September 2004 - ASBMB Comments on "Enhanced Public Access to National Institutes of Health (NIH) Research Information"

I am writing as President of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) to provide you with our comments on the NIH�s notice, �Enhanced Public Access to National Institutes of Health (NIH) Research Information�, which appeared in the NIH Guide to Grants and Contracts on September 3, 2004, as well as in the Federal Register on September 17. As a publisher of four journals, including the Journal of Biological Chemistry, we appreciate the opportunity to comment on this important proposal.

The ASBMB fully supports the concept that scientific publications be made freely accessible to the public in a timely manner. Thus, we support that section of the 3 September 2004 proposed policy calling for NIH-funded research publications to be made freely accessible to the public by 6 months after publication. For ASBMB journals, all manuscripts accepted for publication are freely available to the public online without delay. The NIH proposal will not enhance public access to ASBMB articles beyond that already in place, but provides a mechanism for the NIH to monitor and manage its research portfolio.

We do not support the proposal that the final redacted publisher�s version of papers be deposited in PubMed Central. We propose instead that the NIH link to the publisher�s versions of the articles. There are several advantages to this alternative. This would avoid the existence of two �official� versions of the published documents, reducing the opportunity for a third party to alter the files, and avoid government control of the scientific literature. Furthermore, the existing archives of many scientific journals, such as ASBMB journals, offer advanced searching, enhanced functionality and many other reader services that are presently unavailable at PubMed Central and would require additional funding to provide.

Readers are far better served by reading ASBMB papers and those from over 650 other journals from the HighWire archive than from PubMed Central. In addition, a PubMed Central archive with only NIH-funded papers will be incomplete with only a minority sample of the literature published in ASBMB and other HighWire journals. For example, only 40% of the papers published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry are from NIH-supported investigators. In addition, all papers in the HighWire archive are connected, through shared links in bibliographies and to related papers, into a fully functional, complete site better serving all readers. Accordingly, the system we currently use provides more comprehensive reader and author services and archival capabilities than PubMed Central.

Thus, we are in full accordance with the spirit of the proposed NIH policy relating to accessibility of NIH-funded research, but have serious reservations about the adequacy of PubMed Central as the repository for the scientific literature.

Please let us know if you would like additional information.

Sincerely,

Judith Bond
President
ASBMB