Author's Rights video: 2 minutes explains it all!

The 2-minute Author's Rights Video by the Association of Research Libraries explains clearly and succinctly what scholars can do to make sure they retain the rights to use and share our work in the ways we would like to!

Archive of ARL-NASULGC Webcast on NIH Public Access Policy Now Online

[Forwarding from ARL. via the SPARC Open Access Forum]

For immediate release:

March 10, 2008

For more information, contact:

Karla Hahn

Association of Research Libraries

(202) 296-2296

karla@arl.org

Archive of ARL-NASULGC Webcast on NIH Public Access Policy Now Online

Washington DC - The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC) are making available an archived version of their March 7, 2008, webcast on "Institutional Compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy: Ensuring Deposit Rights."

The webcast explored options for institutional responses to the new Public Access Policy adopted by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and focused particularly on the need for institutions to develop strategies for ensuring the retention of deposit rights by investigators. Effective April 7, 2008, the new policy requires investigators to deposit their articles stemming from NIH funding in PubMed Central. Institutions confront a key set of issues raised by the need to ensure that authors maintain the legal rights required to allow compliance with the new policy.

Audience

Vice presidents of research, administrators and staff in funded research and grants office, campus compliance officers, and others who will be responsible for fulfilling their organizations' compliance obligations as NIH grantees.

Presenters

Jim Siedow

Vice Provost for Research

Duke University

Kevin L. Smith, JD

Scholarly Communications Officer

Duke University

Tony Waldrop

Vice Chancellor for Research & Economic Development

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The webcast archive is freely available from
http://www.arl.org/sc/implement/nih/webcast/.

ARL also maintains a guide for research institutions on the new NIH Public Access Policy http://www.arl.org/sc/implement/nih/guide/.

March 2008 SPARC Open Access Newsletter

Peter Suber just released the March 2008 SPARC Open Access Newsletter. The highlight this month is the Open Access Mandate at Harvard.

IU Bloomington Libraries publish first open access journal!

See the IU Libraries Press Release for their announcement of the publication of the open access Museum Anthropology Review, using the free, open source Open Journal Systems.

Congratulations to Jason Baird Jackson, Editor, and IU Libraries!

Volunteer Recognition: Thomas Krichel

Christian Zimmerman on the RePEc blog, has written a very nice and well-deserved recognition of Thomas Krichel!. As Christian says, Thomas is not just a RePEc volunteer; he is RePEc.

The blogpost also notes some of Thomas' colleagues and helpers in building RePEc, among them librarians, Féthy Mili, Economics librarian at the Université de Montréal, and José Manuel Barrueco Cruz, Economics librarian at the University of Valencia.

Krichel is a library school professor at Long Island University, New York, and was previously recognized on OA Librarian in the post Thomas Krichel: a man with ideas, and drive!.

Krichel is also one of the driving forces behind E-LIS, the Open Archive for Library and Information Science.

Congratulations for this well-deserved honour, Thomas!

OAPEN: peer reviewed open access books

Press release, 12-02-2008
Positive evaluation from European Commission for proposal "Open Access Publishing in European Networks" (OAPEN)

The European Commission announced that the proposal from Amsterdam University Press together with five European University Presses within the eContentplus Programme, has been selected for negotiations on funding. The opening of negotiations starts in March 2008. Completion of negotiations, award decision and signature of grant agreements are expected in May 2008.

OAPEN intends to develop and implement an Open Access publication model for peer reviewed academic books in the Humanities and Social Sciences. This Open Access publication model will also serve as a model in other scientific domains and improve the spread of European research results.
The project aims to achieve a sustainable European approach to improve the quantity, visibility and usability of high quality academic research and foster the creation of new content by developing future-oriented publishing solutions, including an Online Library.

OAPEN addresses the needs of small to medium enterprises and not-for-profit publishers and seeks to offer solutions to both publishers and others stakeholders, such as authors, libraries, research funding bodies, and policy makers.
OAPEN will also aggregate content from other publishers in the Humanities and Social Sciences in order to expand the available Open Access content by achieving critical mass and building up the OAPEN European Digital Library.
The project is the first of its kind and, if funded, is intended to start in September 2008.

