Be openly accessible or be obscure

The Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology (IRCSET) has released a Statement of Policy Relating to: the Open Access Repository of Published Research Papers. See: IRCSET adopts an OA mandate, Peter Suber, Open Access News, May 1, 2008.

Comment:

The first “key principle” in the IRCSET policy is this one:

1. This publication policy confirms the freedom of researchers to publish first wherever they feel is the most appropriate.

However, the first of the “Conditions to which IRCSET funded Award Recipients should adhere” specifies a maximum embargo of 6 months:

1. All researchers must lodge their publications resulting in whole or in part from IRCSET-funded research in an open access repository as soon as is practical, but within six calendar months at the latest.

The first condition cannot be met for some journals, so the first principle and the first condition are clearly incompatible. Might the “should adhere” (rather than “must adhere“, in the wording of the heading “Conditions to which IRCSET funded Award Recipients should adhere“) provide the necessary loophole?

It seems to me that this incompatibility will either: 1) force researchers who support the first principle to ignore (sometimes) the first condition; or, 2) require the IRCSET to (sometimes) ignore the first principle in order to enforce compliance with the first condition; or, 3) challenge the publishers of those journals that either do not permit self-archiving, or require an embargo of longer than 6 months, to decide whether or not to attempt to enforce compliance with their current policies.

How will the IRCSET policy be implemented? Should be interesting.

The new NIH policy about open access began to be implemented on April 7, 2008. The new policy can be expected to have impact on the accessibility of NIH-supported publications in all aspects of the biomedical and health sciences. This post has a focus on one of these areas: immunology.

Research in immunology has potential applications to a wide range of areas relevant to human health, including the prevention and treatment of both infectious and chronic diseases. It’s yet another area of research where improved access to research publications can be expected to increase not only the rate of generation of new knowledge, but also the translation of that new knowledge into practical applications.

The Eigenfactor.org site can be used to identify and rank immunology journals. See: Eigenfactor.org: Immunology journals.

This result was obtained via an advanced search (JCR Subject Category: Immunology; Eigenfactor Subject: No Category; Journal name and ISSN number fields left blank). The three highest-ranked journals (omitting those that emphasize reviews):

1. Nature Immunology (Nature Publishing Group).
2. Immunity (Cell Press).
3. Journal of Experimental Medicine (Rockefeller University Press).

Another ranked list of immunology journals can be obtained via the SCImago website. See: SCImago: Immunology journals (obtained via a search of SCImago Journal Indicators, Subject Area: Immunology and Microbiology; Subject Category: Immunology). The rank order of journals is based on the SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) indicator. The same three journals were ranked highest (again, journals that emphasize reviews were omitted).

The Journal-Ranking.com website also identified these same three highly-ranked journals (when a reviews-oriented journal was omitted).

The data shown below include (when available):
a) Journal name and print ISSN;
b) SJR indicator, obtained via a SCImago Journal Search;
c) Subscription prices per citation, obtained via: Journal Cost-Effectiveness 2005-6 BETA;
d) Policies about archiving in repositories (”Green OA“), obtained via the SHERPA/RoMEO database of information about publisher copyright policies & self-archiving, and from Selected Publisher Policies about the NIH Public Access Policy (posted by Charles W. Bailey, Jr., DigitalKoans, April 9th, 2008).
e) Estimates of percentages of NIH-supported publications that are freely accessible, obtained via PubMed. As described in a previous post, NIH-supported publications were identified by searching for these keywords: Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural [pt] OR Research Support, N.I.H., Intramural [pt].

Note that the criteria that can be used to limit PubMed searches include a “Search by Journal” option. This option was used (on April 8th) to search PubMed for articles with NIH support (intramural or extramural), and to estimate the percentage of these identified as freely accessible, for nine Immunology journals. They were:

#1. Nature Immunology: ISSN 1529-2908
SJR(2006)=12.484
Subscription price per citation: 0.48
SHERPA/RoMEO excerpt: Can archive postprint, with 6 month embargo; see also Author licence policy.
Access to the free full text (FFT) of NIH-supported articles:

published in the last 2 years: 5/162=3% FFT
published in the last 1 year: 1/80=about 1% FFT
published in the last 90 days: 0/20=0% FFT

Comment: This very high-profile journal has a satisfactory policy about Green OA. It encourages submission of “the author’s version of the accepted paper (the unedited manuscript) to PubMedCentral or other appropriate funding body’s archive“, and to the repository of the author’s host institution, with a 6-month embargo. Access to the free full text, through PubMed Central, of articles published in this journal is currently low, but can be anticipate to rise dramatically as the new NIH policy is successfully implemented.

#2. Immunity: ISSN 1074-7613
SJR(2006)=9.337
Subscription price per citation: 0.39
SHERPA/RoMEO excerpt: Can archive postprint on author’s personal or author’s institution’s server.
For NIH-supported authors, the journal will send the postprint to PubMed Central, with a 12-month embargo.
Open Archive: Papers are freely available from the archives of Cell Press journals after 12 months.
Access to the free full text (FFT) of NIH-supported articles:

published in the last 2 years: = 18/185=10% FFT
published in the last 1 year: = 6/86=7% FFT
published in the last 90 days: 0/15=0% FFT

Comment: This high-quality journal has a good policy about the form of Green OA that involves self-archiving in institutional repositories. However, PubMed doesn’t yet provide links to such self-archived articles. Deposition in PubMed Central involves a 12-month embargo. Currently, only 10% of NIH-supported articles are freely accessible via PubMed after 2 years. This percentage should increase as the new NIH policy is successfully implemented.

#3. Journal of Experimental Medicine: ISSN 0022-1007
SJR(2006)=6.785
Subscription price per citation: 0.24
SHERPA/RoMEO excerpt: Can archive postprint (6 month embargo for NIH-supported articles if archived in PubMed Central).
Access to the free full text (FFT) of NIH-supported articles:

published in the last 2 years: 251/325=77% FFT
published in the last 1 year: 94/168=59% FFT
published in the last 180 days: 0/74=0% FFT
published in the last 90 days: 0/35=0% FFT

Comment: This first-rate journal has an outstanding track record about making articles freely accessible via its own archive and PubMed Central. Already, almost 60% of NIH-supported articles are freely accessible within a year after publication. This percentage should increase further as the new NIH policy is successfully implemented.

Two examples of other journals that publish articles about immunology:

#4. PLoS Pathogens: ISSN 1553-7366
SJR(2006)=2.517
Subscription price per citation: zero (no subscription required).
Publication fee (2008): US$2100 (discount available for authors who are affiliated with an Institutional Member).
Published version deposited by journal in PubMed Central.
Access to the free full text (FFT) of NIH-supported articles:

published in the last 2 years: 175/175=100% FFT
published in the last 90 days: 15/15=100% FFT

Comment: A SCImago comparison of this OA journal with the three journals listed above it indicates that the SJR of PLoS Pathogens increased dramatically in 2006.

