Can publishers and NIH make OA work?

The April 7 deadline is rapidly approaching for submitting all publications based on NIH-funded work to PubMed Central. But some publishers are still grumbling about how the NIH plans to implement the public access mandate, which was put in place in linkurl:January.;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/54028/ linkurl:Last month,;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/54372/ Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter asked NIH director Elias Zerhouni in a letter whether the NIH had adequately discussed particulars of the mandate with publishers before implementing it. I called up Glen Ruskin, director of governmental and legislative affairs at the linkurl:American Chemical Society;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/home/53719/ (ACS), to find out what exactly publishers objected to in the mandate. Since the January 11 announcement, the ACS has not communicated to the NIH directly about its reservations over the mandate, Ruskin said. That will happen at a meeting in the coming weeks, at which the ACS will join other publishers to discuss with the NIH some of the particulars of the...