For more information on OAPEN please visit www.oapen.com

Thanks to Jean Kempf on American Scientist Open Access Forum

Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences Adopts Open Access Policy!

Yesterday (Feb. 12, 2008), the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences adopted an open access policy. This is the first university open access policy initiated by faculty!

For background, see Robert Darnton's article The Case for Open Access in the Harvard Crimson.

Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News.

We are in the midst of change

The Journal of Electronic Publishing has just released a special issue devoted to scholarly communications. The article by Karla Hahn, ARL's Director of Scholarly Communications since 2005, Talk about Talking about New Models of Scholarly Communication, is interesting and well worth reading.

One of Karla's key points about the current environment: we are no longer just anticipating change - we are in the midst of it. Another important concept: there is an emerging consensus for a need for librarians to dialogue with scholars, on a one-on-one basis. We may be in the midst of change, but there is much need to talk about what the changes are and, most importantly, where we are going.

Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News.

SPARC NIH Public Access Policy: Implementation Details, Links to Key Resources

SPARC has just published a list of NIH Public Access Policy Implementation Details, with links to key resources to assist libraries to help faculty comply with policy.

Canadian Institutes of Health Research Policy Now in Effect

The following announcement is from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research

(2008-02-04) On September 4, 2007, CIHR released its "Policy on Access to Research Outputs", which aims to improve access to research publications and biomolecular data. Under this new funding policy, recipients of CIHR grants awarded after January 1, 2008, must:

* ensure that all research papers generated from CIHR funded projects are freely accessible through the Publisher's website or an online repository within six months of publication;
* deposit bioinformatics, atomic, and molecular coordinate data into the appropriate public database (e.g., gene sequences deposited in GenBank) immediately upon publication of research results;
* retain original data sets for a minimum of five years (or longer if other policies apply); and
* acknowledge CIHR support by quoting the funding reference number in journal publications.

Currently, more than twenty research funding agencies around the world require supported research publications to be openly accessible. Most recently, the U.S. National Institutes of Health mandated open online access to its funded research through the National Library of Medicine's online archive, PubMed Central.

Rational
CIHR believes that greater access to research publications and data will promote the ability of researchers in Canada and aboard to use and build on the knowledge needed to address significant health challenges. Open access enables authors to reach a much broader audience, which has the potential to increase the impact of their research. In fact, evidence shows that open access publications are more often read and cited than closed access publications. From a Knowledge Translation perspective, this policy will support our desire to expedite awareness of and facilitate the use of research findings by policy makers, health care administrators, clinicians, and the public, by greatly increasing ease of access to research.

Adhering with the new policy - Open access publications
For journal publications, there are two ways to adhere with the policy:

1. Submit your manuscript to a journal that offers immediate open access (e.g., CMAJ, PLoS, BMC) or offers open access to the paper on its website within six months (e.g., NEJM).
2. Submit your manuscript to a journal that does not offer open access, but will permit you to archive the peer-reviewed manuscript in a central or institutional repository within 6 months of publication.

CIHR considers open access publishing fees to be an eligible grant expense.

The SHERPA/RoMEO database contains a searchable listing of journal publisher's copyright and self-archiving policies which will help researchers to determine journal's that adhere with CIHR policy.

Additional information and resources
CIHR has developed a suite of tools and resources that will help clarify this new policy and how it will affect grant recipients:

* CIHR Policy on Access to Research Outputs;
* Frequently asked questions;
* Flowchart for open access publications;
* Adhering with the CIHR Policy on Access to Research Outputs - Selected Journals.

For further information regarding this policy, please contact Geoff Hynes 613-952-8965, or e-mail: ghynes@cihr-irsc.gc.ca

Ian Graham, Ph.D.
Vice-President, Knowledge Translation

Hat tip to Peter Suber on Open Access News

February 2008 SPARC Open Access Newsletter

Peter Suber has just released the February 2008 SPARC Open Access Newsletter.

January has been a remarkable month for open access mandates, with 10 developments in 8 countries (not counting mandates in the works, such as the European University Association!).

