[HN Gopher] Starting July 1, academic publishers can't paywall N...
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Starting July 1, academic publishers can't paywall NIH-funded
research
Author : m463
Score : 379 points
Date : 2025-05-01 15:01 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nih.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nih.gov)
| bananapub wrote:
| I guess the punchline is the NIH won't be funding research then
| either?
| burkaman wrote:
| Yes, this same guy is helping "to cut more than 40% from NIH's
| 2026 budget and pare its 27 institutes and centers down to just
| eight." - https://www.science.org/content/article/new-nih-
| director-def...
|
| He has already fired over a thousand NIH employees and frozen
| or cancelled billions in grants in his first couple months on
| the job.
|
| While we're talking about NIH, here's a fun game: try going to
| https://www.nih.gov/ and putting gender in the search box. Play
| around and see how many Forbidden Words you can discover!
| codehalo wrote:
| Typing "gender" in a phrase such as "sexual gender", "age and
| gender" works.
| burkaman wrote:
| Yes you can also just put "gender" in quotes and it works.
| Or you can spell it wrong - transgender is blocked, but you
| can do transgendr and it will correct your spelling and
| return results. Of course, some of the pages it returns
| have been deleted.
|
| Presumably this was implemented by some developers trying
| to do the absolute bare minimum to comply with the absurd
| orders they were given.
| opello wrote:
| It's entertaining to see the early 2000s name
| "disemvoweling" return with a new purpose!
| rtkwe wrote:
| So it's not just censorship it's bottom of the barrel dumb
| censorship too.
| akovaski wrote:
| > try going to https://www.nih.gov/ and putting gender in the
| search box
|
| Compared to their other actions of censorship, this is such a
| small thing, but for some reason this in particular makes me
| distressed. Possibly because it shows how paranoid they are
| about letting out any information that goes against their
| narrative; that they're willing to do stupid, reckless things
| to control the narrative; that they enforce obedience to
| their ideology at all levels. It just seems like the entrance
| to a dark future.
|
| It feels like they're trying to rewrite history... Which is a
| term I searched the Internet for, and funnily enough the
| first result was a blog post from the current White House
| administration. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-
| actions/2025/03/rest... (My other worry is that _everything_
| they accuse of others is a projection of their own intentions
| onto others. This seems less absurd every passing day.
| Otherwise this would be laughable.) So I guess the White
| House is explicit in they they 're rewriting history to the
| True history. Thank you so much. Finally, we can be united
| under ONE Nation, ONE Truth, and ONE God. Sorry, I got a bit
| over-excited there.
|
| For time travelers: searching for "gender" just directs you
| back to nih.gov, instead of directing you to the search
| results page.
| trhway wrote:
| >Compared to their other actions of censorship, this is
| such a small thing
|
| while what is happening now is truly appalling, not all
| started with the current administration. NIH mortally self-
| wounded its scientific authority and credibility and even
| plain moral standing when they censored and thrown all
| their weight into suppression of the real source of covid -
| the leaked genetically modified gain-of-function-ed virus
| from the research in Wuhan sponsored there by NIH (and
| moved from US to Wuhan intentionally by NIH after
| recognizing how dangerous such experiments are).
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| You don't know what the real source of COVID is, nor does
| anyone else, and this is what NIH has said the entire
| time.
|
| > when they censored and thrown all their weight into
| suppression of [the lab leak theory]
|
| Can you state _plainly_ what you mean by this? What
| _precisely_ did the NIH do that constitutes "censored
| and thrown all their weight into suppression" in your
| mind?
| biophysboy wrote:
| If anybody is reading this comment, I would recommend
| that you look at Michael Worobey's series of papers on
| COVID's origins; they are much more well thought out than
| this horseshit.
| marky1991 wrote:
| I've found so far: 'gender', 'diversity', 'equity',
| 'inclusion', as expected. Not: 'equality', 'socioeconomic',
| 'minority', 'ableism'.
|
| Spanish is uncensored: Not censored: 'diversidad', 'equidad',
| 'genero' Censored: 'inclusion' (ha, same word as in english,
| duh) (Also 'inclusion', surprisingly)
|
| It really doesn't seem to be a broad sweeping thing, mostly
| just 'DEI' terms forwarded in apache or something, which
| makes sense. That gender is included seems to be an outlier.
| (Though would be curious to see if you found any others)
| burkaman wrote:
| 'pregnant people', 'transgender', 'nonbinary', and 'racism'
| are others I found
| scarlehoff wrote:
| Very interestingly, I tried to write "gender" and mistakenly
| wrote "gendea". The search engine, trying to be helpful, gave
| me: "No results found for 'gendea'. Showing results for
| gender"
|
| And voila, I just got 1666 (heh) results free from the
| censors!
| burkaman wrote:
| Note that the top result has actually been deleted though:
| https://www.nih.gov/nih-style-guide/inclusive-gender-
| neutral...
| Finnucane wrote:
| If you had an NIH grant, and then they cancelled the grant,
| does that count?
