[medinformatics] Opening the Door for Public Access to Health Research

[Medical Informatics News]

Interesting article in today’s San Jose Mercury News about the availabilty of
research articles. The National Institutes of Health spends billions
of*dollars each year to support health-related research. But, despite the fact that it is primarily tax dollars
that*fund the research, the general public does not have access to the results of the research. Research studies
are, for the most part, published in professional and scientific journals which charge hefty subscription fees. Even
if the research is published online, without a subscription one must pay a per-article fee to access the study
online.

*

However, consumer advocates, scientists and librarians are challenging the system. In the Internet age, with the cost
of disseminating information declining significantly, why should the public have to pay for it? A small but growing
number of scientific and medical journals are offering their articles to readers for free as part of an “open
access’’ movement that has been gaining momentum.



Currently, Public Library of Science, or PLoS, in San Francisco, publishes two
free online journals and recently announced that it’s launching three more. A project called
OAIster (pronounced “oyster’’; the OAI stands for “open access
initiative’’) has been collecting information from journals and academic libraries and archiving it
online.*



Now the NIH is considering a policy
that would make the results of research it sponsors available to the public, for free, within six months after it is
published.


http://medicalinformatics.weblogsinc...4000387029770/