#5. Journal of Immunology: ISSN 0022-1767
SJR(2006)=2.229
Subscription price per citation: 0.08
SHERPA/RoMEO excerpt: NIH-supported authors can archive postprint in PubMed Central, with a 12 month embargo; see also NIH Public Access Policy: FAQ.
Access to the free full text (FFT) of NIH-supported articles:

published in the last 2 years: 929/1776=52% FFT
published in the last 1 year: 13/860=2% FFT
published in the last 90 days: 1/105=1% FFT

Comment: This popular journal would be more attractive from an OA perspective if its embargo for postprints deposited in PubMed Central could be shortened from 12 months to 6 months.

Four examples of immunology journals that currently have lower SJRs, but satisfactory access policies, are these:

#6. Infection and Immunity: ISSN 0019-9567
SJR(2006)=0.894
Subscription price per citation: 0.26
SHERPA/RoMEO excerpt: Authors can archive postprint.
Journal policy: Published articles freely accessible (and available through PubMed Central) 4 months after publication.
Access to the free full text (FFT) of NIH-supported articles:

published in the last 2 years: 670/761=88% FFT
published in the last 1 year: 256/347=74% FFT
published in the last 180 days: 62/153=41% FFT
published in the last 90 days: 0/67=0% FFT

#7. BMC Immunology: ISSN 1471-2172
SJR(2006)=0.701
Subscription price per citation: zero (no subscription required).
Article processing charge (2008): £950 (€1205, US$1890). Discounts offered (e.g. Supporter Member discount).
Published version included in PubMed Central.
Access to the free full text (FFT) of NIH-supported articles:

published in the last 2 years: 21/21=100% FFT

#8. Microbiology and Immunology: ISSN: 0385-5600
SJR(2006)=0.242
Subscription price per citation: zero (no subscription required).
Access to the free full text (FFT) of NIH-supported articles:

published in the last 2 years: 4/4=100% FFT

#9. Clinical and Developmental Immunology: ISSN 1740-2522
SJR(2006)=0.219
Subscription price per citation: zero (no subscription required).
Article Processing Charge currently €600.
Access to the free full text (FFT) of NIH-supported articles:

published in the last 2 years: 3/3=100% FFT

Comment: Of the four journals (#6 to #9), Infection and Immunity appears to be, by a wide margin, the most popular with NIH-supported authors. A SCImago comparison of the same four journals indicates that the SJRs of BMC Immunology have increased steadily since 2001, while those of Infection and Immunity have declined somewhat over the same time interval. The SJRs of Clinical and Developmental Immunology also increased after 2003.

Of course, there are other journals which do not focus on topics related to immunology, but do publish articles about immunology. One example is provided by the Immunology section of the open access journal PLoS ONE.

Comment: A PubMed search indicated that, of a total 1941 articles published in the last 2 years in PLoS ONE (on any subject, not just immunology), only 55 (3%) were by NIH-supported authors. Of 58 publications indexed under the MeSH Heading “Immunity” and published in the last 2 years, only one was NIH-supported. It’ll be of interest to see whether or not these low percentages increase as the new NIH policy is successfully implemented.

The MeSH Heading “Immunity” was also used (on April 15th) to estimate the number of immunity-related and NIH-supported publications in three other journals. The percentages of such articles for which the free full text (FFT) was available via PubMed were:

PNAS: Immunity-related articles, NIH-supported, published in last 2 years: 198/244=81% FFT; published in last 1 year: 66/112=59% FFT;
Science: Immunity-related articles, NIH-supported, published in last 2 years: 38/64=59% FFT; published in last 1 year: 2/26=8% FFT;
Nature: Immunity-related articles, NIH-supported, published in last 2 years: 3/54=6% FFT; published in last 1 year: 2/31=6% FFT.

In conclusion, the results described above should be useful as baseline data for an immunology-oriented case study of the impact of the new NIH policy on access to articles published in the set of journals considered above.

Heather Morrison has pointed out that one can readily obtain data on the percentages of literature indexed by PubMed for which a link to the free full text is available (see her post: Cancer Literature: 13% Free, March 29, 2008).

The new NIH policy about open access will begin to be implemented on April 7, 2008. So, April 6 is a good time to collect baseline data about the portion of the literature that’s a result of NIH-funded research. An indicator of the amount of such research can be obtained by adding these key words (without the quotation marks) to the PubMed search box: “Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural [pt] OR Research Support, N.I.H., Intramural [pt]“. The key words Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural yield a search for all articles noted in PubMed as resulting from extramural research at any NIH institute. Similarly, the key words Research Support, N.I.H., Intramural yield a search for all articles noted as resulting from intramural research at any NIH institute.

When these key words were used on April 6, with the search limited to articles published within the last 3 years, a total of 215424 articles was identified. When the same search was repeated, but limited to articles published within the last 3 years for which links to the free full text also were available, the result was 73631, or 34% of the total. Over the next couple of years, as the new NIH access mandate continues to be implemented, this percentage can be expected to increase substantially. Indeed, this indicator should provide a simple way of assessing the impact of the new mandate.

Some other data about the percentage of freely-accessible articles, obtained on the same day using the same key words:

Published within the last 2 years: 44366/144166=31%
Published within the last 1 year: 12241/67486=18%
Published within the last 180 days: 3894/30602=13%
Published within the last 90 days: 1012/11947=8%
Published within the last 60 days: 454/6475=7%
Published within the last 30 days: 143/2267=6%

These data suggest that, prior to the implementation of the new NIH policy, less that 10% of NIH-supported articles were freely accessible via PubMed within 90 days after publication. In contrast (after embargo periods of between 6 months and a year have been exceeded) the proportion of NIH-supported articles that were freely accessible via PubMed within 2 years after publication increased to about 30%.

These proportions vary somewhat across topics. When the same search for NIH-supported articles was limited to specified “Topics”, the following results were obtained:

Topic: AIDS
Published within the last 2 years: 2149/6807=32%
Published within the last 90 days: 37/461=8%

Topic: Bioethics
Published within the last 2 years: 167/886=19%
Published within the last 90 days: 2/28=7%

Topic: Cancer
Published within the last 2 years: 16344/48587=34%
Published within the last 90 days: 254/3364=8%

Topic: Complementary Medicine
Published within the last 2 years: 1420/5337=27%
Published within the last 90 days: 36/332=11%

Topic: History of Medicine
Published within the last 2 years: 83/340=24%
Published within the last 90 days: 3/17=about 20%

Topic: Space Life Sciences
Published within the last 2 years: 672/2479=27%
Published within the last 90 days: 10/125=8%

Topic: Systematic Reviews
Published within the last 2 years: 360/1519=24%
Published within the last 90 days: 6/113=5%

Topic: Toxicology
Published within the last 2 years: 6528/21120=31%
Published within the last 90 days: 109/1256=9%

It’ll also be interesting to look for variation in the impact of the implementation of the new NIH policy across topics.