| ratatoskrt wrote:
| Just to be clear, this is a Biden era policy.
| StableAlkyne wrote:
| That it survived two administrations in the current climate is
| a miracle to be thankful for
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| you'd be surprised at how many policies survived two
| administrations. the real big one (unless I'm missing
| something or there have been CIA covert ops) is "not invading
| any new countries" (yemen conflict started under obama)
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| Seems like it'll stick around too. It aligns with the current
| administration's goal of financially starving the bureaucracies
| that surround research institutions.
| StableAlkyne wrote:
| The difference is that while indirect costs are critical to
| research in most cases, journals are the poster child when it
| comes to skimming research funding.
|
| They provide little to no real value beyond a CV trophy and
| only carry out the bare minimum to coordinate peer review.
| Their largest impact is siphoning tens of thousands of
| dollars from labs, and millions from cash-strapped university
| libraries.
|
| Even if the current administration wasn't attacking
| university funding, the publishing system is in desperate
| need of reform.
| ifyoubuildit wrote:
| > I am excited to announce that one of my first actions as NIH
| Director is pushing the accelerator on policies to make NIH
| research findings freely and quickly available to the public.
| The 2024 Public Access Policy, originally slated to go into
| effect on December 31, 2025, will now be effective as of July
| 1, 2025.
|
| Even if it originated with the previous admin, Jay Bhattacharya
| has decided to accelerate it. Seems like a good policy that
| both administrations agree on.
| StableAlkyne wrote:
| If your tax dollars are funding research, you should be entitled
| to reading the results.
|
| I don't think I've met any other researchers who prefer paywalls.
| The problem is the most prestigious journals (Cell, Nature,
| Science, etc) have extremely parasitic business models - you pay
| a bunch of money to publish in them, and then other people pay
| them to read. But in return you get a CV boost.
|
| They charge out the nose for open access (the researcher pays).
| With funding as tight as it is these days, maybe we'll see a
| shift to more a ethical publishing model as researchers start
| questioning whether it's worth it.
| nickff wrote:
| > _" If your tax dollars are funding research, you should be
| entitled to reading the results."_
|
| This statement begs the question, though I understand why it
| seemingly 'makes sense'. Your tax money also funds lots of
| things you don't have access to or visibility of, and it's not
| clear how far your logic should extend. Should you have access
| to intelligence assessments, or the ability to purchase any
| technology developed with government funding? What about
| licenses to patents developed with the aid of government
| funding? How about access to government or external labs, or
| the use of their equipment?
| frainfreeze wrote:
| What goes to government should benefit the people, not the
| mythical entity
| mont_tag wrote:
| This makes me happy. It was such an obvious right thing to do,
| but it took so long to come to fruition.
|
| Next, it would be great if published standards were freely
| available. It is astonishing to me that they are not.
| f1shy wrote:
| Specially the ones with force of law
| Someone1234 wrote:
| I agree; but then we need to come up with a different funding
| model.
|
| Standards aren't free to publish and update, and currently the
| only revenue source is Pay-To-Access which most agree is
| problematic. The problem with government funded (e.g. funding
| the ones with legal enforcement), is that then we're picking
| winners and losers, and it may cause stagnation (or
| monopolies).
|
| I don't like it. I also don't have a better idea.
| nradov wrote:
| That's not the only funding model. Many industry standards
| are free to access, for example HL7 FHIR. Their funding model
| is largely organizational membership fees, plus some
| additional charges for meeting attendance and training
| courses. This works fine. Several federal regulations mandate
| the use of HL7 standards for healthcare interoperability.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > The problem with government funded (e.g. funding the ones
| with legal enforcement), is that then we're picking winners
| and losers, and it may cause stagnation (or monopolies).
|
| The government funds libraries and the grants for NIH
| research. It's already in the business of funding both sorts
| of institutions. Why, then, shouldn't it also simply self-
| publish results for the research it paid for?
|
| The winners would be basically everyone, the losers'
| publishers. Publishing is already just a parasitic artifact
| of over-privatization of what should be government ran
| systems.
|
| It isn't as if publishing has a large cost in general. In
| fact, the government already runs a huge publishing operation
| in the form of PACER. Further, anyone taking grant money is
| already heavily working with the government to convince it to
| fund them.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > Next, it would be great if published standards were freely
| available. It is astonishing to me that they are not.
|
| THIS. Especially for things like the NEC and other building
| safety regulations. Then move on to ISO/ANSI/IEC/etc standards.
