Steven Salzberg, Forbes; Highly Profitable Medical Journal Says Open Access Publishing Has Failed. Right.
"What Haug doesn't mention here is that there is one reason (and only one, I would argue) that NEJM makes all of its articles freely available after some time has passed: the NIH requires it. This dates back to 2009, when Congress passed a law, after intense pressure from citizens who were demanding access to the research results that they'd paid for, requiring all NIH-funded results to be deposited in a free, public repository (now called PubMed Central) within 12 months of publication.
Scientific publishers fought furiously against this policy. I know, because I was there, and I talked to many people involved in the fight at the time. The open-access advocates (mostly patient groups) wanted articles to be made freely available immediately, and they worked out a compromise where the journals could have 6 months of exclusivity. At the last minute, the NIH Director at the time, Elias Zerhouni, extended this to 12 months, for reasons that remain shrouded in secrecy, but thankfully, the public (and science) won the main battle. For NEJM to turn around now and boast that they are releasing articles after an embargo period, without mentioning this requirement, is hypocritical, to say the least. Believe me, if the NIH requirement disappeared (and publishers are still lobbying to get rid of it!), NEJM would happily go back to keeping all access restricted to subscribers.
The battle is far from over. Open access advocates still want to see research released immediately, not after a 6-month or 12-month embargo, and that's precisely what the European Plan S will do."
Showing posts with label NIH open access mandate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NIH open access mandate. Show all posts
Thursday, April 4, 2019
Sunday, January 19, 2014
Congress Passes Spending Bill Requiring Free Access to Publicly Funded Research; Library Journal, 1/17/14
Gary Price, Library Journal; Congress Passes Spending Bill Requiring Free Access to Publicly Funded Research:
From Creative Commons Both the U.S. House of Representative and Senate have passed the 2014 omnibus appropriations legislation. President Obama is expected to sign the bill shortly. What’s so special about this legislation? Federal agencies with research budgets of at least $100 million per year will be required provide the public with free online access to scholarly articles generated with federal funds no later than 12 months after publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
Saturday, May 26, 2012
UCSF Implements Policy to Make Research Papers Freely Accessible to Public; University of California San Francisco, 5/23/12
Kristen Bole, University of California San Francisco; UCSF Implements Policy to Make Research Papers Freely Accessible to Public:
"The UCSF Academic Senate has voted to make electronic versions of current and future scientific articles freely available to the public, helping to reverse decades of practice on the part of medical and scientific journal publishers to restrict access to research results.
The unanimous vote of the faculty senate makes UCSF the largest scientific institution in the nation to adopt an open-access policy and among the first public universities to do so.
“Our primary motivation is to make our research available to anyone who is interested in it, whether they are members of the general public or scientists without costly subscriptions to journals,” said Richard A. Schneider, PhD, chair of the UCSF Academic Senate Committee on Library and Scholarly Communication, who spearheaded the initiative at UCSF. “The decision is a huge step forward in eliminating barriers to scientific research,” he said. “By opening the currently closed system, this policy will fuel innovation and discovery, and give the taxpaying public free access to oversee their investments in research.”"
"The UCSF Academic Senate has voted to make electronic versions of current and future scientific articles freely available to the public, helping to reverse decades of practice on the part of medical and scientific journal publishers to restrict access to research results.
The unanimous vote of the faculty senate makes UCSF the largest scientific institution in the nation to adopt an open-access policy and among the first public universities to do so.
“Our primary motivation is to make our research available to anyone who is interested in it, whether they are members of the general public or scientists without costly subscriptions to journals,” said Richard A. Schneider, PhD, chair of the UCSF Academic Senate Committee on Library and Scholarly Communication, who spearheaded the initiative at UCSF. “The decision is a huge step forward in eliminating barriers to scientific research,” he said. “By opening the currently closed system, this policy will fuel innovation and discovery, and give the taxpaying public free access to oversee their investments in research.”"
