[d@DCC] Is Canada pursuing a Public Access Policy for Health similar to the USA?

From: Russell McOrmond <russell _-at-_ flora.ca>
To: Dosanjh.U (at) parl.gc.ca
Cc: General Copyright Discussions <discuss -_at_- digital-copyright.ca>, info -_at_- hc-sc.gc.ca
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2004 11:06:16 -0400 (EDT)

Dear Ujjal Dosanjh, Minister of Health,

  The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has recently proposed a
policy where NIH funded studies will be moving to an Open Access policy.  

  http://www.nih.gov/about/publicaccess/

  As a strong supporter of Open Access, and a consultant in the related
movements in the software sector, I am wondering if similar initiatives
are under review in Canada.

  Canada recently launched iCommons Canada http://www.icommons.ca/ which 
is a group that provides a variety of easy to use copyright licenses, 
translated to Canadian law from the international Creative Commons 
movement.  This would be a very important group to contact to learn more 
about the advantages of Open Access for publicly funded research.

  I am co-coordinator of a group called "Getting Open Source Logic INto
Government"  http://www.goslingcommunity.org/ . I am available to talk to
you or your staff about this or related areas of policy at any time.


Thank you.

Russell McOrmond
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Full contact information: http://www.flora.ca/#contact

Related articles on Open Access:
http://www.digital-copyright.ca/taxonomy/page/or/349

-- 
 Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/> 
 Telling my story: The Life of one Hacker
 Early draft, looking for comments and corrections of my memory.
 http://www.flora.ca/russell/drafts/life-of-hacker.html

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: 26 Oct 2004 00:39:25 -0000
From: Helen Doyle <hdoyle@plos.org>
To: russell@flora.ca
Subject: Voice your support for the NIH Public Access Policy

Dear Colleague,

As you may know, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently
proposed an “Enhanced Public Access Policy” that will, if adopted,
increase the availability of the research findings funded by NIH. The
plan would require that all articles resulting from NIH-funded studies
be made freely available to the public no later than six months after
publication, through the National Library of Medicine’s centralized
archive of full-text literature, PubMed Central (PMC). Many members
of the publishing industry have been critical of the pending move,
fearing a negative impact on their subscription revenues if they
release even a subset of the articles they publish (those funded by
NIH) to PMC. But many others, including quite a few prominent
scientists and journal editors, support NIH’s prospective action to
increase access to important biomedical discoveries. . Your
perspective and experience both as a supporter of open access and as
a scientist who conducts research and publishes, reviews, edits, and
reads articles is critically relevant to NIH as it considers the pros
and cons of moving forward with its plan. For that reason, we urge you
to submit a comment on the issue using this link:
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/public_access/add.htm
{http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/public_access/add.htm}. At the
bottom of this email are some ideas you might incorporate into your
statement. Please note that it is important that you indicate your
institutional affiliation and position and craft a unique comment –
better to be brief and specific than long and wordy. Comments from
scientists outside the US are extremely valuable, too. More
information about the policy is available at
http://www.nih.gov/about/publicaccess/index.htm
{http://www.nih.gov/about/publicaccess/index.htm}. Notable statements
of support for the plan include: An open letter to the US Congress
signed by 25 Nobel Laureates: http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/bof.html
{http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/bof.html}. The Council of the National
Academy of Sciences:
http://www4.nationalacademies.org/news.nsf/isbn/s09162004?OpenDocument
{http://www4.nationalacademies.org/news.nsf/isbn/s09162004?OpenDocument}.
The Alliance for Taxpayer Access (site provides up-to-date information
about the policy): http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/
{http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/} Ideas you might include in your
comment: -- Unrestricted dissemination of your articles via PubMed
Central can increase the impact and visibility of your work; recent
studies have shown that articles that are available without
subscriptions or other financial barriers are cited more frequently
and appropriately than those that are not (Antelman, K., “Do Open
Access Articles Have a Greater Research Impact?” /College and
Research Libraries/, Sept. 2004). Due to the rising subscription
costs libraries face, many of your colleagues and virtually all
members of the public can’t access your papers. [From 1998-2003, the
average price of an academic journal increased at more than five
times the rate of inflation, according to a United Kingdom
Parliamentary Committee’s findings.] -- The proposed NIH policy will
not put you in conflict with journal policies - many publishers
already deposit their articles in PMC voluntarily, some, like /PLoS
Biology
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