Washington

Final regulations covering access to university researchers' data under the Freedom of Information Act were published in Washington last week. They seem to have gone some way towards satisfying both sides in a bitter dispute over how far such access rights should reach.

The regulations, published by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), will allow raw data to be accessed under the act if these data have been used as the basis for a range of government actions.

But data behind unpublished research results, intellectual property and clinical records of individuals will be exempt. This aspect of the regulations addresses some of the research community's greatest fears.

“We feel that OMB has done a pretty good job — perhaps a better job than seemed possible,” says Bill Colglazier, executive officer of the National Academy of Sciences, which has opposed the move to use the act to gain access to researchers' data.

George Leventhal at the Association of American Universities, which represents leading research universities, says: “We think OMB has done well, and we're especially pleased that commercial and personal data will be exempted.”

The regulations have also been accepted by Senator Richard Shelby (Republican, Alabama), who championed the legislation ordering OMB to draw them up a year ago. Shelby had objected to the last draft of the rules, published in August, saying that they allowed too many exemptions.

OMB acceded to Shelby's demand that the act should allow access to data behind all types of government action, not just federal regulations. It also removed a suggestion that the rules should apply only to research whose economic impact was expected to exceed $100 million.

The final regulation “is a good first step to giving the American people access to the research and science used in federal policies that affect the lives of Americans each day”, Shelby said in a statement.

US business has lobbied hard for access to research results under the act, seeing this as a means of assessing university studies used by the government as the basis for environmental and other regulations.