Finally, it should be noted that some bloggers have proposed that the week beginning on April 7, 2008 should be OA week, in recognition of the beginning of implementation of the new NIH policy. Those bloggers who take part are asked to mention at some point during the week that the NIH is, at present, collecting public comments on the policy.

Added April 7, 2008:

A more elaborate search strategy for identification of NIH-supported publications is described at: www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/funding_support.html

The search strategy involves “all the NIH 2-letter grant codes and institute acronyms as well as the two publication types, Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural and Research Support, N.I.H., Intramural“.

When this strategy was used, the results obtained for the percentages of publications identified in PubMed as freely accessible were:

Published within the last 2 years: 45361/145354=31%
Published within the last 90 days: 1039/11905=9%

These percentages are very similar to those obtained via the search strategy that involves only the two publication types, Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural and Research Support, N.I.H., Intramural.

Results for each of these two publication types were:

Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural:
Published within the last 2 years: 42622/139273=31%
Published within the last 90 days: 981/11425=9%

Research Support, N.I.H., Intramural:
Published within the last 2 years: 2678/7087=38%
Published within the last 90 days: 76/672=11%

The Intramural Support percentages are somewhat larger than the Extramural Support percentages. However, there were substantially fewer Intramural Support publications, so the combined percentages are dominated by the Extramural Support contributions.

I’ve been browsing the Categories in WikiAnswers, looking for questions and answers about OA. So far, I haven’t found much. So, I’ve added some.

One question that I added was: “What is Open Access to academic publications?“. The answer provided was taken from the first paragraph of the current entry in Wikipedia for “Open access“:

Open access (OA) is free, immediate, permanent, full-text, online access, for any user, web-wide, to digital scientific and scholarly material, primarily research articles published in peer-reviewed journals. OA means that any user, anywhere, who has access to the Internet, may link, read, download, store, print-off, use, and data-mine the digital content of that article. An OA article usually has limited copyright and licensing restrictions.

The WikiAnswers software asks “you to find the most specific topic that fits your question“, and provides a menu of topics. None of the categories provided seemed entirely appropriate. I chose “Information Science“, a subcategory of “Social Sciences“. The latter is listed as a subcategory of “Science and Technology“.

Existing answers can be edited, and existing questions can be discussed, but one must register and Log in first.

One can also look at other “Information Science Questions“. Questions and answers may be copied or shared under a Creative Commons license. For answers, this attribution and disclaimer is required:

Important notice: Some or all of this answer was written collaboratively by visitors to WikiAnswers. For reliable information of any sort, you must consult an officially qualified professional in your local area. You use this at your own risk. See the license and original question page for “[question]?”.

Another question that I added was: “What is the Harvard open access policy?“. The answer was based on a blog post, Harvard adopts opt-out open-access policy, by Maxine Clarke, Nautilus, February 27, 2008. (This is my modification of her initial sentence):

The Faculty of Arts and Science at Harvard University has adopted a policy that electronic versions of the ‘final drafts’ of academic papers written by members of the Faculty must be submitted to a repository established by the University, unless the authors request a waiver.

See also a post to my blog, entitled: Much ado about the Harvard OA policy, February 26, 2008.

I chose to include this second question and answer under the topic “Libraries and Library History“, a subcategory of “History Politics and Society“. This probably wasn’t a good choice, but the credible alternatives (other than using “Information Science” another time) weren’t obvious to me.

Again, answers may be edited, or questions discussed, by anyone who has registered and logged in. Interested readers could, of course, not only edit these answers, but also add new questions and answers. Questions and answers can be posted anonymously, without prior registration.

So, how should OA be categorized? Should different questions and answers about OA be placed in different categories?

For those interested in open data, there’s a noteworthy recent press release, about an addition to the NIH Database of Genotypes and Phenotypes (dbGaP; see also posts to Open Access News about dbGaP):

Genome-Wide Association Study on Parkinson’s Disease Finds Public Home at NIH, Geoff Spencer, NIH News, March 4, 2008. Excerpts:

The study, conducted by researchers at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., in collaboration with scientists at Perlegen Sciences, Inc., in Mountain View, Calif., was the first genome-wide association study applied to Parkinson’s disease. It was funded under MJFF’s Linked Efforts to Accelerate Parkinson’s Solutions (LEAPS) initiative.

…

The raw data from a GWAS [genome-wide association] study is frequently useful to other researchers who may combine it with their own data to improve the analytical power and even make new discoveries. But such information may not be deposited in unregulated public databases because the data typically contain details that could be used to identify study volunteers, potentially violating their confidentiality. In order to protect the volunteers’ confidentiality, NIH requires the data submitters to remove identifying information (names, social security numbers, etc.). In addition, researchers who want to use the data must ask for permission and agree to other data use limitations, such as safeguarding participants’ privacy and using the data in ways consistent with consent agreements signed by study subjects. The researcher requests are then reviewed by a data access committee or DAC. Data access committees have been established at several NIH institutes that organize and support GWAS. Because this project was primarily supported by a private foundation, it lacked a DAC to review access requests, so it was considered an orphan data set.

NHGRI’s data access committee recently agreed to adopt the study and manage the data access approval process so that the data could be made widely available while ensuring appropriate protections.

…

For researchers who want to view the Mayo-Perlegen LEAPS Collaboration data, dbGaP offers two levels of access. The first is open access, where certain data are available without restriction, and the second is controlled access, which requires authorization. The open-access section allows users to view study documents that do not risk identifying individual participants, such as protocols and summaries of genotype and phenotype data. The controlled-access portion of the database allows approved researchers to download individual-level genotype and phenotype data from which the study participants’ personal identifiers, such as names, have been removed.

…

Although personally identifying information is not included in the database, concern remains that it may someday be possible to identify someone based on their genetic profile. For this reason only researchers agreeing not to attempt to identify individuals in the database will be given access to the data, as outlined in NIH’s Policy for Sharing of Data Obtained in NIH Supported or Conducted Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) available at http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-07-088.html.

