
free elsewhere, because such research represents only a fraction of the
content of most journals.

Johnson also noted that the revised policy of asking scientists to post
their results within 12 months of publication was a minimal request,
because many journals already make their content freely available on the
Internet after a year. (The policy has focused on getting scientists to
post their results on a centralized, government Web site rather than
trying to force journals to make their pages public, which raises
copyright and other issues.)

NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni denied that the agency had buckled under
industry pressure. Zerhouni said in a telephone interview that there are
so many different kinds of publishers -- including many nonprofit
publishers run by scientific societies, which reinvest their profits in
scientific and educational endeavors -- that it did not make sense to
demand a six-month release deadline for all.

"I could not prove that a six-month deadline would not harm a significant
part of the industry," Zerhouni said. "The new policy continues to call
for release of information as soon as possible after publication, but it
really leaves it in the hands of the scientists to decide when. What's
important is that we're creating a precedent in which the agency that
funds medical research is establishing a public database containing all
its scientific output. I am certain that over time people will see this as
a win-win."

Some advocates for public access agreed that even a voluntary policy
encouraging release within 12 months could result in more access than is
available today, if the NIH makes clear to its grantees that it is serious
about wanting them to participate.

"The next year will tell if it's working. If a lot of people do it, it
won't matter what the language is," said Michael Eisen, co-founder of the
Public Library of Science, which publishes scientific journals freely
accessible to the public. "What's important is for NIH to convincingly say
they're behind it."

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