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Academics, take 2 minutes to help change this world for good! Natalia Koudinova 08 Nov 2004 12:35 UTC

This is an open access communication. Permission is granted to re-publish
it in any media, provided that this letter SPARC OA Forum original letter
URL ( <https://arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/1269.html> ) and the
authorship are properly acknowledged

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7 November 2004

Dear Scholars, Librarians, Policy makers, Funding and charitable agencies
executives,

Please take 2 minutes to have this world changed. There are just few days
left to meet the NIH deadline for a public comment on an NIH (Sept 3,
2004) note and call for comments on
"<http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-04-064.html>Enhanced
Public Access to NIH Research Information".

All you need is to fulfill few questionnaire fields in an original NIH
form (accessible
<http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/public_access/add.htm>at this link)
and press a Submit button.

It took just two minutes (!) of my time to tick twice I "agree" to support
for the NIH plan and provide basic info (such as name and affiliation).

NIH form (in addition to a submitter name and affiliation) asks two basics
questions . The first one is regarding "the proposed Public Access
CONCEPT" (simple tick 'agree' is sufficient unless you decide to type your
comments in the provided comments field). The second question asks for a
"feedback on the proposed IMPLEMENTATION PLAN". Again. simple "agree" will
be sufficient unless you decide to provide additional sentense or two. The
detailed wording of the NIH plan on both questionnaire items is provided
below as supplement.

Can you imagine that NIH plan approval means that great number of
scholarly articles will become available at the NIH PubMed Central web
right next year. Free of charge and with no subscription abuse. In case
you reside outside US, NIH plan may prompt your government to follow the
US pioneering experience, so, please don't think the NIH plan is not your
nation affair. Remember science is global!

As a scientist I feel confident that NIH plan does not make harm to
scholars. Oppositely, the plan aims "establishing a comprehensive,
searchable electronic [archival] resource of NIH-funded research results
[first published in regular peer-review journals] and providing free
access to all [i.e. scholars and public]". In fact, such public archive -
<http://www.pubmedcentral.gov/>PubMed Central (PMC) - does exist, so, it
will be enhanced with the articles published previously. Could you ever
dream of it?

But dont' be fooled, this will not happen automatically, with no support
by you. Commercial (and even scientific society) publishers aggressively
oppose NIH plan.
<http://neurobiologyoflipids.org/content/3/10/neurolipids112004-02.pdf>They
have what to loose, do you? As journal publishers restrict access to your
published articles why not to allow NIH co-deposit your contribution in a
central searchable and most trusted archive? Sounds reasonable? It sounds
great, don't you think so?

Remember. It may take as little as 2 minutes to send your vote to the NIH.
The NIH comment form
<http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/public_access/add.htm>is available at
this link. Don't wait your colleagues do it. Do it now yourself.

Alexei Koudinov, MD, PhD
neuroscientist and editor
http://neurobiologyoflipids.org/myjournalindex.html

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Supplement:

Both questionnaire items of the NIH comment form are spelled out in the
NIH plan as follows: "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... NIH considers
final manuscripts to be an important record of the research funded by the
government and will archive these manuscripts and any appropriate
supplementary information in PubMed Central (PMC), NIH's digital
repository for biomedical research. Six months after an NIH supported
research study's publication or sooner if the publisher agrees the
manuscript will be made available freely to the public through PMC. If the
publisher requests, the author's final version of the publication will be
replaced in the PMC archive by the final publisher's copy with an
appropriate link to the publisher's electronic database.

...NIH trusts that the up to six month delay to public archiving in PMC
recommended by the policy will not result in unreasonable or
disproportionate charges to grantees. As with all other costs, NIH expects
its grantees to be careful stewards of Federal funds and to carefully
manage these resources. We will carefully monitor requested budgets and
other costing information and would consider options to ensure that
grantees budgets are not unduly affected by this policy." Moreover, "As
with NIH's DNA sequence and genetics databases, this digital archive in
PMC is expected to be fully searchable to enhance retrieval and can be
shared with other international digital repositories to maximize archiving
and to provide widespread access to this information. It is anticipated
that investigators applying for new and competing renewal support from the
NIH will utilize this resource by providing links in their applications to
their PubMed archived information. This practice will increase the
efficiency of the application and review process."