An excerpt from section IV of NIH’s policy, IV. Publication:

The NIH expects that investigators who contribute data to the NIH GWAS data repository will retain the exclusive right to publish analyses of the dataset for a defined period of time following the release of a given genotype-phenotype dataset through the NIH GWAS data repository (including the pre-computed analyses of the data). During this period of exclusivity, the NIH will grant access through the DACs to other investigators, who may analyze the data, but are expected not to submit their analyses or conclusions for publication during the exclusivity period. The maximum period of exclusivity is twelve months from the date that the GWAS dataset is made available for access through the NIH GWAS data repository …

There’s a burgeoning literature on the ethical issues raised by human genomics research. Although this literature provides yet another example of information that should be as openly accessible as possible, some of it is, and some isn’t. A prominent example of an article that isn’t OA:

ETHICS: Identifiability in Genomic Research, William W. Lowrance and Francis S. Collins, Science 2007(Aug 3); 317(5838): 600-2 (subscription required). Excerpts:

Open versus controlled release. A cultural habit of rapid, open release of genomic data has been pursued by the involved scientists and institutions since the beginning of the Human Genome Project (19-20). There is no question about the research advantages of such principles and policies. But almost certainly, the principles will have to be modified now for databases that include extensive genotypic information, to heighten the protection of identifiability (21).

Open data release, as with deposition in a publicly accessible Web site, is acceptable only if either: (i) the data are for all practical purposes not identifiable; or (ii) consent to the release is ethically legitimate and is granted by the data subjects, or the necessity for consent is waived by a competent ethics body. Most projects now take three precautionary steps: sequestering the standard identifiers via key-coding; performing disclosure risk-reduction (such as by rounding birth date to year of birth); and providing access to the de-identified data under conditional terms.

In contrast, references 19-21 (see excerpt above) are freely accessible.

Reference 19: National Human Genome Research Institute, Reaffirmation and extension of NHGRI rapid data release policies, National Human Genome Research Institute, February 2003. www.genome.gov/10506537.

Reference 20: Wellcome Trust, Policy on data management and sharing, Wellcome Trust, London, January 2007. www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTX035043.html.

Reference 21: W. W. Lowrance, Access to Collections of Data and Materials for Health Research: A Report to the Medical Research Council and The Wellcome Trust, Wellcome Trust, London, 2006, www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTX030843.html.

An excerpt from reference 21 (the first paragraph of the Executive summary):

Access to collections can be improved, and most scientists hope it will be. But if access is to be optimised, not only will barriers have to be reduced but the provision of access will have to be actively facilitated, guided, funded and rewarded.

An e-letter response to the article by Lowrance and Collins is also freely accessible. It’s from John Gallacher: Identifiability in Genomic Research (Science, 13 November 2007). Excerpt:

The article [by Lowrance and Collins] is written from within the cultural habit of the human genome project in which the rapid and open release of data has proven very advantageous and in which individual identities are easy to conceal and of no social or scientific importance. However, the world that the article explores is epidemiologic, where research cycles are longer and, very shortly, the data will ideally comprise complete genomes on large numbers of individuals linked to detailed clinical information. In the epidemiologic world, public confidence is everything. No confidence means no participation and no epidemiology.

Another example of a relevant article that’s freely accessible:

Data sharing and intellectual property in a genomic epidemiology network: policies for large-scale research collaboration, Dave A. Chokshi, Michael Parker, Dominic P. Kwiatkowski, Bull World Health Organ, 2006(May); 84(5): 382-7. Excerpts:

We propose two fundamental principles upon which to base policy decisions about data sharing and intellectual property: (1) impediments to innovation in research processes should be minimized, and (2) the fruits of research — eventual products that result from scientific discoveries — should be made as widely accessible as possible, particularly to the people who need them the most.

…

Access to information outside the consortium

It is beyond the scope of this paper to deal with the general issue of protection of anonymity for research subjects, except to say that this is of paramount importance. A specific issue for genomic epidemiology is that genetic data may, in certain circumstances, indirectly identify individuals within a well-defined study population. Thus researchers and ethical committees need to weigh up the risks and benefits of different levels of personal genetic identification. For example, there is a difference in risk between releasing large amounts of genetic data for each individual within a small village that is identified and releasing the same data for subjects sampled randomly from a large population, even if both groups are fully anonymised. One way of reducing any potential risk to individuals is to publicly release only pooled data.

Four conclusions seem obvious:

1) It’s difficult to construct any convincing ethical justifications for limiting access to peer-reviewed publications in the field of human genomics research.

2) There are both ethical and pragmatic justications for some limitations on access to human genomics data.

3) The issues, both ethical and pragmatic, raised by open sharing of human genetic epidemiology data are substantially more complicated than those raised by open access to peer-reviewed publications.

4) The field of “open data” seems likely to be one of increasing significance for the open access movement.

The lyrics of one of Tom Lehrer’s most memorable songs come to mind: Fight Fiercely, Harvard!

Fight fiercely, Harvard, fight, fight, fight
Demonstrate to them our skill
Albeit they possess the might
Nonetheless we have the will …

During the two weeks since the vote on February 12 by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard to adopt an open access policy, there has been much comment and debate. Some examples:

Harvard Faculty Adopts Open-Access Requirement, The Chronicle of Higher Education News Blog, February 12, 2008. Excerpt:

The new policy will allow faculty members to request a waiver, but otherwise they must provide an electronic form of each article to the provost’s office, which will place it in an online repository.

Harvard faculty votes on Internet-based open “publishing”. Hilary Spencer, Nature Network forum, February 13, 2008. Excerpt:

Universities have long been interested in retaining some of the fruits of their researchers’ work, whether it has been via institutional repositories, databases, or eprint servers. In addition to making the results of research openly available, and thus benefiting the community as a whole, this proposal seems in part to be an attempt by Harvard to also retain copyright and distribution/licensing rights for their researchers’ work.

Harvard first to force open access, Andrea Gawrylewski, The Scientist.com blog, February 13, 2008. Excerpt, quoting Joseph Esposito:

The implications of Harvard’s decision are broad, but one thing that is likely to happen as a direct result of the decision is that companies with Open Access services may get acquired by traditional publishers …

Harvard open-access policy - can you please be more specific? Noah Gray, Action Potential, February 14, 2008. Excerpt:

That brings us to the main point. Harvard is extremely vague about exactly what this proposal covers. A smart move, if you ask me, because now they can stress any position or interpretation that they want, based on the response they receive.

Blog-style annotation and in-depth criticism: New niche for academic journals, in wake of Harvard open-access move? David Rothman, TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home, February 17, 2008. Excerpt:

Will this kill off academic journals? Not all of them.

The smarter ones could adapt with better-than-ever peer review procedures and maybe even use a blog approach. They could link to the best research and also comment on the worst, while offering far, far more depth than a blog would.

Open access publishing: Harvard ups the ante, Elizabeth Pisani, The Wisdom of Whores, February 18, 2008. Excerpt:

The proposal, reproduced below, is a bit hazy on the timing of public posting. Does a piece of research only become a “scholarly article” once it has appeared in a journal?

Harvard adopts opt-out open-access policy, Nature 2008(20 Feb); 451: 879. (Subscription required). Excerpt:

Stuart Shieber, the computer scientist at Harvard who proposed the scheme, says that any request for an exemption will be granted. The university has not yet worked out how to define what constitutes a ‘final’ draft of a scholarly paper, nor come up with a time limit for submission.

