Government Health Researchers Pressed to Share Data at No Charge
- From: "MikeV" <mvidler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2006 15:10:22 GMT
Government Health Researchers Pressed to Share Data at No Charge
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 10, 2006; A17
Political momentum is growing for a change in federal policy that
would require government-funded health researchers to make the
results of their work freely available on the Internet.
Advocates say taxpayers should not have to pay hundreds of dollars
for subscriptions to scientific journals to see the results of
research they already have paid for. Many journals charge $35 or
more just to see one article -- a cost that can snowball as patients
seek the latest information about their illnesses.
Publishers have successfully fought the "public access" movement for
years, saying the approach threatens their subscription base and
would undercut their roles as peer reviewers and archivists of
scientific knowledge.
But the battle lines shifted last month when a National Institutes
of Health report revealed that a compromise policy enacted last
spring -- in which NIH-funded scientists were encouraged but not
required to post their findings on the Internet -- has been a flop.
Less than 4 percent filled out the online form to make their results
available for public viewing.
Now a key federal advisory committee has recommended that scientists
who receive NIH grants be required to post their results within six
months of publication. And the Senate is considering legislation
that would mandate such disclosures for an even broader array of
federally funded scientists.
"Given the exponential growth in new information, and how quickly
new information becomes old information, it is very important that
everybody . . . gets reasonably timely access to new research," said
Thomas Detre, an emeritus vice chancellor at the University of
Pittsburgh Medical Center. He is chairman of the Board of Regents of
the National Library of Medicine, which manages a publicly
accessible database of medical research called PubMed Central.
The new push has opponents scrambling.
"We think it is too early to jump into a mandatory system," said
James Pringle of the Publishing Research Consortium, a loose-knit
group created to fight the public-access movement.
It is not just profit-hungry publishers who object to mandatory
public access, opponents emphasize. Some nonprofit scientific and
professional societies fear that without the income they receive
from their research journals they will no longer be able to finance
their educational and training programs.
"We make money off our journals, but it all goes back to enhance
publishing and to enhance the needs of our scientific community,"
said Martin Frank, executive director of the Bethesda-based American
Physiological Society, which publishes 14 journals. The society runs
an award-winning mentoring program for minority scientists and
educational programs for elementary schools and high schools.
But advocates point to the growing number of journals that have
adopted business plans that allow them to offer their contents free
of charge. Some charge fees to researchers for publishing their work
instead of charging for subscriptions or page views. Researchers can
pay the fees with grant money -- potentially cost-neutral for the
government, advocates say, and agencies could save some of the
millions of dollars they spend on journal subscriptions for
university libraries.
The push for public access got a boost last month when the NIH,
responding to congressional inquiries, released a progress report on
the voluntary program that began in May. Under that program -- a
compromise between advocates and publishers, crafted by agency
Director Elias Zerhouni -- NIH-funded scientists whose research had
been accepted by a journal were encouraged to display their final
manuscripts on PubMed Central within a year of publication.
By submitting a final draft and not the published article,
researchers could steer clear of legal problems arising from the
fact that journals own the copyrights to their published material.
The report concluded that from May 1 to Dec. 31, the policy prompted
the submission of 1,636 articles to PubMed -- or 3.8 percent of the
43,000 relevant articles published during that interval. That is
"not acceptable," said program coordinator Norka Ruiz Bravo, NIH's
deputy director for extramural research. "We need to change
something, but what that something is is not clear yet."
Others at NIH say the answer is clear to them. A National Library of
Medicine working group concluded last November that scientists are
well aware of the voluntary program -- the NIH has sent multiple
e-mails to grant recipients, published a pamphlet and posted details
on the Web -- and that the online submission system works well. The
best way to boost compliance, a majority of the group concluded, is
to make it mandatory.
In February, the library's Board of Regents made a formal
recommendation to Zerhouni that grant recipients be required to post
their papers within six months after publication -- with some
"flexibility" for infrequently published journals that might be hurt
by free access to their contents within six months.
Ruiz Bravo said the agency is considering the recommendation, but
the publishing consortium is fighting back with data of its own. The
group recently commissioned a survey of 1,128 scientists. It
concluded that although 85 percent of scientists "have heard of"
NIH's public access effort, only 18 percent know "a lot" or "quite a
lot" about it. That suggests NIH could still do more to promote the
voluntary policy, Pringle said.
Even some who generally support public access want more time to make
the voluntary system work, saying the system for posting articles is
cumbersome and could harm consumers because it posts versions that
have not been fully fact-checked by journal editors.
Public-access advocates say opponents are simply stalling.
"It has to be mandatory," said Rich Roberts, chief scientific
officer of New England BioLabs in Ipswich, Mass. -- one of many who
think that most scientists will not get around to posting their work
unless they are told they must.
Some in Congress appear to agree. After years of asking NIH to
encourage public access, Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) and
Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) upped the ante in December by introducing the
American Center for Cures Act. It would require recipients of
grants -- not only from the NIH but also from the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention and the Agency for Healthcare
Research and Quality -- to post their final manuscripts within six
months after publication, or risk losing funding.
That is an option that makes publishers cringe. But it could get
worse.
A spokesman for Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) said last week that the
senator has been mulling over broader language that would compel
public disclosure of research findings from an even greater number
of federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency
and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
With that option looming, the National Library of Medicine's
recommendation -- which applies only to NIH-funded research -- could
start to look good to publishers.
.
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