Posts Tagged OA policy

Political theater about public access to federally funded research

August 16, 2010 at 2:42 pm · Filed under Open Access ·Tagged ,

On July 29, 2010, the Information Policy, Census, and National Archives Subcommittee of the US House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing entitled: “Public Access to Federally-Funded Research”. The hearing was chaired by Subcommittee Chairman Representative William Lacy Clay (D-MO).

The Alliance for Taxpayer Access has posted a news item about the hearings, entitled: Summary: Hearing on Public Access to Federally Funded Research, dated August 12, 2010.  Excerpt from the last paragraph of this summary: “Next steps: Congress will be in recess until September 9, so any further action on this issue or related legislation will happen after that point.”

There was a webcast of the hearings (2 hr 14 min) and a video is available. Copies of the Opening Statement of Chairman Clay and of the Prepared Testimony of the ten panel members are available here.

Some information about the video (the total duration of the hearing was 2:14:00):

  • 3:10 End of Chairman’s Opening Statement.
  • 7:30 End of statement from Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-UT).
  • 7:35 Introduction of Panel I.
  • 9:40 Beginning of reading of Prepared Testimony by each of three members of the first panel. Each member was given 5 minutes to present their testimony. (All had concerns about government-mandated public access to the outputs of federally funded research).
  • 26:10 End of Panel I presentations and beginning of first question period. Representatives Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), Judy Chu (D-CA), Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Chairman Clay asked questions.
  • 1:07:25 End of first panel.
  • 1:09:00 Introduction of Panel II.
  • 1:13:35 Beginning of reading of Prepared Testimony by each of six members of the second panel. (All were supporters of public access to the outputs of federally funded research).
  • 1:43:15 End of Panel II presentations and beginning of second question period. Chairman Clay was the only Representative still present, and he asked several questions.
  • 1:59:10 End of second panel.
  • 2:00:15 Introduction of Panel III.
  • 2:01:30 Beginning of reading of Prepared Testimony by the single member of the third panel, Dr. David Lipman (Director, NCBI, NLM, National Institutes of Health).
  • 2:05:50 End of Panel III presentation and beginning of third question period. Again, Chairman Clay was the only Representative still present, and he asked several questions.
  • 2:14:00 End of hearing.

Summaries of Twitter messages (tweets) about the webcast have been posted here and here. The emphasis is on the Panel II session.

Another commentary about the hearings is: House Holds Hearing on Status of Open Access, FASEB Washington Update, August 6, 2010. The emphasis is on the Panel I session.

Comments: How to review this video, as an example of political theater? First impression: it was based on three one-act plays. Each one was nicely staged. Second impression: the model for these plays was one of the “Judge So-and-So” programs that can be seen on television. In such programs, the judge listens while various people present their different versions of a dispute, and tries to decide who is being deceitful and who isn’t. Representative Clay played the role of “Judge Clay” very well. Most of the supporting cast were also excellent (although perhaps Representative Maloney spent more time in the spotlight than was really necessary). There were even some humorous moments.

What was the purpose of this particular example of political theater? It served well as a tutorial about the OA movement. However, Representative Clay was the only member of the House to benefit from the full tutorial. The other three Representatives were present and asked questions only during the first act. Then, they left.

Were these hearings simply a prelude to further legislative action or an executive pronouncement? Stay tuned for the next exciting episode.

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UCLA survey of knowledge about the NIH Public Access Policy

July 26, 2010 at 7:55 pm · Filed under Open Access ·Tagged ,

Measuring Capacity and Effectiveness of NIH Public Access Policy Programming as a Model for Open Access by Tania Bardyn and 4 co-authors, UCLA Louis M Darling Biomedical Library. Dated July 24, 2010 in the University of New Mexico DSpace repository.

Abstract: This file contains the presentation slides from Ms. Bardyn’s presentation at the Evidence Based Scholarly Communication Conference, March 11-12, 2010, in Albuquerque, NM. [PDF of 44 presentation slides].

This was a “Survey of Translational and Other Researchers’ Knowledge of the NIH Public Access Policy at UCLA“.

