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Symposium #375
Saturday, February 19, 2005
9:45–11:45 a.m., Marriott Wardman Ballroom Salon 1
Washington, D.C.
The publication and dissemination of scientific ideas and discoveries provide the foundation for future progress in science and medicine. For researchers, publishing is the “coin of the realm,” the channel through which they share their findings with their colleagues and, potentially, with a broader audience, including physicians, educators, and the public.
Many policymakers, scientists, and members of public-interest organizations in the U.S., the U.K. and elsewhere are increasingly demanding that the results of scientific and medical research that is publicly funded be made more accessible to the public, by taking advantage of electronic publications and archives. For example, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently proposed a policy, in response to demands of the U.S. Congress, which would request of grantees the deposit of peer-reviewed, published articles reporting on NIH-funded research into PubMed Central, a full-text repository managed by the National Library of Medicine, for free public access six months following publication. Since its announcement in September, the policy has been widely discussed among scientists, publishers, research funders and policy-makers and has been both lauded and criticized by members of these groups.
Using the origin and current status of the NIH Public Access Policy as a framework, the panel will discuss this and other recent developments in access policies, both in the United States and abroad, their implications for researchers and the public, and the complex considerations of scientific societies and their journals as they seek to improve access to the scientific literature.
Moderators:
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