Homer Simpson at the NIH

["Joseph J. Esposito" <espositoj@gmail.com>]

The LA Times editorial made me think of The Simpsons Movie. 
When Bart tells Homer that "this is the worst thing that ever 
happened to me," Homer's cheerful, paternal reply is, "It's the 
worst thing that ever happened to you--so far!"  Yes, it can get 
worse ...

Of course taxpayer-funded research results should be made 
available at no or marginal cost to the citizenry.  I'm a 
citizen, too, and I support this, just as I support publishing or 
posting requirements for any grant-funded research.  (All 
universities should be doing this, too, by providing the 
resources to their university presses.)  The problem is that this 
is NOT what the NIH is proposing.  The NIH is not funding the 
apparatus for publishing.  It hopes to "borrow" it from the 
publishing industry, which has its own interests and 
prerogatives.  This is not a moral argument but an economic one. 
What the NIH lacks is the moral courage to stand up to its 
economic situation.

In an alternate universe, where the NIH acted thoughtfully and 
responsibly, the NIH would fund and develop the means to review 
and publish material based on NIH research.  The money for this 
would come from other areas; it has to come from somewhere.  If 
someone, anyone, developed a way to take advantage of the open 
access, peer-reviewed material (text-mining? authoring of 
syntheses?), that's fine.

The problem with the NIH plan is that the catch-and-release 
publishing it relies on (exclusive publishing rights for 6 or 12 
months, open access thereafter) will inexorably undermine the 
economics of the original publications, even if those rights are 
temporarily exclusive. Older material has economic value, even if 
that value is in building Web destination sites that can be used 
to generate traffic for other revenue-based services. Publishers 
will factor in the lost value of the older material.

Publishers will naturally (they already are) be thinking of where 
best to put their capital to work.  Over time less money will go 
into maintaining the current system; smaller publishers, 
especially small not-for-profit publishers, will suffer most. 
The overall costs of scholarly communications will rise.  The NIH 
authorized repositories will exist, but be of diminishing value. 
By analogy, any American taxpayer can go to the IRS site for tax 
information, but most taxpayers have learned to go elsewhere, to 
books, other commercial Web sites, and accountants.

To put this simply:  the question for a publisher is, Would you 
rather make 10% working with NIH-sponsored work or 20% working 
outside the NIH umbrella? The investment will move away from the 
NIH and the system that the NIH astonishingly thinks will 
persevere forever will becoming less valuable to everyone.

But as Homer says, the worst is yet to come.

Joe

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ray English" <Ray.English@oberlin.edu>
To: "Liblicense L" <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Sunday, July 29, 2007 12:32 PM
Subject: LA Times editorial on accessing NIH research

> 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.
[SNIP]