Well said Les! Irrespective what agencies such as NIH
are willing to do, individual researchers and their
institutions should set up institutional OA archives
and as more and more such archives come into being and
get populated with refereed papers we will move
towards the goal of universal OAA.
Arun
[Subbiah Arunachalam]
--- Leslie Carr <lac_at_ECS.SOTON.AC.UK> wrote:
> After all this speculation I have to say that my
> quibble is not with
> the policy as stated (though it is undoubtedly
> flawed in expression and
> implementation) but with the aims of the policy
> which are to
>
> "1) create a stable archive of peer-reviewed
> research publications
> resulting from NIH-funded research to ensure the
> permanent preservation
> of these vital published research findings
> 2) secure a searchable compendium of these
> peer-reviewed research
> publications that NIH and its awardees can use to
> manage more
> efficiently and to understand better their research
> portfolios, monitor
> scientific productivity, and ultimately, help set
> research priorities;
> 3) make published results of NIH-funded research
> more readily
> accessible to the public, health care providers,
> educators, and
> scientists."
>
> That the primary declared aim is irrelevant to open
> access (let the
> journal publishers preserve their output) is an
> inauspicious basis for
> an OA policy. That the second aim can be achieved
> without any open
> access whatsoever (a bibliographic database would
> suffice) is still
> less encouraging. That More Ready Access (rather
> than Open Access) to
> scientific results by scientists is only admitted at
> the final word in
> the last aim is completely perplexing. That "the man
> on the Clapham
> omnibus" (as we refer to Joe Public on this side of
> the Atlantic) is
> given greater priority in access to scientific
> research than the people
> who are engaged in scientific research is just
> self-defeating when
> devising a policy which is addressed to scientists
> and which is
> supposed to make their research more effective!
>
> No wonder the resulting policy is hardly a clarion
> call for open
> access. But don't pin the blame on the policy,
> direct it at the terms
> of reference! If you want a strong OA policy from
> the NIH, get them to
> admit that OA is what they consider important!
>
> (Of course, an interoperable network of OA
> repositories, maintained by
> research institutions and their funders, will
> indirectly provide
> everything that the NIH's current set of aims lays
> out. And, as we have
> seen in the UK, it may be expedient to remind
> Universities that
> maintaining a managed archive of their own research
> outputs has
> innumerable benefits for the institution as well as
> the researcher. But
> still, to put Open Access as the last priority seems
> so deliberately
> awkward as to require some kind of censure!)
> ---
> Les Carr
>
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Received on Sat Feb 05 2005 - 08:43:25 GMT