On September 9, 2004, the House of Representatives approved a funding bill that would provide the NIH with a $28.5 billion budget in fiscal year 2005. Under the House bill the NIH budget would grow by $727 million or 2.6% above the current level.
Meanwhile, the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor-HHS-Education was expected to recommend an NIH budget of $28.9 billion. This sum represents a $1.1 billion or 3.6% increase above the current level. These figures were circulated unofficially after Subcommittee Chair Arlen Specter (R-PA) polled his colleagues about what funding level to provide. A subcommittee markup was scheduled to take place September 15.
However, it seems unlikely that Congress would be able to finalize the Labor-HHS bill before the end of the fiscal year. It was therefore expected that a Continuing Resolution would be needed again this year to keep the government operating after October 1.
Biomedical research advocates had several concerns about the House version of the NIH bill. The sub-inflationary funding increase was disappointing, but it had been expected since the President had recommended only a 2.6% increase for the NIH. However, the House bill also included several troubling legislative provisions.
During the debate over the bill, the House accepted an amendment offered by freshman Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-Texas) that would cut off National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) funding for two grants. One grant was to study of the impact of dorm room decorations on the mental health of college students. The other project was directed at understanding how college students define a meaningful day. In comments reminiscent of the “Golden Fleece” awards issued by Sen. William Proxmire (D-WI) during the 1970s and 1980s, Neugebauer called upon the NIMH to focus its efforts on “serious mental health issues.” Labor-HHS-Education Subcommittee Chair Ralph Regula (R-TX) defended NIH peer review and urged the House not to involve itself in monitoring funding decisions. Regula called NIH peer reviewers “very capable people,” but said that with a portfolio of some 40,000 grants, “you can find a couple that you might have some question about the efficacy.” Regula declined to oppose the Neugebauer amendment because the projects in question were already completed, and the amendment was approved by a voice vote. It was subsequently revealed, however, while one of the grants was completed, other project was ongoing, although the funds had already been obligated. Research advocates were expected to ask with the Senate Appropriations Committee to counter this amendment and to affirm the importance of an independent peer review process.
The House also approved an amendment by Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ) that would prohibit the use of funds to send more than 50 federal employees to the any one overseas conference. The amendment was apparently a response to controversy in recent years about the size of government presence at certain international meetings. The provision, which would not apply to scientific meetings held in the U.S., is also likely to be raised when the Senate takes up its version of the legislation.
During the course of the debate, Chairman Regula also held a colloquy with Rep. Ernest Istook (R-OK) to clarify the intention behind report language instructing the NIH to make articles publicly accessible through PubMed Central. (See “NIH Requests Comments on Access Plan.”) This provision was included in the House Appropriations Committee report that accompanied the NIH funding bill. The report language, which was made public in mid-July, told the NIH to start requiring extramural researchers to deposit the manuscripts of articles accepted for publication journals into PubMed Central. The articles would be made freely accessible to the public after 6 months, unless NIH funds were used to pay publication related costs such as page or color charges, in which case the manuscripts would be made freely accessible upon deposit. The report asked the NIH to report back on such a plan by December 1, 2004.
Many scientific publishers objected to this mandate, which was appeared without prior discussion. (See “Publishers Question Access Plan.”) Istook agreed to hold a colloquy with Regula to clarify the intent of the language. In his floor statement, Istook said that he has “been very concerned for a number of years that the public is not always able to access the results of [NIH-funded] research. He noted the publication of the NIH policy and said that it “carefully balances the interests” of the publishers, researchers, and patients. Regula agreed with this assessment and said the issue was “a very simple proposition: NIH, or the taxpayer, pays for the research, even pays for the journals, and should be able to share the results with the taxpaying public.” He went on to “encourage the NIH to move expeditiously to finalize its proposal after considering the comments it receives on its policy.”
NIH Requests Comments on Access Plan
On September 3, 2004 the NIH published a Notice in the NIH Guide to Grants and Contracts setting forth its plans to provide “Enhanced Public Access to NIH Research Information” by disseminating accepted manuscripts through PubMed Central. The notice is available on line at
http://grants1.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-04-064.html.
The notice states that NIH has “a long-standing commitment to share and support public access to the results and accomplishments of the activities that it funds” and that “Establishing a comprehensive, searchable electronic resource of NIH-funded research results and providing free access to all is perhaps the most fundamental way to collect and disseminate this information.” The notice further states that NIH must “balance this need with the ability of journals and publishers to preserve their critical role in the peer review, editing and scientific quality control process.”
