Upcoming Event – Open Acccess to Health Research: Future Directions for the NIH Public Access Policy

Wednesday, October 24, 2012
12:00-1:30pm
Wasserstein Hall 3019
Harvard Law School

In 2008, the NIH Public Access Policy entered into force, requiring “that all investigators funded by the NIH submit or have submitted for them to the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central an electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts upon acceptance for publication, to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication.”  Four years later, about 25% of NIH-funded manuscripts are not being made publicly accessible.  This not only limits important progress in health research and clinical practice, but also means that academic institutions must rely on highly expensive journal subscriptions to access tax-funded research. Importantly, Harvard’s Open Access Mandate has not yet been extended to Harvard Medical School or the Harvard School of Public Health. In May, the Harvard Library Faculty Advisory Council issued a public letter calling on faculty to promote open access scholarly publishing, noting that “Many large journal publishers have made the scholarly communication environment fiscally unsustainable and academically restrictive.”

In recognition of Open Access Week 2012, four distinguished panelists will explore the challenges and opportunities for increasing NIH Public Access Policy compliance and open access efforts at Harvard.

• Peter Suber, author of Open Access
• Amy Brand, Assistant Provost for Faculty Appointments & Information
• Winston Hide, HSPH Professor of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
• Patrick Taylor, Assistant Clinical Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Med School; Director of Ethics Analysis and Applications in the Informatics Program and Staff Scientist, Children’s Hospital Boston (formerly PFC Academic Fellow and Chief Counsel for Research Affairs at Children’s Hospital)

The panel will be moderated by Scott Lapinski, HMS Digital Resources and Services Librarian and Open Access Liaison, and June Casey, Librarian for Open Access and Scholarly Communication.  It will be followed by two brief “101” sessions on individual-level implementation of both the NIH’s Public Access and Harvard’s Open Access mandates.

Co-sponsored by the Petrie-Flom Center, Office of Scholarly Communications, Right to Research Coalition, Universities Allied for Essential Medicines, and HLS Advocates for Human Rights.