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Starting July 1, Academic Publishers Can't Paywall NIH-Funded Research (x.com) 98

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
An anonymous reader writes: NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya has announced that the NIH Public Access Policy, originally slated to go into effect on December 31, 2025, will now be effective as of July 1. From Bhattacharya's announcement: NIH is the crown jewel of the American biomedical research system. However, a recent Pew Research Center study shows that only about 25% of Americans have a "great deal of confidence" that scientists are working for the public good. Earlier implementation of the Public Access Policy will help increase public confidence in the research we fund while also ensuring that the investments made by taxpayers produce replicable, reproducible, and generalizable results that benefit all Americans.

Providing speedy public access to NIH-funded results is just one of the ways we are working to earn back the trust of the American people. Trust in science is an essential element in Making America Healthy Again. As such, NIH and its research partners will continue to promote maximum transparency in all that we do.
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Starting July 1, Academic Publishers Can't Paywall NIH-Funded Research More

Starting July 1, Academic Publishers Can't Paywall NIH-Funded Research

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  • I spent a lot of time in academia. I did undergrad and post-undergrad research. I was a grad student for far too long working on my PhD. I was a post-doc for several years after that, and a research associate after that. I know how the sausage is made.

    You'll be hard pressed to find a researcher who favors paywalls. The problem is many of the most prestigious journals use them. This leads to a chicken-and-egg problem for researchers, as they either get their best work in the paywalled journals - where it gets read by more people - or they put it into less prestigious journals that are not paywalled. For years there was no choice; it was paywalled or less read.

    The new regulation says that the previously paywalled journals have to make an open access option available for NIH funded research. This is a great thing. The publishers will still get publication fees, but they can't force readers to pay additional fees. Whether journals should be so expensive to publish in - and subscribe to - is another question, but at least readers will have access to more published work at no direct cost.

    But make no mistake about it. The paywalls existed to generate revenue for the journals, the scientists themselves never favored them. As someone who spent quite a bit of time at a smaller research university (with fewer journal subscriptions available through our library) I know the frustration of not being able to get some journal articles due to paywalls.
    • I've wondered about this in the past when reading about journals (broadly). Aren't they a leftover from Victorian England (or before), when there class system was at it's worst? I've thought that governments and/or international organizations e.g. WHO, etc should take over their role. I mean what great purpose do they serve. From what I read there was a large fraud issue around 2020 where about 30 percent of published studies where somehow fallacious or fraudulent. I think it's much better now (correct me i

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cstacy ( 534252 )

      You'll be hard pressed to find a researcher who favors paywalls. As someone who spent quite a bit of time at a smaller research university (with fewer journal subscriptions available through our library) I know the frustration of not being able to get some journal articles due to paywalls.

      This man is 100% correct and true.

      I spent decades doing research at MIT (DARPA funded) and Harvard Medical School (NIH funded). I had access to any journal I desired. Everybody I know hates/ed journal paywalls, even if it didn't affect us personally.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Don't worry, they solved that problem. The average journal paper is only downloaded a handful of times and the vast majority of those are through package deals with libraries, so the paywalls must make almost no money. A way better business plan is to charge a few thousand dollars for the submission! Get your money up front, guaranteed.

      No need to choose between prestigious and predatory now, you can pay Nature itself $10k pounds to publish your article.

      • A way better business plan is to charge a few thousand dollars for the submission! Get your money up front, guaranteed.

        Not sure if you're being sarcastic there or not, but publication charges are significant for the most prestigious journals. Even the journals that don't have print editions charge hundred of dollars (or more) for publication fees - and many of the print journals are also supported by advertising.

        Academic publishing is similar to health insurance. Nobody likes it - except for the people making money off of it - but there is no other option so we put up with it.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          but there is no other option so we put up with it.

          I was involved with some collegues who were setting up a new journal. They're open science types and definitely wanted a free-to-read journal. Great! So make it completely free. They had much the same attitude you do, oh no, there's no alternative, we have to charge a submission fee. I think they settled on $500, but I'm sure that will rise to the $2000-$2500 that most non-famous journals charge.

