Open Access News

• The September plan drops the provision in the July report requiring that, if the NIH paid any part of the article's publication costs, then PubMed Central (PMC) would release the OA edition of the article immediately. The new plan simply says that the OA edition will appear six months after publication "or sooner if the publisher agrees".
• The September plan gives new detail on exactly what grantees must deposit in PMC: "electronic copies of all final version manuscripts" accepted at peer-reviewed journals, when "final manuscript" is defined as "the author's version resulting after all modifications due to the peer review process." But then the September plan adds a new provision: "If the publisher requests, the author's final version of the publication will be replaced in the PMC archive by the final publisher's copy with an appropriate link to the publisher's electronic database."
• The September plan gives new detail on what kind of NIH funding triggers the OA plan. The plan applies to NIH "grantees and supported Principal Investigators" and covers "all research grants, cooperative agreements, contracts, as well as National Research Service Award (NRSA) fellowships." The OA policy will apply to all articles whose underlying research "was supported in whole or in part by NIH funding."
• The September plan drops the condition in the July report that the policy will only apply to articles accepted by a "scientific journal listed in the NLM's PubMed directory".
• Finally, while the July report contained some background principles and goals of the House Appropriations Committee, the September plan articulates some goals and intentions of the NIH. I count at least these eight: (1) the goal to improve the health of Americans; (2) the goal "to share and support public access to the results and accomplishments of the activities that [the NIH] funds"; (3) the goal to improve access to scientific information for "other scientists, health care providers, students, teachers, and the many millions of Americans searching the web to obtain credible health-related information"; (4) the intention to "balance this need with the ability of journals and publishers to preserve their critical role in the peer review, editing and scientific quality control process"; (5) the intention to monitor the "economic and business implications" of the plan in order to avoid "compromising the quality of the information being provided"; (6) the intention to "maintain a dialogue with publishers, investigators, and representatives from scientific associations and the public to ensure the success of this initiative"; (7) the intention to monitor compliance with the new policy and to use compliance as one factor in evaluating subsequent applications for NIH funds; and (8) the intention to "consider options to ensure that grantees' budgets are not unduly affected by this policy", for example, by journals that impose "unreasonable or disproportionate charges" on grantees.

I just revised my FAQ on the NIH open-access plan to take some of these differences into account. I'll probably write about these and other differences in the next issue of SOAN.

This notice is to announce and to seek public comments regarding NIH’s plans to facilitate enhanced public access to NIH health related research information. NIH intends to request that its grantees and supported Principal Investigators provide the NIH with electronic copies of all final version manuscripts upon acceptance for publication if the research was supported in whole or in part by NIH funding. This would include all research grants, cooperative agreements, contracts, as well as National Research Service Award (NRSA) fellowships. We define final manuscript as the author’s version resulting after all modifications due to the peer review process. Submission of the final manuscript will provide NIH supported investigators with an alternate means by which they will meet and fulfill the requirement of the provision of one copy of each publication in the annual or final progress reports. Submission of the electronic versions of final manuscripts will be monitored as part of the annual grant progress review and close-out process.

NIH considers final manuscripts to be an important record of the research funded by the government and will archive these manuscripts and any appropriate supplementary information in PubMed Central (PMC), NIH’s digital repository for biomedical research. Six months after an NIH supported research study’s publication—or sooner if the publisher agrees—the manuscript will be made available freely to the public through PMC. If the publisher requests, the author’s final version of the publication will be replaced in the PMC archive by the final publisher’s copy with an appropriate link to the publisher’s electronic database.

Update. There is now an OA edition of the full-text.

There are several outstanding virology journals covering all aspects of this dynamic field, but none of the general virology journals are exclusively published on-line or are Open Access. With the launch of Virology Journal, we hope to catalyse a fuller utilization of the Internet for scientific communication in virology drawing on our long experience with the ATV website. We welcome any advice and input.

Q: So why have you introduced Open Choice?

A: What we are saying is: "Look. It's not that we don't want to change on principle; we've been advocating the traditional model simply because we thought it was practical. But if you want to try open access, and you can really organize yourselves in a different way, and the money starts to come out of a different pot, we are happy to change our internal procedures to accommodate you." [...]

Q: You have set the publication fee at $3,000 a paper. Critics say this is too high, that authors won't pay that much; and so, perhaps Springer is only going through the motions. Is Derk Haank really serious about open access?