In the notice, NIH proposes to request that grantees “provide the NIH with electronic copies of all final version manuscripts upon acceptance for publication if the research was supported in whole or in part by NIH funding.” This would apply to research grants, cooperative agreements, contracts and National Research Service Award (NRSA) training fellowships. Depositing a manuscript will be offered as “an alternative means by which [NIH-supported investigators] will meet and fulfill the requirement of the provision of one copy of each publication in the annual or final progress reports.”
“NIH considers final manuscripts to be an important record of the research funded by the government and will archive these manuscripts and any appropriate supplementary information in PubMed Central (PMC),” according to the notice. However, in a significant departure from current practice, the NIH will provide the public with free access to manuscripts 6 months after publication, or sooner if the publisher agrees. In addition, psublishers would have the option to replace the author’s manuscript with a web link to the publisher’s final version of the article.
The NIH Notice differs from the instructions inserted in the Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations report by Rep. Ernest Istook (R-OK). The NIH notices states that the agency will “request” that grantees deposit their articles in PubMed Central, whereas the House report instructed the NIH to require this. The NIH plan would also make all articles publicly accessible after six months, whereas the House language would have required immediate public access if NIH funds were used to pay publications fees such as page or color charges. Because of the latter provision, the original House language would have had enormous negative consequences for not-for-profit publishers, who tend to rely upon publication fees as a way to spread costs and keep subscriptions prices in check.
After the House report language was made public in mid-July, NIH hastily organized three separate sessions for the publishing, investigator, and patient communities.
Representatives of each group were invited to meet with NIH Director Elias Zerhouni to discuss public access issues. Although the House language was couched as an instruction to the NIH to develop a plan, during the July 28 meeting with publishers, Zerhouni indicated that the NIH already had a proposal and would be publishing it within weeks.
One concern about the NIH plan was that it had been developed without public input. The APS is a founding member of a coalition of not-for-profit publishers who have been working to promote the wide-spread free dissemination of scientific research. The DC Principles for Free Access to Science were announced in March 2004 as an reaffirmation of the commitment of scholarly, not-for-profit publishers to innovative publishing practices and the dissemination of the research published in their journals. DC Principles publishers make the full text of their journals publicly available as soon as it is possible for them to do so. They also make selected articles of special interest free online as soon as they are published. In addition, these publishers reinvest the revenues from their journals to support science, including scholarships, scientific meetings, grants, educational outreach, advocacy for research funding, free dissemination of information for the public, and improvements in scientific publishing. The full text of the DC Principles is available online at
http://www.dcprinciples.org.
The DC Principles Coalition has been described as the middle ground between commercial publishers and advocates of Open Access publishing. Nevertheless, these publishers were not consulted during the design and development of the NIH plan.
The APS will study the NIH proposal and provide comments to the agency between now and November 2. Among the questions to be considered is whether it is appropriate for the NIH to regulate scientific publishing, and what will be the impact both on the NIH and on the scientific literature if it does so.
Publishers Question Access Plan
A group of more than 50 not-for-profit publishers including most of the signatories of the DC Principles sent a letter asking Senators Specter and Harkin to halt the NIH’s efforts to develop a government-run manuscript distribution center.
The September 8 letter raised questions about both the public access language in a House Appropriations Committee report and the NIH proposal that was published September 3. APS Executive Director and DC Principles Coalition Coordinator
Martin Frank signed the letter.
“Although it is certainly justified for the NIH to collect manuscripts for internal use to manage its research portfolio, it is unacceptable for the NIH to mandate a timetable by which the public will be given free access to articles destined for publication in scientific journals,” Frank wrote. He noted further that “As scientific publishers, our disagreement is not about whether scientific research should be made broadly and readily accessible. Rather, it is about how best to do so.”
The letter raised concerns about a lack of due process in formulating the proposal as well as the failure of the NIH to adequately evaluate its likely consequences. It asked how the proposed national repository would affect scientific publishing whether it would ultimately prove to be in the best interests of science.
