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 ---------- 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 ---------- 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."
