The Impact of the NIH Public Access Policy On Professional and Scholarly Publishing

Part of the AAP argument against the NIH policy: "When an author asks a publisher to publish a research article, the author agrees to transfer copyright so the publisher will undertake the effort and expense of preparing the article for final publication. The publisher relies on holding copyright to enable it to recoup publication costs and continue to invest in scientific communication. The full benefit of copyright protections is weakened when authors are required to permit NIH to make their journal articles available to the public for free. Moreover, the mandated access policy gives publishers little or no subsequent safeguards from piracy. Scientists should not be limited to publishing in a few compliant journals. Doing so inhibits intellectual freedom and scholarly independence and is, quite simply, against the public interest...."