One concern is the repository’s financial impact on publishers since demand for subscriptions will weaken if manuscripts are made available without charge. The not-for-profit publishers who subscribe to the DC Principles affirm that publishers should make the full text of journals available freely as soon as possible. However, since demand for journals varies among scientific fields, and journals are published at different intervals, the DC Principles allows for the fact that publishers themselves must determine a timetable for granting access that enables them to meet their business and publishing requirements. Consequently, there is serious concern that a government-mandated timetable to make articles freely available will harm some publications by undermining the value of their subscriptions. This will harm science because not-for-profit publishers use their journal revenues to fund innovations in electronic publishing and to support research, scientific meetings, and educational programs.
“Journal revenues underwrite activities that are a public good that supports science,” Frank wrote. “A government-run mandatory distribution system threatens these activities.”
The letter questioned whether the creation of a centralized government repository is “necessary to ensure access to science or desirable as a matter of public policy.” Frank noted that some publishers who signed the letter already voluntarily deposit their content with PubMed Central, while others place their content on-line through the HighWire Library of the Sciences and Medicine
(http://highwire.stanford.edu). “This website, which was privately developed by [Stanford’s] HighWire Press, has search capabilities exceeding those of PubMed Central,” Frank wrote.
Frank also questioned the NIH’s assumptions regarding the likely costs of the proposed repository. PubMed Central currently has a $2.5 million budget, and while NIH estimates that it would cost no more than another $2.5 million to handle the deposit of approximately 50,000 NIH-funded research articles each year, some publishers believe that it might cost as much as $50 million.
Providing patients with access to the latest research about their diseases is one of the primary rationales given for this proposal. However, Frank noted that many patients prefer consumer-oriented information rather than journal articles. For those who are interested in reading the scientific literature, the NIH plan will only give them access to the studies it funds.
“Solving the problem of patient access to research will require cooperative efforts between patients and publishers,” Frank wrote. Most DC Principles journals “already provide copies of articles without charge to individuals dealing with personal or familial health problems,” he said. “Publishers are also exploring with voluntary health agencies additional ways to expedite access to this information.”
With respect to other consumers of research, Frank pointed out that “up until this point, the norm was that journal subscriptions were a cost of doing research.” Although the advent of the Internet makes it easier to disseminate information, it does not eliminate the costs associated publishing. Frank questioned whether it was appropriate for the NIH to “take it upon itself to donate scientific content not only to U.S. researchers and companies but also to the world at large, particularly when doing so will harm the economic interests of U.S. scientific publishers.”
Frank concluded by urging the Senate to seek answers to these questions through an independent General Accounting Office study before allowing the NIH to proceed with its plan. The letter is available on the DC Principles website at
http://www.dcprinciples.org/senateletter.pdf.
FASEB Article Chronicles Lung Surfactant Story
FASEB has published the 16th article in the Breakthroughs in Bioscience series. “Bubble, Babies and Biology: The Story of Surfactant” was written by science writer Sylvia Wrobel under the guidance of scientific advisor John Clements. The article, intended for the general public, describes a problem that was first identified in patients, and then elucidated in the lab through the cooperation of physicians and scientists, which led to the introduction of successful treatments in clinical settings.
Less than 50 years ago, tens of thousands of premature infants were born each year and died, struggling for breath from some mysterious affliction that left physicians baffled and helpless to intercede. “Bubbles, Babies and Biology” traces the confluence of obscure, unrelated discoveries in physics, lung physiology and pathology that led to the discovery of surfactant and its use in saving lives of premature infants. This fascinating tale of research discovery follows the work of many different scientists who unraveled this puzzle and were able to translate basic knowledge into practical medicine and create new frontiers in neonatal medicine. The article is available online at:
http://www.faseb.org/opar/break/.
APS/AAAS Mass Media Science and Engineering Fellow Recounts Experience
| Nicole Garbarini was chosen by the Communications Committee to be this year’s APS-sponsored AAAS Mass Media Science and Engineering fellow. Now in its 30th year, this highly-competitive program has supported more than 450 Fellows. Nicole is an APS student member who is currently a neuroscience PhD candidate at Vanderbilt University, working in the laboratory of Eric Delpire. She has returned to her graduate studies, but plans to continue expanding public understanding of science through freelance scientific journalism. Her article below details her summer of learning at Scientific American. |
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Nicole Garbarini |
There is no doubt that scientific research has an important influence on society. From understanding disease to creating consumer technologies to making political legislation, science affects everyday living. Yet, scientific research is a mysterious process to a large majority of the general public. What goes on in a laboratory? How are hypotheses and data judged to be correct?