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Who Gets to See Published Research?; Chronicle of Higher Education, 1/22/12
Jennifer Howard, Chronicle of Higher Education; Who Gets to See Published Research? :
"The battle over public access to federally financed research is heating up again. The basic question is this: When taxpayers help pay for scholarly research, should those taxpayers get to see the results in the form of free access to the resulting journal articles?...
In Congress, meanwhile, U.S. Reps. Darrell E. Issa, a Republican of California, and Carolyn B. Maloney, a Democrat of New York, introduced the Research Works Act (HR 3699) last month. The bill would forbid federal agencies to do anything that would result in the sharing of privately published research—even if that research is done with the help of taxpayer dollars—unless the publisher of the work agrees first. That would spell the end of policies such as the National Institutes of Health's public-access mandate, which requires that the results of federally supported research be made publicly available via its PubMed Central database within 12 months of publication."
"The battle over public access to federally financed research is heating up again. The basic question is this: When taxpayers help pay for scholarly research, should those taxpayers get to see the results in the form of free access to the resulting journal articles?...
In Congress, meanwhile, U.S. Reps. Darrell E. Issa, a Republican of California, and Carolyn B. Maloney, a Democrat of New York, introduced the Research Works Act (HR 3699) last month. The bill would forbid federal agencies to do anything that would result in the sharing of privately published research—even if that research is done with the help of taxpayer dollars—unless the publisher of the work agrees first. That would spell the end of policies such as the National Institutes of Health's public-access mandate, which requires that the results of federally supported research be made publicly available via its PubMed Central database within 12 months of publication."
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
US government looks to expand scientific open access policy; Ars Technica, 12/14/09
John Timmer, Ars Technica; US government looks to expand scientific open access policy:
The US government's Office of Science and Technology Policy is hosting a forum for debating an expansion of an open access policy, used by the National Institute of Health, that guarantees all publications derived from the agency's funding are available to the public within one year.
"Last Thursday, the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy launched a public forum to allow the public to provide feedback into a potential expansion of the US government's open access policy for scientific research. Right now, the National Institutes of Health is the only agency that requires recipients of its funding to make any scientific papers available to the public within a year of the publication date. For the next month, the OSTP will be soliciting feedback on whether and how the policy should be extended to other federal agencies...
One problem with the documents at the website is that they don't make a clear distinction between the publications that are based on research funded by federal agencies and the data behind the research itself. A more informative description of the different materials can be found in the Federal Register, which published the official request for input...
So, for the moment at least, the OSTP is focusing strictly on publications, and not on providing access to the raw data produced during the course of these studies (although that may be subject to separate disclosure policies, depending on the agency and material). It's a rather significant distinction to make, given the recent controversy over the availability of climate data that was used to produce several peer-reviewed studies.
In any case, the actual format of the material may ultimately be just as important as which agencies are included. The ability to ingest data from these publications and make it accessible to text mining and meta-analysis that crosses disciplines has the potential to open new avenues for research and provide a higher scientific return on the public's investment."
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/12/us-government-looks-to-expand-scientific-open-access-policy.ars
The US government's Office of Science and Technology Policy is hosting a forum for debating an expansion of an open access policy, used by the National Institute of Health, that guarantees all publications derived from the agency's funding are available to the public within one year.
"Last Thursday, the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy launched a public forum to allow the public to provide feedback into a potential expansion of the US government's open access policy for scientific research. Right now, the National Institutes of Health is the only agency that requires recipients of its funding to make any scientific papers available to the public within a year of the publication date. For the next month, the OSTP will be soliciting feedback on whether and how the policy should be extended to other federal agencies...
One problem with the documents at the website is that they don't make a clear distinction between the publications that are based on research funded by federal agencies and the data behind the research itself. A more informative description of the different materials can be found in the Federal Register, which published the official request for input...
So, for the moment at least, the OSTP is focusing strictly on publications, and not on providing access to the raw data produced during the course of these studies (although that may be subject to separate disclosure policies, depending on the agency and material). It's a rather significant distinction to make, given the recent controversy over the availability of climate data that was used to produce several peer-reviewed studies.
