Tourniqueting the financial bleeding at the NIH

After much gnashing of teeth, the mighty National Institute of Health has seen the light, and made open access an official requirement of NIH-funded research.

"Beginning May 2, 2005, NIH-funded investigators are requested to submit to PubMed Central (PMC) an electronic version of the author’s final manuscript upon acceptance for publication, resulting from research supported in whole or in part, with direct costs from NIH. The author’s final manuscript is defined as the final version accepted for journal publication, and includes all modifications from the publishing peer review process."

Not one minute too soon. For too long, scientific publishers, like Elsevier CEO Crispin Davis, have been leeching their 30% net profit from the scientific comuunity (compare that to the 5-10% in the rest of the publishing industry). Crispin Davis paid his dues in companies such as Proctor & Gamble, Guinness and Aegis, a midsize European buyer of ad space, where he, no doubt, learnt the values of publicly-funded research. The financial value that is.