Many comments have been compiled by Peter Suber and Gavin Baker in posts to Open Access News, and they provide a very useful guide through much of the labyrinth. In the list provided below, I’ve included a few excerpts that I thought were especially noteworthy.

Variations on the theme of the Harvard OA policy, February 22, 2008. About a post by Stevan Harnad, The Hybrid Copyright Retention and Deposit Mandate, Open Access Archivangelism, February 22, 2008.

More comments on the Harvard OA policy, February 22, 2008. One of the five comments is from John Mark Ockerbloom in Everybody’s Libraries. An excerpt:

This mandate is faculty-friendly as well as being open-access friendly, in that it minimizes the extra work faculty have to do and assures them the last word in access control, should they decide to exercise it. And that, I believe, is crucial to its having been adopted at all, and to its subsequent acceptance by faculty.

Stevan Harnad replies to Mike Carroll, February 21, 2008. Peter Suber adds some comments of his own. One of his comments is:

Because Harvard’s is the first university-level mandate to focus on permissions rather than deposits, it deserves a chance to show how well it can work.

More on the Harvard policy, February 21, 2008. Excerpts from an article by Lila Guterman in Chronicle of Higher Education, February 21, 2008 (accessible only to subscribers). Example:

Mr. Thatcher and others also wonder whether Harvard faculty members will actually make the effort to comply with the policy. But open-access supporters observe that faculty members themselves were the ones who voted for it.

Mike Carroll on OA, copyright, and the NIH and Harvard policies, February 20, 2008. About a cluster of three related posts by Mike Carroll. Excerpt from the first, NIH and Harvard - It’s About Values:

The key point is that this really is not a technical conversation. It’s a conversation about values….

“Other schools should follow Harvard’s lead”, February 19, 2008. Provides excerpts from: Open access to brilliant insights, Boston Globe, February 19, 2008.

More comments on the Harvard OA mandate, February 17, 2008. Two of the three articles cited suggest that other institutions should follow Harvard’s lead.

More on the Harvard mandate, February 15, 2008. Excerpts from: Heidi Ledford, Harvard adopts open-access policy, Nature News, February 15, 2008. One of the two excerpts:

[T]he university has not yet established a time limit for submission, nor have they defined what constitutes a ‘final’ draft of the paper. Harvard intends to establish an ‘office of scholarly communication’ to define these issues….

More comments on the Harvard OA mandate, February 15, 2008. Five comments are cited. One is from Dorothea Salo at Caveat Lector: Pyrrhic Victories: Excerpt:

I have a feeling the deafening silence coming from publishers right now is deliberate. Their only realistic hope is that the Harvard policy sinks like a stone in a vast sea of institutional indifference, and the best way for them to create that outcome is to keep their mouths shut so that the initial flurry of coverage and interest fades quicker.

Three on the Harvard OA mandate, February 14, 2008. Three comments are cited. The third (see heading: Shieber: Librarians Very Involved with Harvard OA Motion) quotes Stuart Shieber:

Open access repositories are not a substitute for journals. They are a complement to them. It is important that those processes continue, and to the extent that they involve expenses, universities and funding agencies will have to continue to pay for them.

Stevan Harnad’s proposed revisions to the Harvard policy, February 14, 2008. See: Weaken the Harvard OA Mandate To Strengthen It, Open Access Archivangelism, February 14, 2008. Excerpt (quoting Terry Martin of Harvard Law School, to whom Stevan Harnad is responding):

Stevan, I’m sure your version is preferable to the one actually passed by FAS. Some of us urged a more forceful approach. However, those with a better political sense thought otherwise.

More on the Harvard OA mandate, February 14, 2008. The several articles cited include one from T. Scott Plutchak at T. Scott. Excerpt:

That it [the Harvard policy] is driven by the faculty rather than being imposed from the outside is a very positive sign. Most important, however, is that a major university is taking a significant step towards managing its own scholarly production.

Roundup of commentary on Harvard OA policy, February 13, 2008. The various articles cited include one by Gavin Baker, Harvard faculty say yes to OA, Journal of Insignificant Inquiry, February 13, 2008. Excerpt:

… I want to focus on the fact that the faculty, through their own governance process, themselves approved this mandate.

Text of the Harvard policy, February 12, 2008. Excerpt:

To assist the University in distributing the articles, each Faculty member will provide an electronic copy of the final version of the article at no charge to the appropriate representative of the Provost’s Office in an appropriate format (such as PDF) specified by the Provost’s Office. The Provost’s Office may make the article available to the public in an open-access repository.

It’s obvious from all of these comments that the Harvard policy has been spectacularly successful at raising awareness about OA. But, to continue to be influential, the policy must be implemented successfully. Do faculty members at Harvard “have the will” to do this? Or, might they be apathetic (in the well-chosen words of Dorothea Salo, a “slumbering behemoth“) and, by ignoring the policy, thus defeat it?

Public policies about health services vary greatly both between and within countries. “Health services research” (HSR) is a field of research that deals with various aspects of health systems. It’s a field that’s of interest not only to those who do the research, but also to those who make decisions about health policy, and to those who are affected by such decisions. For examples of articles about HSR, see the collection published by CMAJ.

How to assess existing HSR journals? Which HSR journals publish articles that are openly accessible, and hence, are readily available to all those with an interest in health policy and services?

First, a Canadian perspective. Canada’s unique policies for the delivery of health services merit research that has a focus on this particular health system. An example of a Canadian health services research journal is Healthcare Policy. This journal published its first issue in September of 2005. See: Healthcare Policy journal, CIHR Institute of Health Services and Policy Research (IHSPR). Excerpt:

Healthcare Policy is designed to be a key knowledge translation vehicle to stimulate communication and cross-fertilization between researchers and health care decision makers.

An excerpt from the home page of the journal. It is:

For health system managers, practitioners, politicians and their administrators, and educators and academics. Authors come from a broad range of disciplines including social sciences, humanities, ethics, law, management sciences, and knowledge translation.

The publisher of this journal is Longwoods Publishing. The SHERPA/RoMEO summary of publisher copyright policies & self-archiving for Longwoods Publishing indicates that a post-print (i.e. final draft post-refereeing) may be archived 12 months after date of online publication. Information about this 12-month embargo is included in the License to Publish (PDF, 190 KB).

This 12-month embargo can be avoided if authors select the Optional Open Access paid-OA option that’s available for Longwoods’ four journals. Fee for 2008: $2,500.

For an appraisal of the Optional Open Access policy, see: Longwoods Press rolls out Open Access policy, by Greyson, Social Justice Librarian, January 10, 2008. An excerpt from one of Greyson’s comments that follow the appraisal highlights the importance of independent Canadian journals:

I think it’s deeply important for us to continue to have independent Canadian journals, particularly in health policy where our concerns are often quite different from those in the US.

