The NIH public access policy did not harm biomedical journals

Area of Science:

• Scholarly communication
• Bibliometrics
• Biomedical publishing

Background:

• The National Institutes of Health (NIH) implemented a public access policy in 2008 for grant-supported research.
• This policy aimed to make research publicly accessible.
• The policy's impact on the vitality of biomedical scholarly publishing remains unassessed.

Purpose of the Study:

• To analyze the effect of the NIH public access policy on the mortality and natality rates of biomedical journals.
• To determine if the policy influenced the overall number of biomedical journals.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of biomedical journal mortality and natality rates before and after the NIH policy implementation.
• Assessment of trends in the total number of biomedical journals.

Main Results:

• The NIH public access policy was associated with a slight increase in biomedical journal mortality rates.
• A mild decrease in biomedical journal natality rates was observed following policy implementation.
• Despite these changes, journal birth rates consistently exceeded death rates, leading to continued growth in the total number of biomedical journals.

Conclusions:

• The NIH public access policy did not negatively impact the overall growth of biomedical journals.
• The scholarly publishing enterprise demonstrated resilience despite the implementation of a large-scale public access mandate.
• Journal vitality, measured by birth and death rates, showed a net positive trend post-policy.