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We've spent a good deal of time over the past few days on the National Institutes of Health's Public Access web site, reviewing the 195 public comments (1) on the agency's paper-archiving policy (2). According to the new rules (which went into full effect April 7), NIH-supported researchers must upload final manuscripts to the NIH Manuscript System soon after they are accepted for publication, so that the papers may be posted on PubMed Central no later than one year after they appear in print. The comments were lively, and commentators aligned themselves into two camps. Librarians and grant recipients praised the principle of public access to publicly funded research, and they endorsed NIH's implementation, which promises to save them some of the money they spend on journal subscriptions. Publishers and editors also supported the principle of public access, but bristled at NIH's implementation, which promises to deprive them of some of the money they earn from journal subscriptions. It all depends on whose ox is gored, and mine is bleeding right now.
Digression: The Partial JudgeThe catchphrase “it depends whose ox is gored” has its roots in Exodus's catalogue of penalties for misbehaving livestock, but it owes a more recent debt to the “The Partial Judge,” a fable familiar to Americans from Noah Webster's The American Spelling Book (3). The parable is essentially a lawyer joke: A Farmer came to a neighbouring Lawyer, expressing great concern for an accident which, he said, had just happened.
“One of your oxen,” continued he, “has been gored by an unlucky bull of mine, and I should be glad to know how I am to make you reparation.”
“Thou art a very honest fellow,” replied the Lawyer, “and wilt not think it unreasonable that I expect one of your oxen in return.”
“It is no more than justice,” quoth the Farmer, “to be sure: but what did I say? I mistake—it is your bull that has killed one of my oxen.”
“Indeed!” says the Lawyer. “That alters the case: I will enquire into the affair; and if…”
“And if” said the Farmer. “The business I find would have been concluded without an if had you been as ready to do justice to others, as to extract it from them.”
Or, in other words, where you stand depends on where you sit.
There is nothing drier than a copyright dispute. The NIH policy, however, raises some interesting—if difficult—questions of conflicting interests and equity. Yes, it does seem unjust that papers reporting publicly funded research, often reviewed by publicly funded researchers, should be converted into private property by publishers who then charge other researchers (and the public) for access to the data. But publishers invest millions of dollars to separate the wheat from the chaff and to ensure that the winnowings are correct and readable. We offer authors guidance on science and presentation, and professionally review, edit, copyedit, proofread, lay out, and distribute the work. It seems equally unjust that NIH should abruptly nationalize the products of this labor.
The law mandating a public access policy does require that manuscripts be directly submitted to NIH (4). A number of publishers, ourselves among them, have acknowledged the fairness of making publicly funded research publicly available, but have suggested that we satisfy the intent of the law by making these articles available without charge on our own web sites. (Granted, this is a particularly easy argument for BioTechniques to support, since we don't charge for online access in any case, and distribute almost all of our print copies without subscription fees.) At the very least, this approach allows publishers to benefit from the work they've done by increasing their web traffic. And it would serve the research community's interests by ensuring that a single, final, and corrected version of the paper is available, without the conflicting presence of a free but unedited manuscript to confuse the literature.
Several of NIH's commentators objected to this approach, tagging it with the sinister label “dark archive.” By definition, however, a dark archive is a repository of information that is not accessible to the public. (They are usually established to recover data in case of catastrophic failure.) What we propose is anything but dark; it is, rather, the path of enlightenment.
