News & Notices

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) on February 22, 2013, published a memorandum on public access to research results that for many folks has been too long coming. After much discussion, significant public outcry from scientists and publishers in the US and around the world, and a petition on the White House’s We the People website, John Holdren, OSTP Director, announced that Federal agencies with more than $100 million in R&D expenditures must develop plans to make published results of federally funded research freely available to the publish within one year of publication. The OSTP memorandum encourages agencies to work together rather than developing separate approaches and systems where appropriate. Agencies have six months to submit a draft implementation plan to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

The memorandum also requires that agencies ensure that metadata about each relevant publication be available coincident with initial publication and that included in that metadata where possible, is a link to the location where the publication and associated supplemental materials will be available after the embargo period (up to 12 months). Agencies are directed to use a “data format that ensures interoperability with current and future search technology.”

In maximizing public access to published results of federally funded research, agencies are instructed to “Allow the inclusion of appropriate costs for data management and access in proposals for Federal funding for scientific research” and to “provide for the assessment of long-term needs for the preservation of scientific data in fields that the agency supports”.

In a notice posted February 1st, NOT-OD-13-043, NIH noted that should sequestration take effect, they “likely will reduce the final FY 2013 funding levels of non-competing continuation grants” and went on to say that fewer competing awards will likely be made in order to meet the necessary budget limitations. Each Institute or Center will announce their specific approach to meeting the new budget levels in the event of a sequestration.

The effects of sequestration, should it come to pass, are layered on top of the existing Continuing Resolution (CR) under which NIH is currently operating. Under the current CR, continuation awards are generally being funded at levels up to 90% of the previously committed level. These levels may be further reduced in the event of sequestration.

In her letter to the Senate appropriations committee, Kathleen Sebelius, said:

Cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) due to sequestration would delay progress on the prevention of debilitating chronic conditions that are also costly to society and on the development of more effective treatments for common and rare diseases affecting millions of Americans. In general, NIH grant funding within states, including Maryland, will likely be reduced due to both reductions to existing grants and fewer new grants. We expect that some existing research projects could be difficult to pursue at reduced levels and some new research could be postponed as NIH would make hundreds fewer awards. Actual funding reductions will depend on the final mix of projects chosen to be supported by each Institute and Center within available resources. With each research award supporting up to seven research positions, several thousand research positions across the nation could be eliminated.

These impacts on NIH are only a subset of the impacts on the Department of Health and Human Services and represent only a portion of the impact on research in general. The National Science Foundation (NSF), for example, said that sequestrations would “cause a reduction of nearly 1,000 research grants, impacting nearly 12,000 people supported by NSF.” Similarly, NASA anticipates about a 5% reduction in new awards if sequestration goes into effect.

Polls confirm that we would all like to see wasteful government spending reduced or eliminated and deficits decline. Most Americans (54%) believe that the spending cuts looming under sequestration, including the painful research cuts mentioned previously, should be delayed (Bloomberg News Poll). The poll also documented that 64% of Americans oppose a partial government shutdown of non-critical services.

It is now or never for each of us to contact our congressional representatives and tell them what we think about sequestration in particular and perhaps more broadly about putting America back to work and investing in the future through support for research and education. These are traditionally bipartisan goals but the current toxic climate in Washington, DC politics makes it difficult to see how we move forward. Contact your Senators and Representatives and let them know your feelings on these matters!

The European Union planned Horizon 2020 research budget took a significant hit when the European Council cut the proposed budget from €77.6 billion to €69.24 billion. The massive research program may yet see some of these funds returned as the European Parliament still has to weigh in. For mor information, see http://www viagra kaufen stuttgart.nature.com/news/europe-s-leaders-slash-research-budget-1.12403. Similar cuts are in the offing for US research programs if sequestration is allowed to go into effect. Research programs provide significant returns making them a good investment in the future. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make it any easier to find the necessary budgetary funding to support research.

This week, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) initiated an information request for input on the report of the NIH Council of Councils Working Group on the Use of Chimpanzees in NIH-Supported Research. Comments from the research community and other interested parties may be submitted until March 23, 2013 via this NIH website. While comments are being accepted and until decisions are made, NIH will continue its current policy on Research Involving Chimpanzees – NOT-OD-12-025. The report include further explanation of what constitutes “ethologically appropriate physical and social environments” for housing research chimpanzees and proposes retiring most chimpanzees currently involved in NIH-supported research retaining only approximately 50 chimpanzees in an appropriate setting(s) with periodic evaluation as to the appropriateness of this number. The committee also proposes new procedures for future proposals and review of proposals for research involving chimpanzees.

After a final risk assessment and consideration of public comment, NIH published its final approval notice for a new state-of-the-art National Biocontainment Laboratory – the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL). Final State approval processes remain to be completed now. A spokesperson for Boston University Medical Center (BUMC) told the Boston Globe “the rest of the facility probably would not open before the end of this year or early 2014, assuming it obtains all remaining approvals.” The lab is currently partially open, with work limited to BSL-2, on the BUMC campus in Boston, Massachusetts.

The state of federal research funding in the US remains tenuous at best. Late Tuesday night, the US House of Representatives passed HR 8, the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, which had been delivered to the House from the Senate earlier that day. Included among the many provisions in this bill, which now will go to the President to sign, is a two-month delay in the onset of the sequester. As anyone who has paid attention to current news and events is aware, the sequester was a sledgehammer approach implemented by the Congress and the President designed to be so painful that it would ensure that they would work diligently to come up with an consensus approach to reducing spending and reigning in the federal debt to avoid it ever coming into force. The sequester mandates significant across-the-board cuts in most federal programs including the military and entitlements. Major research programs such as those of the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and others will experience 8.2% budget cuts, dramatically affecting research programs funded by these agencies. More information on the anticipated impact of the sequester on research is available at ScienceWorksForUS.org.

Clearly, avoiding the sequester for today is good news. However, the need for Congress and the President to achieve a consensus that will actually resolve the sequester is merely postponed. And virtually the entire Federal government is working under a 6-month continuing resolution approved in September, 2012, which will end on March 27, 2013. Astute readers will notice the close proximity of the new sequester deadline and the end of the continuing resolution. Adding to these to create a perfect storm – the US debt limit will be reached at about this same time, according to Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner (PDF).

So, while we can all breath a brief sigh of relief today, the status of research funding in the US remains precarious until these major issues are resolved finally. Hopefully our elected leadership in the new Congress will find the collective will to come to consensus on an approach that, among other important factors, also maintains support for fundamental research.