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3,8% Compliance to NIH Deposit Policy

22. February 2006 by ob | Kategorien: NLM, Open Access

The NIH progress report to Congress on the public-access policy is now online (dated January 2006). The number of articles deposited in PubMed Central under the policy from its launch on May 2, 2005, to December 31, 2005 (namely, 1,636), the total number of articles covered by the policy that should have been deposited in the same period (43,000), and the embargo periods requested by authors (60% authorized release immediately upon publication, 23% requested embargoes of 10-12 months, and 17% requested something in between). The compliance rate is a miserable 3.8%. “Lack of awareness does not appear to be the primary reason for the low submission rate.” NIH sees no evidence that its public-access policy “has had any impact on peer review”. The cost of handling submissions and administering the policy was $1 million for fiscal 2005. If the compliance rate grows to 50%, the cost would grow to $2 million/year. If the compliance rate were 100% (65,000 articles/year), the cost would be $3.5 million/year. [via OAN]