From a broader perspective, results obtained from the application to health-related issues of research methods derived from a range of disciplines, including the social sciences, are reported in a variety of journals. There are sites that permit a variety of journals in a particular topic area to be ranked according to specified measures of impact.

For example, the Longwoods journal Healthcare Quarterly is currently ranked #1201 in a SCImago ranking of journals in the Subject Area: “Medicine” and the Subject Category: “Medicine (miscellaneous)”. However, Healthcare Quarterly is a journal that has a focus on:

Best practices, policy and innovations in the administration of healthcare. For administrators, academics, insurers, suppliers and policy pundits.

So, it’s a journal intended for research on healthcare policy and services. It seems inappropriate to classify it as a “Medicine (miscellaneous)” journal.

The Longwoods journal Healthcare Policy wasn’t found in the SCImago database via a Journal Search, so it isn’t included in any rankings.

Another website that can be useful for the evaluation of journals is eigenFACTOR.org. There’s a claim on its “why eigenfactor?” page that it “ranks journals much as Google ranks websites“. One option that’s provided is a “cost-effectiveness search“. When this search was done for the “field: medicine” and “fine category: health policy and services”, the cost-effectiveness search results yielded a total of 28 journals. The five top-ranked journals were: Health Affairs, Medical Care, American Journal of Managed Care, Milbank Quarterly and Health Services Research.

Neither of the Longwoods journals Healthcare Policy nor Healthcare Quarterly are included in the eigenFACTOR.org database, so they don’t appear among the 28 journals ranked in the results this particular search.

Similarly, SCImago can be used to obtain rankings of journals in the “Subject Area: Social Sciences” and the “Subject Category: Health (social science)”. They can be ranked by H index, or ranked by SJR (SCImago Journal Rank). Healthcare Quarterly wasn’t found among the 81 journals ranked in the results of this search. Apparently, this is because Healthcare Quarterly has been put into the Subject Area category: “Medicine” and the Subject Category: “Medicine (miscellaneous)”, as noted above. If it had been included, it would have been ranked about 68th of 81 Health (social science) journals, when ranked by SJR.

As is also noted above, Healthcare Policy is currently not included in the SCImago database.

Four of the five journals identified above (as highly ranked in terms of cost-effectiveness) were also found among the top ten journals when ranked according to either H Index or SJR. These four journals and their publishers are listed below. Also included is information about their compliance with the access policies of a range of funding agencies (according to the SHERPA/RoMEO database).

1) Health Affairs (Project Hope): A search of the SHERPA/RoMEO database yielded no information about compliance of this journal with the access policies of funders, nor was I able to find any relevant information via the journal’s website.

2) Medical Care (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins): Results from the SHERPA/RoMEO database indicate that this journal is non-compliant with the access policies of the funders that are identified.

3) Milbank Quarterly (Blackwell): Results from the SHERPA/RoMEO database indicate that this journal is compliant with the access policies of all of the funders that are identified. However, the exact duration of any embargo period, post-publication and prior to provision of free accessibility, isn’t specified for this particular journal. A visit to the journal’s website also didn’t yield this information.

4) Health Services Research (Blackwell): Results from the SHERPA/RoMEO database indicate that this journal also is compliant with the access policies of all of the funders that are identified. However, according to the Copyright Assignment Form, the policy of HSR about postprints is:

Posting of the published Article on an electronic public server can only be done with written permission from Blackwell Publishing.

In contrast, the policy for Standard Blackwell Publishing Journals is that postprints may be posted:

… on free public servers in their subject area after the embargo period stipulated by the journal has been passed (note that the embargo period will vary by journal, e.g. 6 months or 12 months, and that some journals do not have any embargo on self-archiving at all …

Thus, the policy about postprints (author’s final version after peer review) for HSR appears to differ from that of other Blackwell journals.

Some, but not all, Blackwell journals offer a hybrid OA option, called Online Open. According to a list dated May 11, 2007 [xls file], Health Services Research is one of the journals that offers this option. The fee for 2007 is US$2,600. (According to the list dated May 2007, Milbank Quarterly does not offer this hybrid OA option).

There are, of course, other journals devoted to various aspects of research relevant to health policy and health services. Two examples of Open Access journals are BMC Health Services Research (published by BioMed Central; the article-processing fee for 2008 is US$1,870), and Health Research Policy and Systems (published by BMC in collaboration with the World Health Organization; the current fee is US$1,675).

A comparison of SJR data from SCIamgo for these two journals and for the journal Health Services Research indicates that the SJRs for all of these journals have increased after 2003, and that the SJRs for the two BMC open access journals in 2006 were similar to the SJR for Health Services Research 5-6 years earlier.

So, what lessons might be learned from these comparisons? Some points to consider:

a) The policies of publishers about Green OA (archiving of post-prints) for these journals range from non-compliant (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins) to complex (Blackwoods) and/or obscure (Project Hope, Blackwoods). The effort required to try to obtain unambiguous information about these Green OA policies is sometimes ridiculous, to an extent that is almost comical.

b) The preferred alternative to Green OA is Gold OA (paid open access to the full text of journal contents). The most prominent OA publisher in the HSR field is BioMed Central (BMC).

c) Some publishers (e.g. Blackwell, Longwoods) do provide Hybrid OA (paid access to individual articles), but the article-processing fees are expensive (e.g. in comparison with BMC’s Gold OA journals). Such programs may also have other drawbacks. See Peter Suber’s “Nine key questions to ask about any hybrid journal program“, SPARC Open Access Newsletter, issue #101, September 2, 2006.

d) The warning at the SHERPA/RoMEO site should be noted: “All information is correct to the best of our knowledge but should not be relied upon for legal advice“. When a publisher’s policies vary from journal to journal, the information may be correct for one journal, but not for another.

e) Sites designed to permit comparisons of journals, such as SCImago and eigenFACTOR.org, may neglect or misclassify some journals (especially, “niche journals“). It would be prudent not to use any single site of this type as the sole source of information for an assessment of journals. Journal comparisons need to take into account multiple variables, not all of which are likely to be incorporated into any particular source of information.

The January 1, 2008 issue (vol. 19, no. 1) of the journal Human Gene Therapy includes an editorial and five commentaries about adverse events and informed consent in human gene transfer trials. See: Debate over Safety of Gene Therapy Trials Focuses on Issue of Informed Consent, by Vicki Cohn, Press Release, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., January 22, 2008. All of these articles are currently freely accessible:

1) Adverse Events in Gene Transfer Trials and an Agenda for the New Year, by James M. Wilson, the Editor-In-Chief (Human Gene Therapy. January 1, 2008, 19(1): 1-2. doi:10.1089/hum.2008.0104). Excerpts:

The fact is that gene therapy is, and will remain, a highly visible area of translational research with elevated scrutiny.

