MasiMax Assists with Policy Development for Public Access to Research

MasiMax provided meeting support and IT services to the Office of the Director, NIH, on the controversial topic of public access to research findings. The issue deals with the timeframe in which results of NIH-funded research should be made publicly available. MasiMax provided premeeting, onsite, and postmeeting support for an event at which research scientists offered their perspective on this topic. Other, similar meetings solicited the opinions of publishers of scientific journals and of the lay public.

As an extension of these initial NIH meetings, the MasiMax team developed a Web-based data collection system for analysis of responses to the Federal Register notice. This system was developed to collect and analyze comments received regarding a new proposed policy. As comments were received, our team organized them and developed PowerPoint decks that summarized key themes. Our team supported the overall development of the final public access policy and implementation of the policy. We also supported NIH in coordinating responses to the feedback from the public.