Nat'l Institutes of Health: ALL their papers will be free to access starting July 1!!!

[thewayne]

There used to be up to a twelve-month embargo on the release of the full papers of NIH research, starting in July that goes away! People were able to access the abstracts for free, but if you needed the full paper, you had to have insider access via library or other research connections. But now you won't need an intermediary!

Of course, there's always a chance that Our Beloved Leader or other Powers That Be will shut this down. But this is THE Director of NIH that announced this, so with luck it will hold.

https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/who-we-are/nih-director/statements/accelerating-access-research-results-new-implementation-date-2024-nih-public-access-policy

Comments

[thewayne]

As I think you know, I work in a library running interlibrary loan. As a part of that, I subscribe to a librarian-only mailing list for people like I in ILL, it's a help group for trying to find articles and books that are otherwise shown as unavailable in the OCLC/WorldCat system. And we have a very high success rate of filling requests from other librarians. And the number of journal articles that are locked behind paywalls is staggering. I couldn't get a couple of articles for my wife about her peculiar form of cancer without going to this list, and I had them within an hour of posting my request.

There's definitely costs involved in conducting peer review of articles for publication. But then these articles are locked up for seemingly eternity! It's very frustrating for everyone except the publishers. I really like NIH releasing their articles because we, the tax-payers, HAVE PAID FOR THIS RESEARCH!

[white_aster]

Oh, I'm with you. I agree totally. I mostly blame the journal industry for this weird medieval throwback system they've got going, that's built on government-funded research and freely-given writing and peer-reviewing labor. Also just a general gripe about the current push to make scientists do more with less. I hope that they write the increased costs into their grants! Also also, me rolling my eyes at This Guy somehow making an existing planned change in policy that he's inherited into a press release about himself.

(Also, another option for accessing papers, unless it's against your institution's policy: if you can look at the abstract info on the journal's website, look for the "corresponding author", and email them plus the first listed author and ask them for a copy - when I was at the bench, I would have been freaking flattered to hell to have someone ask me for a copy of my papers.)

[thewayne]

While I haven't corresponded with paper writers, I did once email chat with a thesis writer.  Quite surprised him, that was kinda fun.

[white_aster]

Oh man, someone's thesis? You no doubt made his DAY. It's a given that no one wants to read your thesis. :P

[thewayne]

There's a book called What Charles Dickens Ate And What Jane Austen (something, I can't remember).  And his thesis was along those lines, life in Victorian/Edwardian times.  I was able to get a microfiche copy of it, sadly our library's fiche reader had died and I was unable to read it.