An ambitious proposal to make the results of federally funded medical research available to the public quickly and for free has been scaled back by the National Institutes of Health.The agency has been under pressure from scientific publishers, who argued the plan would eat into their profits. The initial plan, encouraged by Congress and hailed by patient advocacy groups, called for NIH-funded research to be posted on a publicly accessible Web site within six months after it is published in a scientific journal.Most research results now are available only by subscription to the journal - at a cost that often reaches into the thousands of dollars - or on a pay-per-article basis that can cost $100 or more for two or three articles.In the final plan, however, the recommended six-month deadline for posting results has been stretched to a year.That change has angered many advocates of public access, who have argued it isn’t fair that taxpayers must wait or ante up to see research results they have already paid for.The NIH has been criticized in the past year by Congress and others for allowing many of its scientists to collaborate with drug and biotech companies in lucrative deals that raise conflict-of-interest issues.
