The NIH has tried to increase public access to publicly-funded research through a system of depositing drafts of published research, a compromise reached when publishers baulked at a required open access system. Now that the Publishing Research Consortium has had a chance to analyze the results, how has it been going?
In a word: it’s a “flop” – according to the Washington Post.
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.”
The news story goes on to cover some legislative moves to force publishers (and researchers) to make their research public. Stay tuned.
