More bang for the taxpayer's buck
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* Janet Rae Brooks

*   © 2008 Canadian Medical Association

Consider it a milestone for public access to the findings of publicly funded research. Commencing this April, researchers funded by the US National Institutes of Health will be required to send copies of their final manuscripts to the National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central database, where they will be made available to the general public 1 year after publication in peer-reviewed journals.

A National Institutes of Health directive issued Jan. 11, 2008, mandated that researchers comply with the federal agency's public-access policy, which was initially implemented as a voluntary measure in 2005. But a provision of a $940-billion spending bill signed into law by President George W. Bush in December 2007 moved the bar from requesting to requiring.

Researchers, libraries, citizens and patient advocacy groups pushed lawmakers for the change after less than 5% of researchers voluntarily submitted copies of their manuscripts to PubMed Central.

Proponents say the change will speed medical progress, improve human health, help libraries cope with rising subscription costs and offer taxpayers access to research for which they annually cough up about US$100 apiece to cover the National Institute of Health's US$29-billion budget.

“Technology has enabled this policy,” says Heather Joseph, executive director of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, a consortium of academic libraries. “It was definitely a polarizing issue, but the reality is that it gives us a tremendous new resource to do things we haven't even thought of yet.”

About 70 000 more manuscripts will be available annually to researchers and the public, Joseph added.

Several journal publishers opposed the change, fearing that making articles free would reduce their advertising and subscription revenue. They also claimed the policy undermines their copyright.

But commencing May 25, 2008, researchers will be required to include the PubMed Central or National Institutes of Health submission number for all articles cited in their future grant applications and progress reports. Failure to do so would jeopardize future funding.