US govt ponders "open access" to research

A debate in the USA over whether government-funded research into health-related issues should be made freely available to taxpayers is moving into the Democratic party-controlled Congress. Supporters of the case for reform argue that the National Institutes of Health is paid for by taxpayers and that it ought to be a condition of receiving research grants that the product will be made available to all. Opponents are mostly in the specialist medical journal publishing business.

A coalition of patient advocacy groups and libraries has succeeded in getting their position taken up in the legislature, with amendments incorporated in the latest Health and Human Services funding bill.

Heather Joseph, executive director of the Washington DC-based Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, told the Washington Post that most journals carry research that is not funded by the NIH, so the effect on subscriptions need not be critical. The Public Library of Science, for example, has published, since October 2003, a peer-reviewed print and on-line scientific journal, entitled PLoS Biology, and has since launched six more similar publications.