U.S. National Institutes of Health Policy: please express support!

Chemists without Borders - and especially our colleagues in the U.S. - please consider writing a comment in support of the U.S. National Institutes of Health' Public Access Policy! Comments are due tomorrow, Saturday, May 31, at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time. The U.S. NIH Public Access policy requires that publicly-funded medical research in the U.S. be made publicly available within 12 months of publication - a more-than-generous-embargo to reassure the publishing community.

If you are not familiar with the details of the policy, you can still respond to question # 4 expressing strong support for the policy in principles. You might want to refer to the Chemists Without Borders Open Chemistry Position Statement, which can be downloaded from here.

Details from Peter Suber on Open Access News:

Time is short to comment on the NIH policy

Public comments on the OA mandate at the NIH are due by 5:00 pm (Eastern Standard Time), Saturday, May 31, 2008, less than two days from now. 

Submit your comments through the NIH web form.  But before you do, see some of the comments already submitted.  The pro-OA comments will give you ideas, and the anti-OA comments will show you what objections to answer and what perspective might predominate if you don't send in your own.

This time the NIH wants separate answers to four separate questions.  The web form has four separate spaces for them:

1. Do you have recommendations for alternative implementation approaches to those already reflected in the NIH Public Access Policy?
2. In light of the change in law that makes NIH’s public access policy mandatory, do you have recommendations for monitoring and ensuring compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy?
3. In addition to the information already posted [here], what additional information, training or communications related to the NIH Public Access Policy would be helpful to you?
4. Do you have other comments related to the NIH Public Access Policy?

If you're thinking that the NIH just concluded a round of public comments for its March 20 meeting, you're right.  See the comments generated by that round (and my blog post on them).  One persistent publisher objection is that the policy has not been sufficiently vetted and one purpose of the new round no doubt is to give the stakeholders one more chance to speak.  We must use it.  Publishers will.

Please submit a comment and spread the word.  Even if you have no suggestions to improve the policy, it's important to express your support.

Thanks to Peter Suber on
"http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/05/time-is-short-to-comment-on-nih-policy.html">Open Access News