ASM Comments on NIH Proposal

From MLA Legislative Task Force Listserv

> November 2, 2004
>
>
> NIH should be sure of long-term support for its open access
> publishing proposal, ASM cautions
>
> An enterprise as vital to biomedical research as the dissemination of
> research results should not be left to the vagaries of the annual
> appropriations process, the American Association for Microbiology
> asserts in its formal comments on NIH's proposal for providing open
> access to published research funded by the agency.
>
> "What assurance does the NIH research community have that this
> initiative will be timely, accurate, complete and sustained in the long
> term?" the association asks.
>
> The issue of "resources and good stewardship of biomedical research
> funding" is crucial to the NIH plan, and NIH should "establish the scope
> of the initiative in terms of numbers of articles and estimate the
> resources needed," the association urges in comments signed by ASM
> President James Tiedje and Samuel Kaplan, who chairs the ASM
> Publications Board.
>
> The issue of archiving is critical for science, ASM notes, asking what
> reassurance the National Institutes of Health can offer the scientific
> community that its PubMed Central database "will be able to sustain over
> time a complete archive, not just a subset, of NIH supported research
> articles."
>
> The issue is especially important in view of the "unknown effects" the
> initiative might have on library archives and print journals, the
> association points out.
>
> An allied issue is whether PMC will be able to keep up with progress in
> publishing technology if NIH requires that an electronic copy of each
> article be submitted. "If the PMC becomes the final arbiter of the
> technical guidelines for the transmission and posting of electronic
> manuscripts, will assurances be provided that such guidelines keep pace
> with developments in the field?" ASM asks.
>
> Reluctance to vest so much power over the scientific literature in a
> government agency has been a recurrent theme in letters and testimony
> from ASM and other publishing community stakeholders to NIH since the
> agency published its draft plan on "Enhanced Access to Research
> Information" Sept. 3.
>
> A subsequent identical posting in the Federal Register on Sept. 17
> extended the 60-day deadline for comments to Nov. 16.
>
> Expanding on another common response to the plan, concerning the effect
> of a possible "author pays" publishing model on NIH grantees and their
> institutions, ASM questions whether NIH intends to make submission of a
> manuscript for archiving and posting "a condition of receiving an NIH
> grant or award." (see Washington Fax 8/31/04)
>
> The proposal states that "NIH intends to request that its grantees and
> supported Principal Investigators provide the NIH with electronic copies
> of all final version manuscripts upon acceptance for publication if the
> research was supported in whole or in part by NIH funding." Further, NIH
> offers to archive those final manuscripts on PMC until they are made
> public six months after publication, as stated in the plan.
>
> Concerns have been raised whether the new publishing process would be a
> drain on resources better devoted to the research. In an Aug. 9 letter
> to NIH Director Elias Zerhouni, Tiedje and Kaplan asked NIH to add funds
> to grants to cover publication costs. (see Washington Fax 9/1/04)
>
> In the Oct. 25 comments, ASM focuses several observations on the months
> between archiving an accepted manuscript and opening a published article
> to public use. During that period would the manuscripts be subject to
> Freedom of Information Act requests, and what other legal ramifications
> can be envisioned, the association asks. For example, how will a
> publication date be established for purposes of patent law?
>
> NIH should define clearly when a supported research study will be
> considered "published" for the purpose of public posting, the
> association asserts. ASM recommends the six-month clock be started on
> the "date a peer-reviewed journal containing the article is issued by a
> publisher."
>
> To avoid several possible pitfalls, ASM also suggests that "only the
> final published article be provided to NIH. ASM further advocates
> linking from PMC to a journal's web site for the final posted article.
>
> "Limiting the submission to final published papers at six months would
> accomplish the goal of supporting public access," ASM reasons.
>
> A manuscript that is sent to PMC as it is accepted by a journal likely
> will be very different from the published article, ASM points out. The
> worry is that with more than one draft of an article in the system one
> or more iterations of a manuscript as well as a published article might
> be made public.
>
> Further, if NIH is going to handle manuscripts, ASM questions how the
> agency will react to such issues as "scientific misconduct and disputes
> among and between authors, as well as the final screening for use of
> microbiology contrary to human welfare" that arise in the time between
> acceptance of a journal article and its publication.
>
> Since only a portion of the articles in scientific journals result from
> NIH-funded studies, PMC should "clearly state that it is not a
> comprehensive archive of all biomedical research," ASM asserts. NIH
> policy should, however, state that PMC will post all NIH-supported
> research papers published in the peer-reviewed research.
>
> The agency should consider the ramifications of its open access policy
> for life science research funded by other agencies and for research that
> is not federally funded, "including the potential effect of disparate
> treatment on non-NIH-supported research," the association adds. "Will
> publishers have to track and make available several separate and
> disparate streams of articles?"
>
> The NIH initiative deserves "careful attention and further dialogue and
> cooperation with scholarly publishers before its implementation," the
> association suggests. ASM publishes 11 journals that print over 7,000
> scientific articles yearly, the comment document notes.