  • From Slides 3, 9 & 10: Translational researchers at UCLA (N=?) and attendees at 8 NIH Workshops (N=103) were surveyed. The survey took place between Nov. 30, 2009 and Dec. 15, 2009.
  • From Slide 13: 72.5% of responses (50/69) were from the David Geffen School of Medicine.
  • From Slides 15 & 17: Of 69 respondents, 51% did not attend an NIH Workshop at UCLA. And, 51% were Translational Researchers.
  • From Slide 16: 74% (51/69 respondents) answered “Yes” to the question: “Are you currently involved in any NIH funded research?“
  • From Slide 26: 50% (32/64 respondents) did not know the stated intention of the NIH Public Access Policy.
  • From Slide 36: Of 65 respondents, 43% had successfully submitted an article to PubMed Central.
  • From Slide 37: Of 65 respondents, 95.4% answered “No” to the question; “Have you made any attempts to retain your copyrights when publishing in an academic journal?“.
  • From Slide 38: Knowledge Sharing: 89% (24 respondents) of NIH Workshop Attendees answered “Yes“; 49% (17 respondents) of Translational Researchers answered “Yes“.
  • From Slide 42: Quote from survey respondent at UCLA, December 2009 (about future training on the NIH Public Access Policy): “I think it is more efficient for the NIH website or other external website to provide such training. The issues are the same at all universities and it is not clear why each institution should provide this information. Since the NIH requires IDs on papers in biosketches and progress reports, that affects investigators competitiveness on grants which is much stronger motivation to comply with the policy than mandated training by UCLA which will force investigators to know the policy, but not necessarily comply with the policy.”
  • From Slide 43: 57% (37/65 respondents) answered “Yes” to the question: “Do you think you need further training on this issue?“.

Comments: The response rate was not high for this survey. Of 103 NIH Workshop Attendees, only 43% of 69 survey respondents were sure that they had attended a Workshop. So, the response rate from NIH Workshop attendees was 0.43×69/103=29%. It’s not stated how many Translational Researchers were surveyed, but it’s unlikely that the response rate for the Translational Researchers was higher than it was for the NIH Workshop Attendees.

Might the survey results be biased in a way that yielded an underestimate of knowledge about the NIH Public Access Policy by translational and other researchers at UCLA? This also seems unlikely.

A question that wasn’t answered in the slide presentation: were the 28 respondents who had successfully submitted an article to PubMed Central (see Slide 36/44) also the most knowledgeable about the NIH Public Access Policy? (If not, does it matter?).

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Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada’s OA policy

July 3, 2010 at 11:03 am · Filed under Open Access ·Tagged

HSF Open access to research outputs policy: Guidelines, Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada. Last updated: June 29, 2010. [FriendFeed entry]. Excerpts:

The Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada’s (HSF’s) mission is to lead in eliminating heart disease and stroke and reducing their impact through the advancement of research and its application, the promotion of healthy living, and advocacy. To that end, HSF is committed to enhancing the application of research results. By adopting this policy, HSF expects that the cutting edge research we fund will be freely accessible and useable for the international research community, policymakers, health care administrators, clinicians, and the public.

…..

This policy applies to all publications which report work and findings obtained with the support, in whole or in part, of any type of grant awarded June 1 2010 and onward from the Heart and Stroke Foundation (HSF). HSF also encourages immediate compliance with this policy by researchers publishing work supported by HSF grants received before June 1 2010.

HSF recognizes that there may be reasonable limitations and exceptions to compliance. However, researchers are expected to make every effort to comply and must notify HSF staff immediately when there are exceptions or limitations.

…..

HSF covers expenses that researchers reasonably may incur related to publishing in Open Access or hybrid scholarly journals.

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Preliminary data about CIHR-supported publications cited in PubMed

January 8, 2010 at 1:29 am · Filed under Open Access ·Tagged , , ,

Technical Bulletin No. 372 of the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM) was posted on January 5, 2010. Excerpt:

Effective mid-October 2009, when a published article has an acknowledgement of funding support from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), that information is added to the PubMed journal citation.

At present, a search using the country name alone (a search on ‘canada [gr]‘) retrieves the relevant records, because CIHR is the only Canadian organization in the Grant Number field in PubMed at this time.

Thus, it’s now feasible to obtain, via PubMed, data that will provide  indicators of compliance with the Policy on Access to Research Outputs of the CIHR. This policy “applies to all grants awarded January 1, 2008 and onward, which have received funding in whole or in part from CIHR“.

For example, the Advanced Search option in PubMed can be used to obtain an estimate of the total number of CIHR-supported publications with a publication date in the last 2 months of 2009. The result (search #1): 867.

Of these, links to ‘free full text’ were available for a total of (search#2): 82 (9.5% of 867). Of these 82 publications, 23 (28%) were published in PLoS ONE (search#3).

Analogous data can be obtained for several topics (such as ‘Cancer’). Total number of cancer-related (and CIHR-supported) publications with a publication date in the last 2 months of 2009 (search #4):  221. Number of these for which links to ‘free full text’ were available (search #5): 23 (10% of 221). Of these 23 publications, 7 (30%) were published in PLoS ONE (search #6). (The other 16 articles were distributed across 14 different journals).

