NIH呼应哈佛 MIT 共创开放获取盛世

　　

生物通报道，今年美国的几所高校开始实行“开放获取”（Open Access）决议，目前通过该项决议的有哈佛大学和麻省理工大学及斯坦福大学，目前新的Nature新闻披露美国国家卫生研究院（NIH）也将大力推行该政策。

 

据介绍，新的政策规定凡是受NIH基金资助的研究项目文章均应在接到杂志收录通知后在Pubmed中心提交全文，供读者下载阅读。

 

自从该政策实行以来，目前在Pubmed上公开的NIH基金的研究文章比往年多出3倍，到今年3月Pubmed公开的全文数是6425篇，而去年3月仅有1852篇全文被公开。前NIH院长Harold Varmus称，自从研究者开始接受这一政策以来，Pubmed缺乏全文下载的情况得到了很大的改善。

 

Open-access政策正在NIH发扬光大。

 

赞同之声

Open-access政策的目标就是让更多的人能免费地获取科学和学术研究成果。作为替代仅限于少数人、有特许权和非常昂贵的系统，它将为每一个想学习的人打开学习的大门。哈佛大学图书馆馆长校罗伯特·多恩顿说，它将是挣脱商业出版束缚、走向免费学术资源的第一步，使得大家都能免费利用我们学校的知识库。

 

反对之声

出版行业，以及一些学术集团，已通过一些形式反对开放获取，他们主张，学术文章的免费发布最终将侵蚀期刊的价值、摧毁现有的商业模式。这样的发展措施将反过来损害研究的质量。他们声称，允许文章未经同行严格的审查程序而在互联网上发表将使其如同获得布兰妮的最新发型光盘一样轻而易举。他们还说，这也将切断一些期刊为教育培训和专业会议提供补贴的可能。

 

（生物通 小茜）

 

生物通推荐原文阅读：Open-access policy flourishes at NIH

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But the policy still has opponents. "This so-called 'open access' policy was not subject to open hearings, open debate or open amendment in Congress," John Conyers (Democrat, Michigan), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, wrote on The Huffington Post website last month (he declined to be interviewed for this article). In February, Conyers re-introduced a bill from the last congressional session that would amend US copyright law to forbid the NIH making funding conditional on manuscripts being publicly accessible. However, congressional observers say that the bill has little chance of going anywhere this year.

 

Open-access policies have caught on around the world in recent years. Britain's Wellcome Trust, the Italian National Institute of Health (ISS), the European Research Council and many others have implemented similar mandates, including all seven UK research councils. Disease groups such as the high-profile US foundation Autism Speaks have done the same, as have the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Faculty of Arts andSciences at Harvard University.

 

The reason that the policy has succeeded at the NIH "is that there has been cooperation — whether they wanted to [comply] or not — by grantees, by extramural staff, by the universities and by publishers", says David Lipman, director of the NIH's National Center for Biotechnology Information in Bethesda, Maryland. He believes that the new requirement is at least partly responsible for the increased use of PubMed Central; there were approximately 550,000 articles downloaded from the site in March 2008, and 680,000 last month.