Kate Nyhan

Hi #medlibs and #datalibs and #OpenAccess / #PublicAccess / #OA experts

The FDA policy post-Nelson memo says:

Immediate availability of scholarly publications and underlying scientific data "as soon as practicable" upon formal publication

The whole thing is a quote. The quotation marks are their own. See it at https://www.fda.gov/science-research/about-science-research-fda/public-access-results-fda-funded-scientific-research

So -- what does that mean exactly? Can FDA-funded extramural researchers publish in a subscription journal that requires an embargo before public access is allowed?

Public Access to Results of FDA-Funded Research

Ensuring public access to the results of FDA-funded research

U.S. Food and Drug Administration
Dec 9 at 5:30pmWeb
Show threadKate NyhanDec 9

BTW the word "immediate" does not appear in the actual policy

https://www.fda.gov/media/184755/download?attachment

But the phrase "as soon as practicable" does

Show threadKate NyhanDec 9
Wouldn't it be hilarious if DOGE-y people at FDA generated the *summary* and it included the immediate availability part because their LLM has been trained on a million libguides that all rehash the Nelson memo?
Show threadKate NyhanDec 9
If an LLM summary were involved, that could explain the ambiguity about the effective date too. In the screenshot it sounds like funded authors have to comply with this requirement starting August 15 2025; in the policy itself, it seems like that date is when FDA staff started including these requirements in grant paperwork. In which case, grants that started before that date presumably have different terms?
Show threadKate NyhanDec 9
But of course people can write ambiguous and confusing text too....