Washington

The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has cancelled a briefing on the final version of its new policy for open access to scientific literature — leaving the plan's supporters and opponents anxious about what happens next.

On 10 January, officials at the biomedical research agency alerted reporters and other interested parties that the NIH would unveil its open-access policy the next day. But that same evening, they abruptly cancelled the announcement, and declined to say when it will be rescheduled.

The plan, whose progress has been followed avidly by scientific publishers and many researchers, has already been outlined by NIH director, Elias Zerhouni. He has written that the agency will request, but not require, that NIH-funded researchers submit the final, peer-reviewed version of their publications to the NIH. The agency would then make the manuscripts freely available after a specified time.

Zerhouni has previously said that the papers would be made public on the National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central website no earlier than six months after the date of publication (E. A. Zerhouni Science 306, 1895; 2004). But multiple sources briefed on the new version of the plan last week say that the date has now changed to 12 months post-publication.

Sources close to Congress and the NIH speculated that the White House had scuttled the NIH announcement over concerns that the issue would complicate the confirmation hearings of Mike Leavitt, whom President George Bush has nominated as health secretary. Those hearings were set to be held on 18 and 19 January. But some questioned this explanation, which wasn't officially confirmed. This has left each side of the open-access debate worrying that the policy may now be revised in favour of their opponents.

“Obviously the policy could change — we've certainly heard that it may,” says Barbara Meredith, a vice-president at the Association of American Publishers, which opposes early, open release of all research findings.

“The fact that they've postponed the announcement gives us concern,” says Emily Sheketoff of the American Library Association, which supports quick, open access to literature. Sheketoff worries that her opponents may now influence the policy. The NIH “is not waiting to hear more from us”, she frets. “It is waiting to hear more from them.”