Publishing Research Consortium Release

[Ann Okerson <ann.okerson@yale.edu>]

Arrived today...
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NEWS RELEASE

Media Contacts:
James Pringle (AAP/PSP Executive Board)
james.pringle@thomson.com
(215) 823 5685

Robert Campbell (PRC steering group and PA Council)
robert.campbell@oxon.blackwellpublishing.com
+44 1865 476117

Author Survey Points to Need for Increased Understanding of Current NIH
Policy

New York, March 2, 2006 - Scientific, technical and medical 
publishers called today for an increase in communications to 
science and medical authors in light of a new survey that finds 
low understanding of the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) 
Public Access Policy for posting peer-reviewed articles to PubMed 
Central (PMC), NIH's online database.

The online survey, conducted in January of this year by the 
Publishing Research Consortium (PRC), shows that although most 
authors are aware of the NIH policy, many authors do not post on 
PMC because they do not understand the process, nor do they 
identify clear benefits for posting their work. Of the NIH-funded 
authors who responded to the survey, 15% have never heard of the 
policy and a further 23% have heard of the policy, but know 
nothing about it. The survey found awareness of NIH-funded 
authors is only marginally higher than of all life sciences and 
medicine authors.

"As publishers, we are committed to working with the NIH in 
improving dissemination of and enhancing access to scientific and 
medical research," Robert Campbell, Chairman of the PRC. 
"Publishers remain willing and prepared to work with the National 
Library of Medicine to advance the goals of the NIH's Public 
Access Policy as currently construed, and to aid the NIH in 
facilitating voluntary compliance by NIH-funded authors."

The PRC survey also revealed authors have limited understanding 
of the benefits of the NIH policy for the scientific research 
community, the public or existing journals.  However, 
approximately 42% of survey respondents reported that they intend 
to post in the future and just 3% responded that they are not 
planning to post.

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About the Study

This survey is based on 1,128 completions of a structured online 
questionnaire between January 19-30, 2006, and 20 follow-up 
teledepth interviews by independent researchers, Kindle Research 
and GfK NOP.  A sample of 16,000 recent corresponding U.S. 
authors in life sciences and medicine journals, drawn from ISI 
(Thomson Scientific) databases, were e-mailed and invited to 
complete a short questionnaire.

About the Publishing Research Consortium (PRC)

The PRC is a group representing publishers and societies 
supporting global research into scholarly communication with the 
aim to provide un-biased data and objective analysis.  For 
further information about the PRC, please visit the following 
website: http://www.publishingresearch.org.uk/ The founding 
partners of PRC are The Publishers Association (PA) of the UK, 
the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers 
(ALPSP), and the International Association of Scientific, 
Technical & Medical Publishers (STM). Corresponding partners 
include The Association of American University Presses and the 
Professional/ Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of 
American Publishers.

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