Peter analyzes the NIH and ERC developments in some depth. He points out that more publishers should probably take on the task of archiving in PMC on behalf of authors; many make back issues freely available within the 12-month embargo at any rate, so this just makes sense. The NIH policy follows the dual deposit / release approach (deposit immediately, but set a delay on release if necessary). Peter's explanation of the benefits of this approach are well worth reading.

SPARC Announces Campaign for Student Engagement

SPARC has just announced a Campaign for Student Engagement.

Let your students know!

Unanimous OA Recommendations from the European University Association

The 791 universities from 46 countries of the European University Association have unanimously endorsed some very strong OA recommendations, which Peter Suber has summarized as follows:

* Here's a digest of the most important of the recommendations. European universities should...

1. launch OAI-compliant institutional repositories (A2)
2. adopt OA mandates for their research output (A3)
3. educate faculty about copyright and encourage the removal of permission barriers at least for users in the author's institution (A4)
4. consider paying publication fees for faculty who publish in fee-based OA journals (A5)
5. work with public funding agencies with OA mandates to encourage deposit in institutional repositories (B1)
6. educate university rectors about the importance of OA (B2)
7. support OA mandates for publicly-funded research in the EU (C1)

Kudos especially to Lesley Wilson, Secretary General of the EUA, and Sijbolt Noorda, chair of the Working Group on Open Access. Thanks to Stevan Harnad for breaking the news, and to Peter Suber for comments and summary.

My comments: this is huge; it sets the direction for European universities. It will take some time, of course, for each university to set its own policies and procedures, and a bit longer for these policies and procedures to take effect. Other jurisdictions are likely to follow the European example, each in its own time. Even if the impact is not felt immediately, the importance of this endorsement should not be underestimated.

Berkeley pilot to subsidize open access fees

Congratulations to Berkeley on announcing a pilot program to pay OA fees on behalf of Berkeley authors!. The program is funded by the discretionary accounts of Thomas Leonard, University Librarian, and Beth Burnside, Vice Chancellor for Research.

Thanks to Peter Suber.

Kudos to Nature for enlightened License for Publish

Nature Publishing Group has posted some very enlightened instructions for authors in their License to Publish. Authors retain copyright, AND NPG has included this language actively encouraging self-archiving:

When a manuscript is accepted for publication in an NPG journal, authors are encouraged to submit the author's version of the accepted paper (the unedited manuscript) to PubMedCentral or other appropriate funding body's archive, for public release six months after publication. In addition, authors are encouraged to archive this version of the manuscript in their institution's repositories and, if they wish, on their personal websites, also six months after the original publication. In all these cases, authors should cite the publication reference and DOI number on any deposited version, and provide a link from it to the URL of the published article on the journal's website (see publications A-Z index).

Kudos to Nature, and thanks to Peter Suber for the alert.

NIH and European Research Council OA Mandates

Some major events in open access this week:

The final text of the NIH policy has been posted:
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-08-033.html
and a very interesting FAQ

The European Research Council has announced an exemplary Open Access Policy - open access to funded research within 6 months, no loopholes, and an indication that the 6-month maximum will be shortened! For links and a summary, see Peter Suber's Open Access News.

As always, the best way to keep with the latest developments is to tune into Peter Suber's Open Access News.

NIH Mandate: rebuttal of more publisher opposition

Predictably, STM has come out against the NIH mandate - for details and rebuttal, see Peter Suber's Open Access News. Of interest: STM is claiming that NIH is an "unfunded mandate", ignoring the $30 million per year in funding they are currently receiving in page charges!

See Open Access News for the American Chemical Society reaction, too.

NIH Mandate: publisher opposition

The Association of American Publishers has issued a press release clearly indicating plans to continue fighting the NIH public access mandate. For the full press release and a very thorough rebuttal, see Peter Suber's Open Access News.

One of the points raised is a call for further public consultation and comments. Hmmm...there hasn't been enough debate about the merits of OA yet? Really?

