The winner’s curse is a concept in economics: often the winner in a competition has paid more for the prize than it’s really worth. An item in the Oct. 9 issue of The Economist describes an analogy to the curse in the area of scientific journal publication. Competition is stiff for publication in the top tier journals, so the tempation is strong to inflate the significance of the article by claiming or suggesting important results beyond what the data support, just to get through the strongly guarded portals of the big journals. But, a study in PLoS Medicine, which the The Economist article summarizes, suggests that the winners in the publication auction also fall foul of the curse, in that subsequent analysis of the results very often shows that the published results were incorrect. Dr. JPA Ionnidis is one of the authors, and we all remember him as the spoil-sport who suggested some three years ago that most published research results are wrong. The authors suggest that the current system of publication distorts the results of scientific research, by conferring an unjustfied cachet on the work published by top-tier outlets, and explore some alternatives. There are two nifty green squares, one cogently stating the paper’s basic argument and the other a numbered list of possible alternatives to the current state.
PLoS

The NIH has issued an updated FAQ on the policy mandating deposit in PubMed Central of final manuscripts reporting on research funded by NIH grants. The FAQ document itself is rather lengthy and contains links to the text of the policy statement and to supporting resources, such as the list of those journals which automatically deposit the manuscript without further action by the author(s).
FAQ

The Arts and Sciences Faculty at Harvard University adopted a plan whereby the ‘final draft’ of any manuscript accepted for publication would be placed on the University’s web site, unless the author(s) specifically requested that this not happen. This step would make default Open Access (OA) publication the norm, which is probably a first. Other institutions have considered this policy but the big H has done it. Some things are not clear, at least not from the news reports. Can faculty impose a “blanket” delay, or must each final draft be restricted by separate action? What happens when coauthors split over releasing the pub on the School’s site? Lots of potential for discord there, no? And, what exactly is the “final draft?” I think some of these will be easier to solve than others, but there’s no way around the fact that this is a very big boost for OA publication. The new issue of Nature has a short news item on this, and notes that this policy would conflict with the editorial policies of Cell, Science, and, well Nature So, we shall see. Do the publishers accomodate themselves to Harvard or Harvard to the publishers?
Harvard OA

On Dec. 26, 2007 the President signed legislation instructing the NIH to adopt measures to ensure the deposit, in an Open Access archive, of reports describing the results of research funded by the Institutes, “in whole or in part”. A “voluntary” program initiated in 2005 failed quite miserably and now the lawmakers mean business. NIH created a set of policies to implement the legislation. Essentially, if you take NIH funding, you MUST see to it that the final accepted manuscript, with supporting materials, is archived in the NIH’s electronic repository PubMed Central.
There are probably some questions, so here’s a suggestion: Follow the link below and READ CAREFULLY Prof. Peter Suber’s analysis of the NIH policy and what it means and how authors should act. (Note: Prof. Suber’s background is in philosophy and law, both disciplines requiring careful attention to texts. He is also a committed advocate of Open Access publishing.) No matter how you feel about this measure, or about OA generally, you will profit by reading this careful and detailed summary. DO NOT TRY TO SKIM OR SPEED READ through this. Print it out, go someplace quiet and READ IT ALL, MORE THAN ONCE. The article contains a number of internal links to official NIH documentation and the FAQ. There is also a good discussion of some open questions, and a quick summary of threatened legal action on the part of publishers who feel that their Ox is being gored.
Mandate

The article is entitled The Mandates of January and describes an astonishingly large number of OA mandates issued by various bodies and agencies. These are worth reading too, but to get to the NIH case, scroll down until you read: “The day after Christmas, President Bush….” That’s it.

Finally, there’s a long backstory to this, but in essence what has happened is that Congress has bought the “equity/justice” argument saying reports of publicly funded research should be generally available without further costs or fees. Congress is also intriqued by the suggestion that easier access to research will speed up the development of improved diagnostic and therapeutic interventions, maybe even cures. This may not be true, but nobody in Congress wants to be seen opposing a measure that might result in treatments or even cures. So, the gloves are off.