A: As always, I am very serious --$3,000 is a very competitive price. Even open-access advocates would have to acknowledge that. The Wellcome Trust report, for instance, estimated the true cost of publishing a paper at more like $3,500.

Q: But if PLoS charges $1,500 and BioMed Central just $525, how can Open Choice be competitive?

A: Of course, we can't compete with heavily subsidized prices from new initiatives. In reality, however, it is they who are not competitive because they can't offer a brand name like Springer's.

(PS: When this interview first appeared, yesterday, it was not OA. Thanks to Information Today for making it OA today.)

The same issue of Information Today has a non-OA article by Robin Peek, The Cascading Effect. The TOC describes it this way: "Robin Peek asks what many are wondering: Where does open access go from here?"

Roger Strouse's "The Changing Face of Content Users and the Impact on Information Providers" (p.27) presents results from an Outsell survey. Among the findings Strouse includes is a section "Social Publishing, Information Sharing, and Open Access," which mentions file-sharing, networking among academics and scientists, collaborative software, blogs, wikis, media "that bypass the traditional publishing establishment altogether." He goes on to summarize challenges by scientists and libraries to traditional publishers, and concludes:

Librarians in academic institutions can become leaders with regard to open access initiatives by educating authors about alternative publishing venues, while at the same time continuing to push commercial vendors to develop more palatable pricing. For their part, vendors must do a better job of justifying their prices, and communicating directly to scientists (and librarians) the value they add to the publication process.

The great advantages derivable from information of this description, will, we hope, be sufficiently obvious to every one in the least degree conversant with medical knowledge; any arguments, therefore, to prove these are unnecessary, and we content ourselves by merely showing in what direction their utility will be most active: To the Medical and Surgical Practitioners of this city, whose avocations prevent their personal attendance at the hospitals --To Country Practitioners, whose remoteness from the head quarters, as it were, of scientific knowledge, leaves them almost without the means of ascertaining its progress --To the numerous classes of Students, whether here or in distant universities --To Colonial Practitioners --And, finally, to every individual in these realms....In this attempt, we are well aware that we shall be assailed by much interested opposition. But, notwithstanding this, we will fearlessly discharge our duty.

Update. Also see this background by Richard Horton, current editor of The Lancet. "[M]edicine in 1823 was a little different (but not very much) than now because the famous and powerful surgeons and physicians of the time charged their students to come and listen to lectures. And they charged phenomenal amounts. Well, Thomas Wakley, the first editor, was not having any of this! Thomas Wakley was the Harold Varmus of his time. And so he started The Lancet. He did have a user charge though. Sixpence. And here you could get all the lectures that these physicians and surgeons were delivering at such high cost, almost for free. Medicine did not break down I note that historical lesson thanks to The Lancet." (Thanks to Garrett Eastman.)

Country-specific data of C sequestration by terrestrial ecosystems are highly desirable, because nations and not continents are the main actors in international negotiations and efforts addressing global climate change (e.g. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change). As people involved in these political processes might have limited access to classic scientific journals, an open-access journal like "Biogeosciences" might be especially suited for publication of the country-specific data presented in the manuscript.

As scientists and Nobel laureates, we are writing today to express our strong support for the House Appropriations Committee's recent direction to NIH to develop an open, taxpayer access policy requiring that a complete electronic text of any manuscript reporting work supported by NIH grants or contracts be supplied to the National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central. We believe the time is now for all Members of Congress to support this enlightened policy.

Science is the measure of the human race's progress. As scientists and taxpayers too, we therefore object to barriers that hinder, delay or block the spread of scientific knowledge supported by federal tax dollars including our own works....

There's no question, open access truly expands shared knowledge across scientific fields -- it is the best path for accelerating multi-disciplinary breakthroughs in research....There is widespread acknowledgement that the current model for scientific publishing is failing us....The trend towards open access is gaining momentum....Free access to taxpayer funded research globally may soon be within grasp, and make possible the freer flow of medical knowledge that strengthens our capacity to find cures and to improve lives.

As the undersigned Nobel Laureates, we are committed to open access. We ask Congress and NIH to ensure that all taxpayers get their money's worth. Our investment in scientific research is not well served by a process that limits taxpayer access instead of expanding it. We specifically ask you to support the House Appropriations Committee language as well as NIH leadership in adopting this long overdue reform.