Impacts of Greater Public Accessibility to Federally Funded Research Publications: Evidence from the NIH Public Access Policy

有了更多的公众访问，科学文章有望接触到更广泛的受众，产生更广泛的创造力和灵感，并可能导致更多、更快的后续研究。本项目实证调查了由联邦政府资助的学术和工业研究中知识流动和扩散的研究对科学出版物的更大公众可及性的影响。该项目重点关注于2008年4月生效的美国国立卫生研究院（NIH）公共获取政策，该政策要求NIH获奖者在原始出版后的12个月内，将由NIH资助的研究成果在PubMed Central （PMC）上免费公开。本研究运用经济学、计算机科学和生物科学的专业知识，分析了(1)论文引文网络的变化，揭示了NIH政策对学术研究知识扩散的影响；(2)异质性论文和专利引文网络的变化，了解了该政策对工业研究的影响。该项目提出并验证了各种衡量引文网络知识流动程度、广度和速度的指标，并开发了有助于政策情景分析的新型引文网络增长模型。更广泛的影响白宫科技政策办公室（OSTP）最近向研发支出超过1亿美元的联邦机构发布了一份备忘录，指示它们制定计划，增加公众获得联邦资助研究的结果和数据的机会。其他一些政府已经实施或考虑了类似的政策。这项研究为这些政策是否有可能实现包括加速科学进步、刺激创新和刺激经济增长在内的总体目标提供了迫切需要的实证启示。它为这一重要的科技创新政策的“循证”决策提供了实证结果和见解。本项目开发的分析框架、方法和算法对今后评估类似或相关的政策举措很有价值。

Intellectual MeritWith greater public access, scientific articles are expected to reach a broader audience, generating a broader scope of creativity and inspiration and likely leading to more and faster follow-on research. This project empirically investigates the effects of greater public accessibility to scientific publications resulting from federally funded research on knowledge flow and diffusion in both academic and industrial research. The project focuses on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy, effective in April 2008, that requires NIH awardees to make peer-reviewed publications resulting from NIH-funded research publically available free of charge in PubMed Central (PMC) within twelve months after the original publication. Employing expertise in economics, computer sciences and the biosciences, this research analyzes changes in (1) paper citation networks to uncover the impacts of the NIH policy on knowledge diffusion in academic research, and (2) heterogeneous paper and patent citation networks to understand the effects of the policy on industrial research. The project proposes and verifies various measures of degree, breadth and speed of knowledge flow on citation networks, and develops novel citation network growth models that are useful for policy scenario analyses. Broader ImpactsThe White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) recently issued a memorandum to Federal agencies with more than $100 million in research and development expenditure, directing them to develop plans to increase public accessibility to results and data of federally-funded research. Some other governments have implemented or considered similar policies. This research sheds urgently-needed empirical lights on whether such policies are likely to achieve the overarching goals including accelerating the progress of science, spurring innovation and stimulating economic growth. It provides empirical results and insights for "evidence-based" policy making on this important science and innovation policy. The analytical frameworks, methodologies and algorithms developed in this project are valuable for evaluation of similar or related policy initiatives in the future.