Comment: As the Policy on Access to Research Outputs of the CIHR is implemented, one can expect to see an increase in the percentage of CIHR-supported publications (cited in PubMed) for which links to ‘free full text’ will be available. As noted in NLM Technical Bulletin No. 372:

A PubMed Central Canada manuscript submission system will be implemented in early 2010. This will be another source for grant information from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

(Note: the link to PMC Canada in the current version of NLM Technical Bulletin No. 372 is corrupted).

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Contribution to the OSTP Policy Forum

December 20, 2009 at 7:29 pm · Filed under Open Access ·Tagged , ,

Today (December 20) is the last day for contributions to the first phase of the Public Access Forum, sponsored by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP): Policy Forum on Public Access to Federally Funded Research: Implementation.

The next phase, to begin on Dec. 21, is described at: Public Access Policy Phase One Wrap-Up: Implementation. Phase Two of this forum will focus on “Features and Technology”. It’s scheduled to run from Dec. 21 to Dec. 31. Phase Three, focused on “Management”, is expected to run from Jan. 1 to Jan. 7. (Initially, this Policy Forum was scheduled to end on Jan. 7, but the timeline has been extended by two weeks. The current plan is to “use those last two weeks to revisit, on a more detailed level, all three focus areas that will have been addressed by then“).

My own contribution to the first phase, posted today, was:

Thanks for the opportunity to post a comment. OSTP has provided innovative leadership in it’s initiation of this Policy Forum.

Who should enact public access policies?:
• Agencies that fund a significant amount of research should enact mandatory policies. Some differences in policies across agencies may be necessary at this time, but researchers (and their institutions) should not be overburdened by too many differing implementation requirements.

Version and Timing:
• The author’s final version, after peer review, of papers stemming from all publicly-funded research should be required to be deposited into an open, central repository immediately upon acceptance for publication. The author(s) should retain copyright to this version.

Mandatory:
• Deposit should be mandatory, by funders and also by each sponsoring institution. Persistent failure by authors to comply with such a policy should lead to appropriate penalties (such as ineligibility for further funding).
• Deposit should be in a central repository. There are already two successful central repositories, arXiv and PMC. (What’s missing is a successful one for all of the social sciences and humanities). Harvesting from the central repository into the sponsoring institution’s repository should be feasible, if desired by the sponsoring institution (to reduce the burden on researchers and their sponsoring institutions).

Other:
• From an international perspective, there should be harmonization of policies by those agencies in different countries that support similar kinds of research. For example, the requirements for deposition in PMC, UKPMC and PMC Canada should not differ.
• The value-added services offered by these repositories could differ. For example, an ideal value-added service would be the provision, for each article in a repository, of credible article-level metrics (ALMs). The Public Library of Science (PLoS) has already done pioneering developmental work on such ALMs (http://www.plos.org/cms/node/485). The repositories of sponsoring institutions could also provide value-added services not already available via the central repositories.

Comment: These comments are, of course, my own. They do not represent the views of any of the institutions or organizations with which I’m associated.

The only aspect of my comments that’s at all novel is probably the suggestion that deposition in both central repositories and the repositories of sponsoring institutions would permit each type of repository to offer different value-added services to authors and users. My current view is that such value-added services are needed to establish (or enhance) differences in “brand” across different repositories, and to increase the appeal of repositories to authors and users.

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What’s the future of OA?

November 1, 2009 at 2:39 pm · Filed under Open Access ·Tagged , , ,

Tom Wilson, in a message sent to the BOAI Forum on October 31, 2009, suggested that “… any strategy [for the OA movement] evolved today on the assumption that the future is likely to be the same as the past is probably going to fail“. Other excerpts:

No one knows exactly how the ‘open access’ movement will pan out ….. Strong advocacy of repositories is strong advocacy of the status quo in scholarly communication. ….. scholars are increasingly taking matters into their own hands and producing free OA journals on some kind of subsidy basis and any economist will tell you that social benefit is maximised by this form of OA.

Stevan Harnad, in a response to the same Forum, has reiterated some of his well-known perspectives:

The purpose of the Open Access movement is not to knock down the publishing industry. The purpose is to provide Open Access to refereed research articles. ….. The way to take matters in their [scholars'] own hands is to deposit the refereed final drafts of all their journal articles in their university’s OA Repository.

Comment: My own opinion is that both perspectives are tenable. I agree with Stevan Harnad that the most important short-term goal of the OA movement is to “provide Open Access to refereed research articles“. I also agree with Tom Wilson that ”No one knows exactly how the ‘open access’ movement will pan out” over the longer term, and that “the status quo in scholarly communication” seems likely to be unstable.

