A letter of support for the extension of the NIH OA policy to all US Federal funding agencies

Sent to a number of US authorities, as advised by the US TaxPayers’ Alliance, and in response to their call for support.

March 31^st 2011

To whom it may concern:

This month marks the third anniversary of the first U.S. policy to ensure public access to the published results of publicly funded research: that of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In three short years, the policy has come to deliver free and open access to over two million full-text articles, which are accessed by nearly half a million PubMed Central users from all sectors of the public every day. This free and open access is of particular value to researchers working in low-GDP regions of the world who are hampered by their institutions’ inability to access research that is not OA. Unless research outcomes are shared and widely understood, their value is impaired. The major global problems waiting to be addressed and solved through research – including issues related to environmental, human and animal health; as well as agriculture and food security - all require international knowledge and collaboration. The free exchange of research findings is critical to resolving the many problems facing mankind. We encourage you to support an extension of the NIH OA policy to other US federal funding agencies.

The increasing awareness and adoption of ‘openness’ in the United States and elsewhere is a hugely promising stance. In research publishing, the Open Access movement is advancing strongly and the introduction of the NIH Public Access Policy mandate, together with those adopted by all UK research councils, the Wellcome Trust and over 200 other major research organisations, including Harvard and MIT is testament to the natural practice that scientists follow in sharing their findings. This ‘openness’ is mirrored in a number of developing country initiatives (for example in India, the CSIR government agency is successfully running an Open Source Drug Discovery programme), since it not only has benefits for the progress of research, but also demonstrates the research strengths of organisations and has been shown to lead to real benefits for countries – social and political as well as economic.

The Electronic Publishing Trust for Development is an international Trust, registered in the UK, that has been working for over a decade to support the free exchange of research findings, not only between developed and developing country researchers, but also by raising the visibility of unique research emanating from the regions where the problems are most keenly experienced. We therefore strongly urge the extension of the NIH OA policy to other US federal funding agencies in the certain knowledge that its adoption would vastly enhance research progress throughout the world.

Professor Derek Law, Trustee/Chairman; Barbara Kirsop, Trustee/Secretary
On behalf of the Electronic Publishing Trust for Development