In any case, the actual format of the material may ultimately be just as important as which agencies are included. The ability to ingest data from these publications and make it accessible to text mining and meta-analysis that crosses disciplines has the potential to open new avenues for research and provide a higher scientific return on the public's investment."
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/12/us-government-looks-to-expand-scientific-open-access-policy.ars
Friday, July 3, 2009
Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) Reintroduced in Senate; Library Journal, 7/2/09
Andrew Richard Albanese, Publishers Weekly via Library Journal; Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) Reintroduced in Senate:
"It looks like there’s a new copyright battle brewing in Congress after U.S. Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and Joe Lieberman, (I-CT) reintroduced the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA), a bill that would require every federal department and agency with an annual extramural research budget of $100 million or more to make their research available to the public within six months of publication.
The bill sets up a direct showdown—or perhaps a stalemate—with Congressman John Conyers (D-MI), who in February of this year, introduced the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act (HR 801) an opposing bill supported by publishers that would prohibit the federal government from requiring copyright transfer in connection with receiving federal funding.
Reintroduction
This is the second time around for both bills. The publisher-supported HR 801 was first introduced in September, 2008, in response to the implementation of the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) open access mandate, effective as of April 2008, which requires NIH grantees to make their resulting research publicly available within a year. Publishers have bitterly opposed the NIH mandate on both procedural grounds, and on principle.
Procedurally, publishers claim passing the mandate in an omnibus funding bill was wrong, and Conyers, HR 801’s sponsor, has complained that the NIH mandate slighted his Judiciary committee’s jurisdiction, calling it “a change slipped through the appropriations process in the dark of night.” On principle, publishers claim the NIH mandate takes unfair advantage of publishers’ efforts, such as editing and peer-review, and diminishes copyright.
OA on the offensive?
First introduced in 2006, FRPAA represents an even broader, more aggressive mandate to offer public access to taxpayer-funded research across all agencies. Although the initial bill went nowhere legislatively, supporters say it generated critical support for OA policies, including the NIH’s.
The FRPAA would apply to all unclassified research funded by agencies including the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Transportation, Environmental Protection, as well as the National Science Foundation and NASA.
Reintroducing FRPAA in 2009 would seem to be a smart political play for OA advocates—going from defense, with HR 801, to offense with the NIH mandate, and FRPAA. OA advocates, however, stress that the bill’s reintroduction is not a strategy—the FRPAA, they say, can pass.
This is partly because the NIH mandate has been successful so far, said Open access proponent Peter Suber. Second, he notes, when FRPAA first went to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs in 2006, Lieberman was the committee’s ranking member—he now chairs the committee.
Last but not least, the bill’s aim syncs with President Obama’s pledge to open up government. “Cornyn and Lieberman are not interested in being a symbolic foil to Conyers,” Suber noted. “They want public access to publicly-funded research, and they think this is the time to try again.”
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6668699.html
"It looks like there’s a new copyright battle brewing in Congress after U.S. Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and Joe Lieberman, (I-CT) reintroduced the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA), a bill that would require every federal department and agency with an annual extramural research budget of $100 million or more to make their research available to the public within six months of publication.
The bill sets up a direct showdown—or perhaps a stalemate—with Congressman John Conyers (D-MI), who in February of this year, introduced the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act (HR 801) an opposing bill supported by publishers that would prohibit the federal government from requiring copyright transfer in connection with receiving federal funding.
Reintroduction
This is the second time around for both bills. The publisher-supported HR 801 was first introduced in September, 2008, in response to the implementation of the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) open access mandate, effective as of April 2008, which requires NIH grantees to make their resulting research publicly available within a year. Publishers have bitterly opposed the NIH mandate on both procedural grounds, and on principle.
Procedurally, publishers claim passing the mandate in an omnibus funding bill was wrong, and Conyers, HR 801’s sponsor, has complained that the NIH mandate slighted his Judiciary committee’s jurisdiction, calling it “a change slipped through the appropriations process in the dark of night.” On principle, publishers claim the NIH mandate takes unfair advantage of publishers’ efforts, such as editing and peer-review, and diminishes copyright.
OA on the offensive?