However, if the “status quo” is identified as a somewhat bewildering variety of options for scholarly communication that are changing quickly as technologies evolve, and are varying from field to field (and even across sub-disciplines in the same field), then this “status quo” may persist for quite a few years, before a smaller number of “best practices” become firmly established.

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More about compliance with WT’s OA policy

October 15, 2009 at 11:01 pm · Filed under Open Access ·Tagged ,

As noted in a previous post (dated June 9, 2009), Robert Kiley of the Wellcome Trust (WT) has reported data indicating that (for Trust-funded research papers published between October of 2007 and August of 2008) potential compliance was about 95%, but actual compliance hovered around 35%.

He recently discussed compliance with the OA policy of the WT in one of the presentations that are available via OASPA 2009 (presentations recorded at the 1st Conference on Open Access Scholarly Publishing, Lund, Sweden, September 14–16, 2009). His presentation is Open Access and the Wellcome Trust (video, 34 min, including a Q & A session).

At about 11.35 min, there’s a slide entitled: Issues – still to be resolved. Four issues are listed: Improving compliance with the OA mandate; Improving methods for researchers to meet author-side payments; Clarifying publishers’ OA policy; and, Working out how to flip the model from “subscriber pays” to “author pays”.

The next slide, at about 11.45 min, shows a plot of compliance (% of papers available in PubMed Central or UKPMC within 6 months of publication) for various dates between November 2006 and January 2009. The plot indicates an upward trend (an increase in compliance) from about 15% compliance on November 2006 to about 36% compliance by January 2009.

The next slide, at about 14.30 min, is entitled: What is being deposited? Data for Wellcome-supported papers in UKPMC are shown, for the period January 2007 to January 2009. During this period, only 16% of 3684 Wellcome papers in UKPMC were author depositions. The remaining 84% were publisher depositions.

The next slide, at about 15.15 min, is entitled: Improving compliance with mandate. Three problems affecting compliance are addressed: Problem in part – authors not self-archiving; …in part, publishers not having workflows to support “author pays” model; ..but, in part, we (funders) have not yet demonstrated the benefits of OA, something we are addressing through UKPMC.

At about 17.00 min, he remarks (not on a slide) that WT hasn’t used the “nuclear option” yet (has not told grantees that WT will stop funding those who don’t comply with the OA mandate).

At about 18.30 min, he begins to address the third problem, that: in part, we (funders) have not yet demonstrated the benefits of OA, something we are addressing through UKPMC. The purpose is to “give something back” to researchers, via new services at UKPMC.

From about 20.25 min to 25.15 min, he addresses the other three issues (other than Improving compliance with the OA mandate) mentioned on an earlier slide: Improving methods for researchers to meet author-side payments; Clarifying publishers’ OA policy; and, Working out how to flip the model from “subscriber pays” to “author pays”.

His final slide, which appears at about 25.15 min, is entitled: Take home messages (one of which is the need to take action on improving compliance). The Q & A session with members of the audience begins at about 26.45 min.

Comment: The OA policy of the Wellcome Trust is of special interest because the WT is involved in a pioneering effort to implement a strong mandate. So far, the WT has avoided use of the “nuclear option” to enforce compliance (the option that grantees who don’t comply lose support from the WT). Instead of focusing attention only on author self-archiving, other ways of improving compliance are also being explored, such as finding ways to enhance publisher depositions (currently, the major source of depositions). As of October 15, 2009, there have been 180 views of the video about Open Access and the Wellcome Trust. Close attention should be paid, by members of those agencies planning to implement strong OA mandates, to relevant information provided by the WT.

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CBCRA OA policy revised

June 28, 2009 at 2:34 pm · Filed under Open Access ·Tagged ,

An Open Access Policy was adopted by the Canadian Breast Cancer Research Alliance (CBCRA) in April 2007. This policy was revised in April 2009, and can be accessed via the CBCRA Open Access Archive subsection of the Research Program section of the CBCRA website. The CBCRA OA Policy has changed from a request to a requirement.

Revised Policy [PDF]. Excerpt:

CBCRA requires that grant holders supply an electronic copy of final, accepted manuscripts funded in whole or in part by CBCRA grants, to be posted in the CBCRA Open Access Archive, as soon as possible after publication. A publisher’s embargo period of up to six months will be permitted. The document must be either a publisher-generated PDF or the author’s final, accepted version, including changes introduced by the peer review process.

The first sentence of the previous policy was:

CBCRA requests that grant holders supply an electronic copy of final, accepted manuscripts funded in whole or in part by CBCRA grants.