…

I encourage the professional gene therapy societies and various related foundations to work together in the new year to undertake a critical review of the conduct of our clinical trials. As you can see in the following commentaries, these are very complex issues and conflicts and biases are at times unavoidable. However, it behooves us to get ahead of this issue and put in place more effective ways to ensure that research subjects who courageously give of themselves can do so with a full and unbiased understanding of the risks and benefits of their participation.

2) Case of Leukaemia Associated with X-Linked Severe Combined Immunodeficiency Gene Therapy Trial in London, by Board of the European Society of Gene and Cell Therapy, Executive Committee of the Clinigene Network of Excellence, and Executive of the Consert Integrated Project (Human Gene Therapy. January 1, 2008, 19(1): 3-4. doi:10.1089/hum.2007.1221). Excerpt:

However, retroviral and lentiviral SIN vectors remain to be proven clinically to provide both efficacy and a lower, ideally negligible, risk of adverse effects, and long-term follow-up of respective clinical trial patients is a clear necessity.

3) If It’s Broken, Shouldn’t It Be Fixed? Informed Consent and Initial Clinical Trials of Gene Therapy, by Arthur L. Caplan (Human Gene Therapy. January 1, 2008, 19(1): 5-6. doi:10.1089/hum.2007.1010). Excerpt:

Nothing can make the death of a subject in a clinical trial anything other than a horrible tragedy. There are, however, steps that could and should be taken to help ensure that when a death or adverse event occurs there is less room for doubt about the adequacy of informed consent.

4) Informed Consent in Human Gene Transfer Clinical Trials, by Jeffrey Kahn (Human Gene Therapy. January 1, 2008, 19(1): 7-8. doi:10.1089/hum.2007.1228). Excerpt:

The challenge of improving informed consent deserves the same attention as the science and medicine of gene transfer, and only when we meet that challenge can we claim that the subjects in HGT research are truly protected.

5) Protections for Participants in Gene Therapy Trials: A Patient’s Perspective, by Suzanne R. Pattee (Human Gene Therapy. January 1, 2008, 19(1): 9-10. doi:10.1089/hum.2007.1214). Excerpt:

Respecting participants by including them in the process respects the gravity of the request made of them - to give selflessly of themselves to benefit others.

6) Human Gene Therapy, Consent, and the Realities of Clinical Research: Is It Time for a Research Subject Advocate?, by Tomas Jose Silber (Human Gene Therapy. January 1, 2008, 19(1): 11-14. doi:10.1089/hum.2007.1217). Excerpt:

A research subject advocate could enhance the protection of participants in gene transfer research by advising the research team about participant concerns, by verifying the appropriateness of the Data Safety Monitoring Plan, by monitoring adverse events, and, most importantly, by the direct interaction with concerned families, stressing availability throughout the study while maintaining a working relationship with and independence from researchers.

For another example of the “elevated scrutiny” that human gene therapy is receiving, see a commentary about the articles listed above, On gene therapy and informed consent, by Alan Milstein, blog.bioethics.net, January 29, 2008. Excerpt:

January’s issue of Human Gene Therapy offers some intriguing commentary on the issue of informed consent in gene transfer trials.

…

I had represented the Gelsinger family after the death of their son in the experiment sponsored by Dr. Wilson and because I currently represent the family of Jolie Mohr, whose recent death renewed the debate over the informed consent process in this field of research.

See also: A comment from Paul Gelsinger on gene therapy and informed consent, blog.bioethics.net, January 31, 2008. The final sentence:

Anyone considering joining a clinical trial needs to be aware that they are dealing with a system that is seriously flawed.

Clinical trials of human gene therapy are of great interest from a variety of perspectives, including bioethical ones. They also provide an example of an aspect of biomedical and health-related research that’s of interest to many people, in addition to those researchers who are active in the field. Human Gene Therapy, and its publishers, Mary Ann Liebert Inc., should be thanked for providing free access to the thought-provoking articles published in the January 1, 2008 issue.

However, it should also be noted that Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. is listed in the SHERPA/RoMEO database as a publisher that’s non-compliant with the access policies of a variety of funding agencies. There’s a “Liebert Open Option” for Human Gene Therapy [PDF, 74 KB]. Fee: $3,000.

So far, I’ve not been able to find any information about how Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. plans to respond to the recently-revised NIH Public Access Policy.

The International Journal of Internet Research Ethics (IJIRE) is a “peer-reviewed online journal, dedicated specifically to cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural research on Internet Research Ethics“. The first issue of the IJIRE appeared in January, 2008. No subscription is required. PDF versions of articles can be downloaded. The IJIRE is published at the Center for Information Policy Research, School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

The final article [PDF, 226 KB] in the first issue, by Erin Hvizdak, is entitled: Creating a Web of Attribution in the Feminist Blogosphere, International Journal of Internet Research Ethics 2008(Jan); 1(1): 115-133. The article includes comments about current copyright law, and presents data about the use of Creative Commons licenses by bloggers.

An excerpt from page 2/20 of the PDF:

Current copyright law in the United States embraces the idea that a single, autonomous author, free from influence or help by others, creates each potentially copyright-protected work. This concept emanates from the “heroic self-presentation of Romantic poets” (Woodmansee & Jaszi, 1994, p. 3) that developed some 200 years ago.

An excerpt from page 4/20:

But, as described, existing copyright law privileges and protects works that emanate from the single, autonomous individual, extending no thought, acknowledgement, or protection to the feminist notion of collaborative, relational ordialogic cultural production.

An excerpt from page 6/20:

The weblog is a collaborative form of media that emphasizes dialogue and deconstructs the dualisms and binaries present in copyright law through prevalent sharing, quoting, and linking of information.

An excerpt from page 10/20:

Creative Commons licenses were present in 22 out of 55 blogs total (10 of the women’s blogs and 12 of the feminists’ blogs), or 40% of the time, demonstrating that women and feminists use Creative Commons on a far more regular basis than the general web population.

For a commentary on this article, see: [feminism and copyright] posted on January 22, 2008 by Jess (Jess Laccetti). Excerpt:

In this month’s issue (I believe it is also the first ever issue) of the International Journal of Internet Research Ethics there is a fascinating article by Erin Hvizdak. Her “Creating a Web of Attribution in the Feminist Blogosphere” takes a feminist look at issues of copyright.

What’s Internet research ethics? There’s an item about it in Wikipedia. There, Internet research ethics is currently defined as involving “the research ethics of Internet research, with an emphasis on scientific research carried out via the Internet“. The IJIRE has a focus on “the ethical obligations of researchers conducting research online“. I’ve argued, in some online notes, that this kind of focus can be termed “micro-level Internet research ethics”, where the emphasis is on knowledge growth (or, knowledge generation) via research conducted online.

