LA Times editorial on accessing NIH research

[Ray English <Ray.English@oberlin.edu>]

Opinion
Editorial
Accessing NIH research
Congress should grant taxpayers free access to the medical 
studies they fund

Los Angeles Times
July 27, 2007
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-nih27jul27,0,2419093.story?

Taxpayers pony up $28 billion annually for the National 
Institutes of Health, the world's largest source of funding for 
medical research. The payoff, in addition to the occasional 
spectacular breakthrough, is more than 60,000 published studies 
each year.

The first beneficiaries of that knowledge aren't doctors or 
patients.

They are the publishers of the journals that review, print and 
sell the results to subscribers. Your tax dollars may have 
financed the clinical trial of a new treatment regime for the 
rare disease you've contracted, but you'll probably still have to 
pay to see the results.

Now, some lawmakers are trying to increase the public's access to 
this research. In a new funding bill for the NIH, the House of 
Representatives required that the results of the studies the 
government funds must be made freely available online within 12 
months of their publication. The requirement builds on a 
2-year-old NIH initiative to gather research in a free website 
called PubMed Central. That initiative was voluntary. But so few 
researchers complied -- less than 5% in the first year -- that 
proponents of "open access" to scientific research have lobbied 
to make it mandatory.

The main opposition has come from publishers, who argue that 
making research available free could ruin the smaller journals 
that serve some medical specialties. Libraries may stop 
subscribing to costly niche journals if they know the material 
will be available for free within a year. And if those journals 
die off, researchers will lose the valuable services they supply, 
such as rounding up experts to review studies before they're 
published.

While publishers have an important role to play, particularly in 
judging a study's credibility, that doesn't mean they're entitled 
to squeeze cash from that study in perpetuity. An open access 
requirement could force changes in some journals' business 
models, but a growing number have found ways to succeed while 
making research available for free -- for example, by charging 
researchers fees for publication. And the 12-month period of 
exclusivity enables publishers to continue selling journals to 
those with the most immediate need to see them.

At the same time, opening up access to NIH-funded studies will 
increase their impact on researchers around the world. That's 
very much in the public interest. The more information that's 
available, the more chance someone will leverage it into another 
medical breakthrough.

(c) 2007 LA Times

Ray English
Director of Libraries
Oberlin College