Note that the word “requests” in this first sentence has been replaced by “requires” in the revised policy.

For a post by Peter Suber in Open Access News about the previous policy, see: CBCRA formally requests OA to the research it funds, October 2, 2007. (Coverage of CBCRA in Open Access News can be searched via: http://tinyurl.com/lcmzfu).

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Steps a university can take in support of OA

June 11, 2009 at 5:22 pm · Filed under Open Access ·Tagged ,

See: Open Access at Concordia University: A Report for the Office of Research, Kathleen Shearer, March 27, 2009 [9-page PDF]. The report includes sections on: What is open access?; How is open access implemented?; State of play; Why does open access matter for Concordia?; Options.

The principal option that’s proposed is the implementation of an OA policy . It’s pointed out that a “sustainable OA repository is an essential element for supporting an open access policy“.

In addition to the adoption of an OA policy, it’s suggested that the university could join other universities in endorsing major open access statements, “to indicate to the international community [the university's] formal commitment to open access.

Activities to support faculty members’ open access endeavors are also suggested. In particular, “the university might encourage faculty authors to modify restrictive publishing contracts so that they can deposit their work into an OA repository“.

The university “could also support the transition [of its university-based journals] to open access models by providing them with expertise and infrastructure support“.

Finally, “the university should continue the practice of giving due weight in promotion and tenure committees to peer-reviewed publications regardless of their price, medium, or business model, and also ensure that scholars are rewarded and encouraged for scholarly works whether or not they fall outside the traditional publishing system“.

The report also includes Annexes on: 1) Major Definitions of Open Access; 2) CIHR Policy on Access to Research Outputs September 2007; 3) Sample University Open Access Policies; 4) Further Reading.

Annex 3 includes the OA policies adopted by MIT Faculty and by the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Comment: This is a succinct and well-written report that was prepared for the Office of Research of Concordia University. However, it should be helpful to members of any university who are interested in supporting OA. For example, there’s an urgent need to ensure “that scholars are rewarded and encouraged for scholarly works whether or not they fall outside the traditional publishing system“

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More on compliance with Wellcome Trust’s OA policy

June 9, 2009 at 1:45 am · Filed under Open Access ·Tagged ,

In a blog post entitled “Journals compliant with Wellcome mandate” (UK PubMed Central Blog, June 1, 2009), Robert Kiley noted data indicating that (for Trust-funded research papers published between October of 2007 and August of 2008) potential compliance was about 95%, but actual compliance hovered around 35%. The data were taken from slide 14/21 of a presentation that’s available via another blog post, “Funder mandates” (UK PubMed Central Blog, May 29, 2009). The potential compliance estimate of 95% is based on the percentage of journals used by Wellcome-funded authors that have a “Wellcome compliant” publishing option. The Wellcome Trust’s OA policy is available at: “Position statement in support of open and unrestricted access to published research” (last updated February 2008).

An estimate of somewhat more recent compliance can be obtained via PubMed. As noted in a NLM Technical Bulletin from the National Library of Medicine, dated May 12, 2006, the search term “wellcome trust [gr]” can be used to retrieve citations (created since June 2, 2005) indicating Wellcome Trust support.

When this search was done (on June 8), but limited to articles published in the last 1 year, the proportion of articles for which the free full text was available was: 1527/4223 = 36%. When the same search was done for articles published in the last 180 days, the proportion with free full text was: 594/2088 = 28%. So, the proportion of articles with publicly-accessible full text, published between 6 months and one year ago, can be estimated to be: (1527 – 594)/(4223 – 2088) = 933/2135, or 43.7%.

Recent compliance with the Wellcome mandate appears to be approaching 44%. Might the difference between the earlier figure of about 35% and the estimate of close to 44% be explained by articles that are publicly accessible, but not via PMC/UKPMC? Examination of a sample of 100 articles published between 6 months and a year ago (and cited by PubMed) indicated that, for about 6% of these articles, the full text was publicly-accessible only via the journal site, not via PMC. (Usually, the full text was publicly-accessible via both PMC and the journal site).

If the estimate is correct that compliance with the Wellcome mandate (Trust-funded research articles must be available through PMC/UKPMC within 6 months after publication) appears to be about (44% – 6%) = 38%, then recent compliance is  close to the estimate of about 35% (see above), and still well below the estimated potential compliance figure of about 95%.

Added June 18, 2009: More extensive sampling has indicated that, for Trust-funded articles published between 6 months and a year ago (and cited by PubMed), the percentage for which the full text is publicly-accessible only via the journal site, and not via PMC, may be higher than 6%, and may be as high as 10%.

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