The US National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy has long been controversial. The policy requires NIH grant-holders to deposit manuscripts in PubMed Central no later than a year after the version of record is published.

Despite attacks on the NIH policy such as the proposed US Research Works Act, a recent report, The Future of Taxpayer-Funded Research: Who Will Control Access to the Results? from the Committee for Economic Development's Digital Connections Council found that the NIH policy substantially increased public access to research results, and had benefits that far outweighed the costs.

Some of the benefits were:

• Accelerated progress in science from the speeding up and broadening diffusion of knowledge
• Faster movement from basic research to the commercialisation of new products and services because of greater diversity among researchers
• The exploration of more varied research paths
• Increased economic growth and new jobs because of faster commercialisation
• More follow-on research conducted
• Avoidance of duplicative or dead-end lines of inquiry
• Greater accountability for funders and better administration of the research enterprise

The report recommended that processes for academic advancement, such as tenure and promotion decisions, should reward researchers who support greater openness.

The report also found that there was no evidence that the NIH policy had harmed subscription-supported STM publishers over the last four years or threatened the sustainability of their journals or their ability to fund peer review.

Nor was there evidence of a significant reduction in traditional publishing outlets.