Similarly, the media is a highly influential presence in today’s world, connecting and educating people about current events and how they impact the future. And like research science, news making remains a mysterious process to many. How are stories investigated? What constitutes an important news item?
The AAAS Mass Media Science and Engineering Fellowship program aims to directly close the gap between the way scientists and journalists understand each other. Now in its 30th year, this program places young scientists at mass media outlets for 10 weeks to educate them about the journalistic process and bring current researchers into newsrooms across the country. This summer, I had the wonderful opportunity to participate in this program and work at Scientific American magazine. I have always had an interest in journalism and have prior editorial experience from high school and college newspapers. However, I have not had much formal communications training.
The summer began with three days of orientation at the AAAS offices in Washington, DC. I had the chance to meet the other 16 fellows selected for this year’s program who came from all walks of science, from plant biology to chemistry to geophysics. Orientation sessions taught us about interviewing, note-taking, reporting, and the editorial process. Experts in the field of science writing, including accomplished freelancers and science news editors, led us in interactive workshops. We toured the news offices of NPR and had a roundtable discussion with some of their science reporters. Additionally, we met several Mass Media program alumni who are currently involved in communications. All of these activities were a great way to hear about what science journalism is like today and meet people who moved from science backgrounds into a writing career.
I then moved to Manhattan to begin my work at Scientific American. Mariette DiChristina, the magazine’s Executive Editor, was my main contact. She introduced me to the magazine, helped me get acquainted with the editorial process, and gave me my first work assignments. An excellent mentor, she made sure that I was given ample opportunities to participate in various editorial staff duties, such as participating in news, production, and editorial meetings. She also set up meetings with Publicity, Marketing and other departments on the business side, which gave me a more complete picture of all the components needed to successfully publish the magazine.
My first duty, which made me acutely aware of the learning curve I faced, was to edit a “Letters to the Editor” section. I initially thought this would be a fairly easy task. However, as I started work on this section—trying to find appropriately representative letters, editing them without changing their overall tone, contacting authors of the original articles to get their response—I realized that a lot of work goes into a seemingly simple task like putting together the feedback section of the magazine.
The majority of my work assignments involved editing, researching facts and primary literature, and reporting and writing. One of my most exciting assignments was writing my first news brief. I was to write approximately 500 words about a microchip that can release extremely precise and minute amounts of fluids. The chip is being developed to serve as a prosthetic retinal implant, essentially mimicking the neurons which degenerate in some types of age-related blindness. I really enjoyed reading the primary research, thinking of questions to ask the researchers, and figuring out who else I could talk to in order to develop this story. Composing the article was challenging, but after writing and editing, then working with my editor, I felt like I was able to develop the story into a solid piece which explained the importance of this new technology.
While much of my work was done from my desk, I had opportunities to find story ideas outside of the office as well. I attended two press conferences, which not only generated story ideas, but also allowed me to meet other members of the press and observe a scientific press conference. I also spent a day on an assignment at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where I conducted half hour interviews with seven of their primary investigators. This was a great opportunity to discuss some of their research.
I learned a lot about the magazine just by chatting with members of the Scientific American staff about their work and how they ended up working for a science publication. I was continually impressed with how much they knew about a wide range of scientific disciplines. Neuroscience and biomedical research may always be the most familiar to me, but working with the
Scientific American editorial staff has inspired me to learn more about other scientific disciplines.
The program ended with wrap-up sessions at the AAAS offices. Each fellow shared their summer work at a poster session and attended workshops about other opportunities in science communications.
These ten weeks increased my interest in communications and reminded me how fortunate scientists are to experience the excitement of discovery first-hand. Unlike most people, we have everyday access to cutting edge information about science and technology. While benchwork or grant-writing may at times seem commonplace, we are involved in an exciting and fast-paced field. Talking to journalists about my own work really makes me feel privileged to be involved in biomedical research.
Though I have now returned to my graduate program, this fellowship has encouraged me to continue pursuing outreach to the general public via journalism. I strongly recommend this program to graduate students who are interested in learning more about the journalistic process. Additionally, I am especially grateful to the American Physiological Society for continuing to support this program. I believe their support is a significant contribution to the public understanding of scientific research. |