If it’s accepted that the creation of new knowledge needs to be
complemented by effective approaches to knowledge transfer and exchange, (that is the dissemination of new and existing knowledge), then a “macro-level Internet research ethics”, with an emphasis on ethical issues relevant to the online dissemination of research outputs, also merits consideration.

From this perspective, “macro-level” ethical issues include ones that are used to justify the OA movement, such as justifications based on the concept of distributive justice.

Erin Hvizdak’s article, with its focus on copyright and on blogs, could be regarded as contribution to “macro-level Internet research ethics”. There’s also a focus on a particular conceptual framework, one that’s often referred to as an ethics of care. As is pointed out in the Wikipedia entry for Internet research ethics, this is only one of a number of conceptual frameworks that can be used to examine ethical issues.

Finally, it’s noteworthy that, although the article by Erin Hvizdak contains information about the use of Creative Commons licenses, such a license wasn’t used for this article.

I agree with the view expressed by Ben Brumfield (Grand Text Auto, December 21, 2007):

I suspect that the OA debate will be resolved neither by authors nor by readers. The scientific publishing panelists at SXSWi this year agreed that the fight was between funders and journals.

I’d only add one minor revision, that the fight is between funders and publishers of journals.

It should be noted that funders are accepting some compromises in their approaches to this struggle.

The recent open access mandate for the NIH in the USA has involved an important compromise: it will permit a 12-month embargo on open access. See: An open access mandate for the NIH, Peter Suber, SPARC Open Access Newsletter, issue #117, January 2, 2008. The wording of the mandate:

The Director of the National Institutes of Health shall require that all investigators funded by the NIH submit or have submitted for them to the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central an electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts upon acceptance for publication to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication: Provided, That the NIH shall implement the public access policy in a manner consistent with copyright law.

Heather Joseph of The Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) has commented on this compromise, in Q&A with SPARC’s Heather Joseph, Joseph: NIH policy “an Enormous Step Forward”, Library Journal Academic Newswire, January 8, 2008. The question and the comment:

On another hand, some open access advocates say that the yearlong embargo is too long and could essentially set a de facto embargo period for publishers. How do you respond to those arguments?

I completely understand the concerns of those who think a year is too long an embargo period, but from a pragmatic standpoint, this was a necessary compromise. This policy represents a sea change in the parameters of the scholarly communications marketplace. We’ve gone, in one fell swoop, from information being locked up behind perpetual, exclusive distribution licenses to an embargo period limited to no longer than one year. That’s an enormous step forward. Also, the policy allows the researcher to determine the embargo period. It is not a static 12-month requirement. This puts more power in the research community’s hands to determine what they feel is best in terms of timing.

Individual researchers are not required to wait for a year. And, the embargo period could be shortened in later versions of the policy.

Peter Suber has posted this and other excerpts from the interview in: Heather Joseph on the OA mandate at the NIH, Open Access News, January 8, 2008. He has also commented on the mandate for NIH in: An open access mandate for the NIH. An excerpt, about the compromise:

The policy does permit a 12 month embargo, which I think is too long. But here’s what I said about that in August:

I wish the bill had shortened the embargo. Any embargo is a compromise with the public interest, and longer embargoes are more harmful in medicine than in other fields. But I’d much rather have a mandate than a shortened embargo, if we had to choose. The reason is simply that a short embargo without a mandate isn’t really short, since there would be no enforceable deadline for ending the embargo and providing OA. Moreover, we don’t have to choose. Shortening the embargo can be our next goal….The bill is…a significant, unmistakable gain on the most important front –the mandate– and [since the current embargo is 12 months] it’s not a loss or retreat on any front….

Note his comment that: “I’d much rather have a mandate than a shortened embargo, if we had to choose“.

An agency that has a Policy on Access to Research Outputs that involves a shorter embargo (6 months) is the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). Excerpts from the section about Peer-reviewed Journal Publications:

Grant recipients are now required to make every effort to ensure that their peer-reviewed publications are freely accessible through the Publisher’s website (Option #1) or an online repository as soon as possible and in any event within six months of publication (Option #2).

Under the second option, grant recipients must archive the final peer-reviewed full-text manuscripts immediately upon publication in a digital archive, such as PubMed Central or the grantees institutional repository. Publications must be freely accessible within six months of publication, where allowable and in accordance with publisher policies. …

A major compromise is involved in the words: “where allowable and in accordance with publisher policies“.

In: OA mandate at the CIHR, (Open Access News, September 4, 2007), Peter Suber has commented:

This is a major policy with a major loophole: “Publications must be freely accessible within six months of publication, where allowable and in accordance with publisher policies.” The exception swallows the rule. Any publisher who doesn’t want OA within six months, or ever, can easily block it, and CIHR invites them to do so. But for that, the policy would be exemplary: the mandatory terms, the reasonably short embargo, the equal standing of central and distributed repositories, the willingness to pay publishing fees at fee-based OA journals, the OA data policy, and the implicit sanction for non-compliance.

…

The Wellcome Trust and several of the Research Councils UK have found an elegant way to close the loophole the CIHR that left open: they require OA archiving on a certain timetable, as a condition of funding, and take advantage of the fact that researchers sign funding contracts before they sign copyright transfer agreements with publishers. In short, they require grantees to live up to their funding contracts and, therefore, to transfer copyright on their funded work, if at all, only subject to the terms of the prior funding contract. If a publisher is unwilling to let the author comply with the funding contract, the author must look for another publisher. I do hope the CIHR will move in this direction at its next policy review, and close or at least shrink the gigantic loophole in the present policy.

Of course, my own view is that both a closure of the loophole in the CIHR mandate (by requiring immediate deposition of the final peer-reviewed manuscript in a suitable repository, with OA within 6 months, as a condition of funding), and a shortened embargo (a maximum of 6 months) are preferable. From this perspective, the 6-month embargo (rather than requiring OA immediately upon publication) is the only compromise being accepted.

Why accept this particular compromise? Briefly, for two main reasons: 1) Researchers should, as much as possible, be able to choose whatever journal they prefer. Acceptance of a 6-month embargo provides more options (although some major journals that require at least a 12-month embargo, or don’t permit archiving at all, would still be excluded); 2) “Green” OA (with a 6-month embargo) is likely to continue to be less costly to the researcher (and thus, to the funder) than “Gold” OA, via a journal that charges an article processing fee in return for providing immediate open access, either to the particular article, or to the entire contents of the journal. Of course, only some OA journals charge article processing fees, but they include a number of the better-known ones.

A final comment: The mandate for NIH has not yet been implemented. Nor has the CIHR policy, although it will apply to all grants awarded after January 1, 2008. The ways in which these policies are implemented seem likely to be crucially important. Stay tuned.