AIRI Statement on Open Access

Released October 28, 2004

The Association of Independent Research Institutes (AIRI) is an association of independent, not-for-profit biomedical and behavioral research institutes conducting federally funded research. Its mission is to enhance the ability of its members to improve human health and advance knowledge. AIRI endorses the NIH proposal for increased public access to NIH-funded research results.

Scientists and the general public will greatly benefit from free access to a comprehensive, centrally located base of medical knowledge. Making research results freely available through NIH’s PubMed Central (PMC), six months after the study’s publication, necessarily enhances the efficiency and effectiveness of the biomedical research enterprise and provides the public with access to credible and timely information.

In the process of formulating the best plan for implementing open access, AIRI urges NIH to make a priority the preservation of information quality through peer-review. In addition, AIRI encourages NIH to establish a process to ensure that there is no confusion surrounding an author’s final version-of-record of a submitted publication. Finally, in undertaking this enormous data load, AIRI hopes that NIH is prepared to maintain PMC archives in perpetuity.

AIRI realizes that many actors and interested parties in the science and publishing communities will be affected by a new NIH open access policy. As such, AIRI applauds NIH efforts to include all of the relevant stakeholders in the planning process, and hopes that dialogue will remain open throughout the course of implementation.

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