Each year, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) gets over $28 billion dollars from taxpayers. The vast majority of that money goes to fund about 200,000 researchers who annually publish more than 60,000 articles. But most of those papers are off limits to the people who pay for the research—the public.

To remedy this situation, the NIH began asking researchers in 2005 to voluntarily submit their peer-reviewed manuscripts to a database called Pubmed Central. The plea fell on deaf ears. By 2006, only 4% of the articles eligible for submission had been turned in.

Now the US government is taking action. Language in the House Department of Health and Human Services appropriations bill, passed on 20 July, would require investigators to submit their papers to Pubmed Central. Those papers would be made available to the public within a year of publication. Similar language was passed in the Senate on 23 October.

The fight, however, is far from over. The provision must make it through House-Senate negotiations into a combined bill and signed into law by President Bush, who is threatening to veto.

Publishers are concerned that public access will land them in the poor house by driving away subscribers (why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?). But some scientists say that public access will speed innovation by making research readily available. Several journals are already trying the open-access model, but many require the researchers to pay for publication.

What do you think? Should I have the right to curl up with a cup of tea and a free copy of that 2006 paper on restless leg syndrome I’ve been dying to read?

Posted on behalf of Cassandra Willyard, Nature Medicine's news intern.

Posted by Juan Carlos Lopez at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

A while ago, I had a chat with Phil Campbell, who just arrived in New York after dining with royalty., and he told me something extraordinary.

We started talking about cognitive enhancement -- taking drugs to improve your cognitive skills. Of course, drugs for conditions such as ADHD and narcolepsy have been used by some people for some time, but data on their efficacy are scarce and not well controlled. The fascinating thing is that it seems that Phil heard from a reliable source that, if you wanted, you could set up a clinical trial specifically designed for a putative cognitive enhancer here in the USA. In other words, the FDA would not get on your way if your clinical trial was not for a drug aimed at curing disease, but designed to enhance your natural abilities.

I'm frankly surprised about it and wonder if this is really the case. Can anybody out there confirm or deny this? And if this is true, what would be a reliable endpoint in a trial of a cognitive enhancer? Maybe that's why you don't hear about companies going after this dream; because one doesn't have a meaningful endpoint.

One thing I can tell you: the day we have a safe cognitive enhancer, I'll be the first one to buy it.

Posted by Juan Carlos Lopez at 08:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Last Friday, Nature and Science shared the Premio Principe de Asturias for Communication and Humanities.

Considering that the Premios Principe de Asturias are a big deal in Spain and Latin America, I was somewhat surprised to see that the coverage that they got in the international press was somewhat minor. Not even the fact that Al Gore, Bob Dylan and Michael Schumacher were among the winners in other categories made much of a difference. I guess this goes to show that the Spaniards need to do a lot more of brand building around their Premios.

Even here at Nature Publishing Group, as international a company as we are, our awareness of the Premio Principe de Asturias was relatively limited. Rumor has it that the company had to be contacted a couple of times before realizing that the Award was legitimate and not one of those e-mail scams involving African Princes, which I'm sure all of you receive every once in a while.

I don't know, but maybe someone in Spain got wind of that rumor and wanted to equalize the score on the day of the awards. Otherwise, how can one explain that, for a few hours, a picture of Nature's editor Phil Campbell shaking the hand of Prince Felipe published in the newspaper "El Pais" referred to Phil as the Editor of Science? Or is there something we don't know, Phil?

Happily, as soon as our press officer got on the case, things were quickly sorted out, the caption was changed, and Phil could have a peaceful dinner with Spanish Royalty.

Posted by Juan Carlos Lopez at 08:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)