Who controls access to the results of research studies? The researchers? The publishers? The funders?
Under a new policy that took effect in January at JAMA® and the other JAMA Network™ journals, authors can make the results of their studies accessible to the general public on the day they are published.
The policy permits “authors of original research investigations to deposit their accepted manuscript in a public repository of their choosing immediately on the day that the manuscript is published by the JAMA Network,” according to an editorial co-written by the editors-in-chief and publishers of the JAMA Network journals.
“The ‘accepted manuscript’ is the fully peer-reviewed version of the manuscript that has been revised in response to review and is judged acceptable for publication; additional edits, refinements and enhancements will still appear in the version of record that is published in the JAMA Network and to which the accepted manuscript that is deposited will link,” the editorial says, adding that the policy was adopted because “it supports the principles of sound science.”
New direction from White House
The move—which has been in development since prior to the July 1, 2022, arrival of Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, MD, PhD, MAS, as JAMA editor-in-chief—is in line with new government guidance stating the data and outcomes of federally funded research must be generally available to the public.
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) updated U.S. policy guidance recommending that the results of taxpayer-supported research be made immediately available to the American public at no cost. In a memo to federal departments and agencies, OSTP delivered guidance for them to update their public-access policies to make publications and research funded by taxpayers publicly accessible, without an embargo or cost.
Among the agencies affected is the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which has a $45 billion budget—most of which goes to fund medical research. All agencies must create and fully implement updated policies by end of 2025.
“The public access policy is a big decision for JAMA. It helps scientific findings get out to the public and it helps authors comply with whatever policies occur in the future,” Dr. Bibbins-Domingo said. “We want to get the information from scientists’ new discoveries out to as many people as possible—to other scientists and to those who need to act on the information to improve the health of patients and the public.”
“We've accepted an author’s manuscript,” she added. “They can now put it in a public repository on the day we publish the manuscript. That means somebody who might be in another country or who doesn't have a JAMA subscription can find that information because it's in that public repository.” This JAMA Network policy applies to all authors, regardless of whether their work was funded by the federal government.
The JAMA Network already offers a range of publishing options for authors including two fully open-access journals—JAMA Network Open™ and JAMA Health Forum™—and open-access options for authors at all JAMA Network specialty journals.
Open access means the article is freely accessible to subscribers and nonsubscribers at the time of publication with rights of reuse and redistribution. The new public-access policy gives authors the option to make their work freely available in public repositories, expanding free accessibility to all original research articles published in all JAMA Network journals, including JAMA.
Medical journals’ vital role
With its action, JAMA became the only general medical journal to have such a policy, as of this article’s deadline. The journal Science also has implemented a similar policy. In a related move, the JAMA Network journals last fall adopted new policy on sharing the data that underlies the original investigations they publish.
“At JAMA, we want to be about helping authors do what's good for science, because ultimately this is what allows for good science to translate to improvements in health,” Dr. Bibbins-Domingo said.
In the debate over medical journals and public access to findings, one critical issue that should not be overlooked is “the value of peer review, editorial review, and post-publication enhancements, particularly for those who seek to translate scientific knowledge to practice and policy,” says the editorial co-written by Dr. Bibbins-Domingo and her JAMA Network colleagues.
“Our core audience is not just scientists who want to see the effect size of the trial and use it to design new experiments,” she said in an interview. Rather, that “core audience also includes clinicians who say: ‘Well, summarize that for me and tell me what that means for clinical practice. Tell me what that means for a new policy that our hospital is going to adopt. And tell me what I need to watch out for when the latest scientific thinking changes.’ That’s the value that sits within our journals—for scientists and for those seeking to act on the science to improve the lives of patients.”
