NIH Flooded With Comments on Public Access Proposal

摘要

Prodded by Congress, the National Institutes of Health this fall solicited the public's views on a plan that would require NIH-funded investigators' papers to be posted on the Internet 6 months after a journal publishes them (Science, 10 September, p. 1548). And the public took notice. NIH received about 6000 comments by the 16 November deadline. A brief review of the first batch of 800 or so-the only ones NIH made available by press time-indicates support from librarians, patient advocates, teachers, and individual scientists. But although some major research organizations back NIH's proposal, many scientific societies and commercial publishers have called for NIH to delay or scrap it.