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| As someone that went through university solely thanks to Sci-Hub
| I value any effort that can be put into making scientific papers
| more available. I would have never been able to pay for all the
| papers I had to access and, in my case, I only got a smoother
| experience using uni available content in my last semester, so...
| StableAlkyne wrote:
| Sci-Hub was an incredible achievement. It was the closest
| humanity came to the interconnected sharing of knowledge we
| dreamed the Internet would be in the 20th century.
|
| And they tried their hardest to kill it because journals
| believe they're entitled to extract a century of rent from work
| they did not perform.
| pdfernhout wrote:
| Something I wrote related to this in 2001: "An Open Letter to
| All Grantmakers and Donors On Copyright And Patent Policy In
| a Post-Scarcity Society" https://pdfernhout.net/open-letter-
| to-grantmakers-and-donors... "Foundations, other grantmaking
| agencies handling public tax-exempt dollars, and charitable
| donors need to consider the implications for their
| grantmaking or donation policies if they use a now obsolete
| charitable model of subsidizing proprietary publishing and
| proprietary research. In order to improve the effectiveness
| and collaborativeness of the non-profit sector overall, it is
| suggested these grantmaking organizations and donors move to
| requiring grantees to make any resulting copyrighted digital
| materials freely available on the internet, including free
| licenses granting the right for others to make and
| redistribute new derivative works without further permission.
| It is also suggested patents resulting from charitably
| subsidized research research also be made freely available
| for general use. The alternative of allowing charitable
| dollars to result in proprietary copyrights and proprietary
| patents is corrupting the non-profit sector as it results in
| a conflict of interest between a non-profit's primary mission
| of helping humanity through freely sharing knowledge (made
| possible at little cost by the internet) and a desire to
| maximize short term revenues through charging licensing fees
| for access to patents and copyrights. In essence, with the
| change of publishing and communication economics made
| possible by the wide spread use of the internet, tax-exempt
| non-profits have become, perhaps unwittingly, caught up in a
| new form of "self-dealing", and it is up to donors and
| grantmakers (and eventually lawmakers) to prevent this by
| requiring free licensing of results as a condition of their
| grants and donations."
|
| Glad to see better policy happening -- even if all too slowly
| and only in some areas.
| buyucu wrote:
| Scihub is the best. They are doing a huge service to humanity.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Just saying, sci-hub (and libgen) has turned off in my
| country (Netherlands). Like, they block access at an ISP
| level -- and all ISPs and phone companies are blocking it. I
| imagine there might be a measurable decline in academic
| productivity, at that point.
|
| Anyway, the warning is: liberal free countries can stop these
| things if they want to.
|
| So... it's up to us the public. Why can't university
| libraries make their books and journals properly accessible
| in a digital format, like libgen and sci-hub? Why can't they
| make their whole collection RAG retrivable, for that matter?
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Turned off how? Like a Chinese firewall kind of thing? Are
| you not able to simply VPN around the block?
| ulrikrasmussen wrote:
| I've also had some trouble accessing them in Denmark.
| They're still available on Tor though.
| buyucu wrote:
| I recommend a good vpn, such as Mullvad.
|
| But I agree, countries should not allow this kind of
| authoritarian practices.
| int_19h wrote:
| Is there an actual court order in effect, or is it some
| kind of tacit agreement between ISPs?
| sadiq wrote:
| This is good though it's not clear whether these papers will
| appear in the PMC Open Access subset
| (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/tools/openftlist/) and be bulk
| downloadable.
|
| I've been doing some work with colleagues at Cambridge and
| Imperial over the last year on using LLMs to improve evidence
| synthesis, primarily trying to find papers on the effectiveness
| of certain Conservation interventions. It's becoming clear that
| you really need to move beyond screening papers only by title and
| abstract - there's often information buried deep within papers
| that can only be found with access to full text. My colleague
| Anil Madhavapeddy has written a bit about our adventures in
| trying to ingest full-text academic papers:
| https://anil.recoil.org/notes/uk-national-data-lib
| spookie wrote:
| Do you know of any ready to use alternatives to title and
| abstract screening? Wondering about it since I'm in the weeds
| of doing so.
| tough wrote:
| what do you mean exactly? I was suprised how with grobid many
| of at least the arXiv papers are easily converted to xml for
| better processing than PDF.
|
| Most of the papers are constructed from their latex sources
| so there's an easy way to undo it i guess.
|
| https://github.com/kermitt2/grobid
| shishy wrote:
| grobid is a wonderful resource, patrice did an awesome job
| (I used it at my previous job at scite.ai)
| shishy wrote:
| Yes, it depends on what you're doing; for general paper
| discovery / search tasks, title abstract can be enough (which
| is also why Springer and Elsevier have been pulling even their
| abstracts from sources like OpenAlex).
|
| But for something like that you need full texts to look into
| results sections. I'm very curious how you're dealing with
| information contained in tables, or if you're dealing with
| snippets of text from the full-text alone. Have you poked
| around Elicit yet?
| ck2 wrote:
| How about NIH funded drugs, can they be "paywall-ed" ?
| zdragnar wrote:
| NIH doesn't do mass production. It may not even do the research
| necessary to get synthesizing at scale working.
|
| Until the NIH becomes a drug production company, the drugs
| themselves are, by necessity, "paywalled".
| jeffrallen wrote:
| ...if there's any left:
|
| https://www.thisamericanlife.org/859/transcript
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