On November 30 - December 1, 2023, the National Academies convened a public workshop for stakeholders to inform the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as they develop or update policies to enhance public access to the results of HHS-funded research. Workshop discussions focused on topics related to scholarly publications and convened interested individuals and communities, including authors, investigators, research institutions, libraries, scholarly publishers, scientific societies, healthcare providers, patients, students, educators, and research participants.
The workshop featured invited presentations and discussions addressing:
- Additional steps that agencies could consider to ensure that any changes to public access policies promote equity in publication opportunities for investigators supported by NIH, Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Administration for Community Living (ACL), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and other HHS agencies, and do not create new or reinforce existing inequities in publishing opportunities.
- Steps for improving equity in access and accessibility of publications by diverse communities of users, in addition to removal of the currently-allowable 12-month embargo period for federally-supported publications.
- Effective approaches for monitoring trends in publication fees and impacts on affected communities, including perspectives on what constitutes a “reasonable” cost.
- Considerations to increase findability and transparency of research, including efforts to improve use of persistent identifiers (PIDs) (e.g., ORCID IDs, DOIs, RoR ID) and metadata, as well as institutions and researchers’ experiences with adoption of different identifiers across publications and research data.
The planning committee developed the agenda, selected and invited speakers and discussants, and moderated or identified moderators for the discussions. A proceedings-in-brief of the presentations and discussions at the workshop was prepared by a designated rapporteur and published in accordance with institutional guidelines.
Planning Committee
S. Claiborne Johnston (co-chair), Harbor Health; UCSF
Bonnielin Swenor (co-chair), Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Igor Bado, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Margaret Burchinal, University of Virginia
Darla Henderson, Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB)
Veronique Kiermer, Public Library of Science (PLOS)
Adriene Lim, University of Maryland
Milagros Nores, National Institute for Early Education Research
Pamela Padilla, University of North Texas
Lori Schultz, University of Arizona
Bodo Stern, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Carrie Wolinetz, Lewis Burke Associates LLC