In 2008, Congress mandated that the government agency, National Institute of Health (NIH), must make the results of taxpayer funded research freely available to the public. However, university grant receivers from the NIH have done so only about 75% of the time.


In the November 26 issue of Chemical and Engineering News, Britt Erickson reports that the National Institute of Health will begin holding back grant money to NIH funded researchers who do not comply with the agency's published access policy.

A weak congratulations to the NIH. We limit it to weak, because the NIH should not be giving out grant money in the first place. Any research done at universities should be done on a private contribution basis from the University itself, from donors, or from companies interested in the results of such research.

The public gains essentially nothing from such grants, which run into billions of dollars, and they should be eliminated.