Revisiting Kent Anderson’s post based on his FOIA request documents show that PubMed Central spends most of its money tagging author manuscripts, and that its stricter rules for NIH authors may double its costs.
As requested, here is a summary of all the things found so far through the FOIA requests regarding PubMed Central — from eLife to BMC to JMLA to conflicts of interest to coverups. It’s quite a fetch.
The PMC NAC, facing controversies about its oversight functions and seeing the focus of its oversight embroiled in a public scandal, said nothing about these topics at its latest meeting.
New documents show that the Director of the NCBI was deeply involved in getting eLife launched on PubMed Central, that NLM staff were uneasy about the shortcuts taken to make it happen, and that eLife was largely driving the bus throughout.
Why does PubMed preferentially link to PMC versions in its search result lists? Emails from 2011 suggest it’s specifically to generate more traffic to PMC and show off NLM services.
New evidence suggests that US taxpayers are not the major beneficiaries of the NIH Public Access Policy, and that even within the NIH, there has been some unease about the situation.
New documents obtained via an ongoing FOIA request show that PubMed Central spends most of its money tagging author manuscripts, and that its stricter rules for NIH authors may double its costs.
More indications of favoritism and cronyism, this time stretching back from F1000 Research to BioMed Central, and more mismanaged conflicts of interests. The common thread may be a new “old boys” network.
A new episode of the Scholarly Kitchen podcast is ready. This time, we talk with head chef Kent Anderson about his experience filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
An analysis of publishing costs continues the theme of accountability and transparency, but perhaps focuses too much on the containers of information rather than how and why the containers are filled in the first place.
Attacks — both overt and covert — from OA advocates and NIH/NLM phantoms come in the wake of the posts revealing how eLife and PubMed Central coordinated activities and kept secrets.
Conflicts of interest at PubMed Central have been mismanaged, and seem to have led to loading the National Advisory Committee with Wellcome representatives, among other things.
When PubMed Central expedited eLife, PeerJ wondered why. Emails within PMC suggest they were tempted to help PeerJ in the same way. They even talked with eLife about how to handle things.
Circumstantial evidence has become direct evidence — that eLife requested publication in PMC; that PMC collaborated with eLife; that PMC sought to conceal its preferential treatment; and that systems and processes at the NLM regarding PMC inclusion are unclear and open to abuse and misuse.