          Except there is an alternative. It does not cost that much to p

    • I would expect as much. Can anyone even make a good case for the existence of "Journals" -- as companies that get to sell access to research they didn't fund? I don't believe any scientists are getting rich off royalties from them, right?

      They seem to me to be like a worse version of the record label racket. It seems like peer review itself should provide enough signal (drawing on the reputations of who decided to review it) to distinguish a Serious Paper that Really Matters from some slop fabricated by a co

      • I don't believe any scientists are getting rich off royalties from them, right?

        I have never met a scientist who earned a nickel off of journal paper royalties; I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure no such thing exists. I've worked with people who have published in Nature and Science and they never mentioned ever getting money back for their papers; I was a co-author on a paper in PNAS and neither I nor anyone else on the paper received any money from that either.

        Can anyone even make a good case for the existence of "Journals" -- as companies that get to sell access to research they didn't fund?

        The big journals exist primarily because they have existed for so long. As I mentioned elsewhere, the academic journals

    • IYou'll be hard pressed to find a researcher who favors paywalls. The problem is many of the most prestigious journals use them. This leads to a chicken-and-egg problem for researchers, as they either get their best work in the paywalled journals - where it gets read by more people - or they put it into less prestigious journals that are not paywalled. For years there was no choice; it was paywalled or less read.

      In addition to that, there's also the problem that publishing in those less-prestigious journals may not count as much towards getting academic tenure - compared to getting a paper into, say, Science or Nature (depending on your field).

    • Agreed on this being awesome. I'm a huge fan of searching the NIH databases to find research papers. I've learned a lot and benefitted a lot from it.

  • Golden Fleece Award mod 2 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Thursday May 01, 2025 @09:21AM (#65344269)
    Old William Proxmire had an award he handed out every so often called "The Golden Fleece" based on his lampooning what he called waste of money research. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    Some of this was funny, but so easy to take out of context.

    I have no issues with research being publicly available, however, will everyone know how to process the sometimes hard to digest work? A lot of it can be seriously obscure, even for those of us who do research for a living.

    Imagine "the public" making informed and accurate assessments on " The effects of amalayze 32 inhibitions while promoting dihedral versions of oxyribonase accumulation in sperm differentiualization for optimal leukocyte production in type O reactions." (completely made up stuff here)

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by cstacy ( 534252 )

      Imagine "the public" making informed and accurate assessments on " The effects of amalayze 32 inhibitions while promoting dihedral versions of oxyribonase accumulation in sperm differentiualization for optimal leukocyte production in type O reactions." (completely made up stuff here)

      You should get a job as an LLM.
      On the Internet, nobody knows you're a human!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kackle ( 910159 )
        It's funny you say that, because yesterday I asked an LLM to dumb down a medical paper's paragraph that was a over my head. I was surprised it did so and matched what I thought to understand about it. However, I'm sure it could be in error at times, misleading someone like me.
        • Maybe one day AI will be able to reduce these studies down to no more than 4 letter words so the anti-vax types can understand them too.

          • Maybe one day AI will be able to reduce these studies down to no more than 4 letter words so the anti-vax types can understand them too.

            Maybe. There are some anti-since and biology people on the other end of the coin who need some help as well. They are smarter the anti-vaxxers, but have some strange ideas too. They at least stand some chance of enlightenment.

        • It's funny you say that, because yesterday I asked an LLM to dumb down a medical paper's paragraph that was a over my head. I was surprised it did so and matched what I thought to understand about it. However, I'm sure it could be in error at times, misleading someone like me.

          Yes, I haven't done that, but I'm going to try it now. One of the things I did for some professors is the long winded ones would try to impress people with bafflegab.

          So I'd sit with them, they'd talk with me about their work, get me to understand their work, and I'd make a video or Powerpoint to explain to people in other fields just what the hell they were talking about. That's the thing with the highly educated. Outside their field of expertise, they are pretty pedestrian. Not a diss, but just how it i

      • Imagine "the public" making informed and accurate assessments on " The effects of amalayze 32 inhibitions while promoting dihedral versions of oxyribonase accumulation in sperm differentiualization for optimal leukocyte production in type O reactions." (completely made up stuff here)

        You should get a job as an LLM. On the Internet, nobody knows you're a human!