Not a problem! I wouldn't mind seeing more discussion about debate about OA policy, not at all. Let's open up discussion about the allowance for a 12-month embargo, for example. This is more than generous to the diminishing portion of the publishing community which prefers not to adapt to an open access environment. If it's not appreciated, why not eliminate provision for the embargo? There are many gold and green publishers who can provide the needed coordination of peer review, without the embargo. The AAP might wish to argue that this limits the intellectual freedom of researchers, but this is argument is not correct. Researchers who do not wish to comply with any of the requirements of funding agencies (they have many, not just OA dissemination of results), need not seek funding. Or, they can accept funding, and work with colleagues to start up their own journals!

Come to think of it - the start-up time for a new journal might correlate fairly well with the time it takes to receive a grant, conduct the research and write up the results for publication - especially if there are a number of researchers in your field in the same situation with the same incentive to create change.

January 2008 SPARC Open Access Newsletter

Peter Suber has just released the January 2008 SPARC Open Access Newsletter.

Highlights include an in-depth analysis and history of the coming NIH public access mandate - did you know that the $29 billion annual budget of the NIH is more than the Gross Domestic Product of 142 countries, for example, and an article outlining a few of the key open access related events and milestones of 2007.

NIH Public Access Mandate Made Law

From: Alliance for Taxpayer Access
www.taxpayeraccess.org

For immediate release
December 26, 2007

Contact:
Jennifer McLennan
jennifer [at] arl [dot] org
(202) 296-2296 ext. 121

PUBLIC ACCESS MANDATE MADE LAW
President Bush signs omnibus appropriations bill,
including National Institutes of Health research access provision


Washington, D.C. – December 26, 2007 – President Bush has signed into law the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2007 (H.R. 2764), which includes a provision directing the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to provide the public with open online access to findings from its funded research. This is the first time the U.S. government has mandated public access to research funded by a major agency.

The provision directs the NIH to change its existing Public Access Policy, implemented as a voluntary measure in 2005, so that participation is required for agency-funded investigators. Researchers will now be required to deposit electronic copies of their peer-reviewed manuscripts into the National Library of Medicine’s online archive, PubMed Central. Full texts of the articles will be publicly available and searchable online in PubMed Central no later than 12 months after publication in a journal.

"Facilitated access to new knowledge is key to the rapid advancement of science," said Harold Varmus, president of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Nobel Prize Winner. "The tremendous benefits of broad, unfettered access to information are already clear from the Human Genome Project, which has made its DNA sequences immediately and freely available to all via the Internet. Providing widespread access, even with a one-year delay, to the full text of research articles supported by funds from all institutes at the NIH will increase those benefits dramatically."

"Public access to publicly funded research contributes directly to the mission of higher education,” said David Shulenburger, Vice President for Academic Affairs at NASULGC (the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges). “Improved access will enable universities to maximize their own investment in research, and widen the potential for discovery as the results are more readily available for others to build upon.”

“Years of unrelenting commitment and dedication by patient groups and our allies in the research community have at last borne fruit,” said Sharon Terry, President and CEO of Genetic Alliance. “We’re proud of Congress for their unrelenting commitment to ensuring the success of public access to NIH-funded research. As patients, patient advocates, and families, we look forward to having expanded access to the research we need.”

“Congress has just unlocked the taxpayers’ $29 billion investment in NIH,” said Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, a founding member of the ATA). “This policy will directly improve the sharing of scientific findings, the pace of medical advances, and the rate of return on benefits to the taxpayer."

Joseph added, “On behalf of the Alliance for Taxpayer Access, I’d like to thank everyone who worked so hard over the past several years to bring about implementation of this much-needed policy.”

For more information, and a timeline detailing the evolution of the NIH Public Access Policy beginning May 2004, visit the ATA Web site at http://www.taxpayeraccess.org.


The Alliance for Taxpayer Access is a coalition of patient, academic, research, and publishing organizations that supports open public access to the results of federally funded research. The Alliance was formed in 2004 to urge that peer-reviewed articles stemming from taxpayer-funded research become fully accessible and available online at no extra cost to the American public. Details on the ATA may be found at http://www.taxpayeraccess.org.

Jennifer McLennan
Director of Communications
SPARC
(the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition)
http://www.arl.org/sparc
(202) 296-2296 ext 121
jennifer@arl.org