I'M PAYING FOR THAT MICROSCOPE:

NIH Proposes Free Access For Public to Research Data (Rick Weiss, September 6, 2004, Washington Post)

The National Institutes of Health has proposed a major policy change that would require all scientists who receive funding from the agency to make the results of their research available to the public for free.

The proposal, posted on the agency's Web site late Friday and subject to a 60-day public comment period, would mark a significant departure from current practice, in which the scientific journals that publish those results retain control over that information. Subscriptions to those journals can run into the thousands of dollars. Nonsubscribers wishing to get individual articles must typically pay about $30 each -- fees that can quickly add up for someone trying to learn about a newly diagnosed disease in the family.

Although patient advocacy groups and other organizations have been lobbying hard for the proposed shift, the scientific publishing industry and related interests are crying foul. The move could drive some journals out of business, they say, and bankrupt some scientific societies that are dependent on journal profits to fulfill their research and education missions.

Whatever the outcome, both sides agree change is inevitable, given society's rising expectations of easy access to information from the Internet and the enormous interest in health -- a topic that NIH officials say accounts for about 40 percent of all Internet queries.

"The status quo is not an option," NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni said last week at a meeting on the agency's Bethesda campus.