        We do live in an age where we go to webpages, and have to convince a robot that we are human!

    • So the public should have no say in being taxed to pay for research that they can't even access regardless of whether they could understand it or not? Can I decide to do things for your own good while making you pay for it with minimal ability on your part to understand what's happening merely because I feel as though you're part of some group of unwashed masses that I'm superior too?

      The public should always have access to what their tax dollars have been spent on. Researchers aren't owed funding for the

      • So the public should have no say in being taxed to pay for research that they can't even access regardless of whether they could understand it or not? Can I decide to do things for your own good while making you pay for it with minimal ability on your part to understand what's happening merely because I feel as though you're part of some group of unwashed masses that I'm superior too?

        I guess you didn't read the part where I said "I have no issues with research being publicly available, however, will everyone know how to process the sometimes hard to digest work? A lot of it can be seriously obscure, even for those of us who do research for a living."

        Outside of my field I'm not as astute as I am within it.

        Let's take an abstract from a real paper on PubMed Central - a US Government website: Abstracts are by nature, a simplified version of what the paper is. It's already freely avai

  • It's a really good idea (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Raisey-raison ( 850922 ) on Thursday May 01, 2025 @09:33AM (#65344289)

    If taxpayers already paid for the research, they shouldn't have to pay twice. Making the research publicly available is an excellent idea.

    • Sounds good to me :) , I said in another post, but too me government and/or international organizations could take over publishing. I'm no expert, but journals are a leftover that doesn't make sense anymore, from what I understand. Still, my knowledge on this is quite limited. So, I would love to hear opinions from scientist, and researchers. I would love to understand better the flow and sharing of research.

  • This is kind of pointless now since Trump/Musk cancelled most NIH research.
    The US won't be producing any research. All of the good researchers are fleeing to Europe and Canada.
    The rest are working at McDonalds.

    • Hey now, we won't need to pay to read whatever crackpot dipshits RFK finds to blame autism on vaccines in September this way!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mspohr ( 589790 )

        Yes, RFK is fully funding vaccine disinformation.
        Have to keep your priorities straight.

        • I don't know if he's doing that now ... I can't speak for the past as I've never read any of his anti vax stuff. It's absolutely true, though, that autism rates are through the roof and an unbiased analysis of why is the only way to find out. Vaccines? Too many vaccines? Environmental exposure to chemicals? Radiation? Who knows?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by markdavis ( 642305 )

      >"This is kind of pointless now since Trump/Musk cancelled most NIH research. The US won't be producing any research [...]"

      Wow, I am impressed. It took 3 hours this time before an off-topic, alarmist, inaccurate, flame-post appeared.

      Probably just kills you when there is something very positive you can't legitimately attack, doesn't it?

  • Patients dying of Tuberculosis in Sierra Leone will be thrilled they can now get peer-reviewed literature absolutely free. They'll have to walk three miles every day to read it, but hey, progress.
    • Well, since Sierra Leone has historical links to the UK, like Liberia does to the USA, perhaps Britain should send them more antibiotics?
      • Maybe, but former colonial ties strike me as a rather clumsy way to organize a world. One hopes foreign policy can evolve beyond where it was in the 1800s.
        • nations do what they would like. Perhaps the UK gives them development aid? Has created a lot of the infrastructure so they buy replacement parts et al from the UK? They are a Republic in the commonwealth, so HM CIII is not the head of state.
  • Funded by NIH means funded by taxpayers. We have the right to access the research funded by us.
  • NIH had originally proposed making this mandatory years ago. The date got pushed back (possibly more than once). The first "open access" mandate was over a decade ago but exceptions were carved out, and there were also some very long grants that were already funded that were exempt from new regulations. This is just the latest - and hopefully last - step.

    The foot dragging came more from the journals than anything. It wouldn't be that hard for Nature, Science, Cell, and the rest of the most prestigio

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