First introduced in 2006, FRPAA represents an even broader, more aggressive mandate to offer public access to taxpayer-funded research across all agencies. Although the initial bill went nowhere legislatively, supporters say it generated critical support for OA policies, including the NIH’s.
The FRPAA would apply to all unclassified research funded by agencies including the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Transportation, Environmental Protection, as well as the National Science Foundation and NASA.
Reintroducing FRPAA in 2009 would seem to be a smart political play for OA advocates—going from defense, with HR 801, to offense with the NIH mandate, and FRPAA. OA advocates, however, stress that the bill’s reintroduction is not a strategy—the FRPAA, they say, can pass.
This is partly because the NIH mandate has been successful so far, said Open access proponent Peter Suber. Second, he notes, when FRPAA first went to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs in 2006, Lieberman was the committee’s ranking member—he now chairs the committee.
Last but not least, the bill’s aim syncs with President Obama’s pledge to open up government. “Cornyn and Lieberman are not interested in being a symbolic foil to Conyers,” Suber noted. “They want public access to publicly-funded research, and they think this is the time to try again.”
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6668699.html
Thursday, March 19, 2009
NIH Open Access mandate made permanent, Science Commons, 3/17/09
Via Science Commons: NIH Open Access mandate made permanent:
"The NIH Public Access Policy, which was due to expire this year, has now been made permanent by the 2009 Consolidated Appropriations Act, signed into law last week...
Prior to NIH’s mandatory deposit requirement, under a voluntary policy NIH began in 2005, the compliance rate in terms of deposits in PubMed had been very low (4%, as published in an NIH report to Congress in 2006). Shortly after the adoption of the new mandatory policy, submissions spiked to an all time high, prompting an NIH official to project compliance rates of 55-60%. Just take a look at this NIH chart, and note the sharp rise after the policy took effect in early 2008."
http://sciencecommons.org/weblog/archives/2009/03/17/nih-mandate-made-permanent/
"The NIH Public Access Policy, which was due to expire this year, has now been made permanent by the 2009 Consolidated Appropriations Act, signed into law last week...
Prior to NIH’s mandatory deposit requirement, under a voluntary policy NIH began in 2005, the compliance rate in terms of deposits in PubMed had been very low (4%, as published in an NIH report to Congress in 2006). Shortly after the adoption of the new mandatory policy, submissions spiked to an all time high, prompting an NIH official to project compliance rates of 55-60%. Just take a look at this NIH chart, and note the sharp rise after the policy took effect in early 2008."
http://sciencecommons.org/weblog/archives/2009/03/17/nih-mandate-made-permanent/
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Copyright Research Bill ReIntroduced, LIS News, 2/4/09
Via LIS News: Copyright Research Bill ReIntroduced:
"The Fair Copyright in Research Works bill, a controversial measure that would ban public access policies similar to those of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), was reintroduced in Congress last night, after being shelved at the end of 2008.
The bill resurfaces as proponents in the Association of American Publishers’ (AAP) Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division holds its annual conference today in Washington, DC. Although the text of HR 801 has yet to be posted online, those who have seen it say it has much the same text as HR 6845, which was the subject of a spirited hearing held before a Congressional subcommittee last year.
In a statement, AAP officials praised the bill's reintroduction, and said the legislation "would help keep the Federal Government from undermining copyright protection for journal articles." The library community, however, strongly opposses the measure."
http://lisnews.org/node/32669/
"The Fair Copyright in Research Works bill, a controversial measure that would ban public access policies similar to those of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), was reintroduced in Congress last night, after being shelved at the end of 2008.
The bill resurfaces as proponents in the Association of American Publishers’ (AAP) Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division holds its annual conference today in Washington, DC. Although the text of HR 801 has yet to be posted online, those who have seen it say it has much the same text as HR 6845, which was the subject of a spirited hearing held before a Congressional subcommittee last year.
In a statement, AAP officials praised the bill's reintroduction, and said the legislation "would help keep the Federal Government from undermining copyright protection for journal articles." The library community, however, strongly opposses the measure."
http://lisnews.org/node/32669/
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