In April, 2009, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy began to require that all research publications resulting from NIH funding be made publicly accessible within a year of publication through deposit on PubMed Central. The NIH Public Access Policy is part of a larger move toward open access in scholarly publishing. It would appear to have a yet-to-be-assessed potential to increase the public value of federally funded knowledge production, with at least potential implications for personal health decisions, evidence-based medicine and policy-making, and citizens' participation in policy deliberations, as well as playing a more active role in health-care decisions affecting them and their families. The research develops and validates a reliable set of methods and instruments, as well as some initial baseline measures, for accurately assessing the value of the government's public access policy among likely beneficiaries of this public access, namely, health-care practitioners and administrators, patient families, and patient and patient advocacy agency staff.
The project has three goals: 1) develop survey items, interview protocols, and environmental scans that make sense to the constituent groups; 2) produce knowledge of value to these groups as well as researchers and policy makers; and 3) provide some baseline measures of current research awareness and access.
Intellectual Merit: The project lays the groundwork for a scientific analysis of levels of public engagement with publicly accessible research. The results provide a deeper understanding of whether Open Access policies have the intended impact in four key areas: research discovery, comprehension, evaluation, and utilization.
Broader Impact: As public access to research literature increases, there is a need to develop a scientific framework for analyzing public levels of engagement with this knowledge. This project develops important protocols, instruments and training procedures as well as establishes initial baseline measurements to inform future research on the topic.
This study established grounds for exploring the impact on physicians and patients of increasing access to health research. That increase in access is currently taking place from a number of initiatives, led by the NIH Public Access Policy, passed in 2008. This Policy requires that all research articles, resulting from a NIH grant, be made publicly available within twelve months of publication. While the NIH Policy will need to be in place for a number of years before its makes a substantial difference to the proportion of health research that is freely available without a subscription or membership in a research library, questions remains as to the degree to which physicians will take advantage of this greater access, additional training in using this literature is needed, and patients are interested in such access or having their physicians have such access. This pilot study of 90 physicians and patients, involving interviews and surveys, was able to establish that, one third of the physicians were interested in seeing more of the research literature than they were currently able, with some taking steps to circumvent current restrictions on access. Among the 56 patients involved in the study , one-quarter felt it was very important for them to be able to access the relevant research, while almost all felt it was very important for their doctors to be able to access this research. As a result of this study, a Randomized Controlled Study has been initiated for 2012-14 which will assess the actual information-seeking behaviors and research use of a sample of physicians and community health organization officers in their course of their professional practice for a period of six-to-nine months. During this time, those in the experimental phase of this study will be provided will complete access on their device of choice to the relatively complete journal collection of Stanford University Library. Follow-up interviews with the physicians and community health organizations are planned to explore how and why the literature was used or not used, what’s value is and how that can be improved through training and better-designed resources.
