Dialogue Over Public Access to Scholarly Publications Continues in the U.S.

"On May 14-15, 2013, the National Academy of Sciences hosted a public comment meeting concerning public access to federally supported R&D publications. The meeting was sponsored by several federal departments and agencies affected by the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) memorandum issued in February 2013 ... The meeting was designed to gather members of various stakeholder groups to offer input on issues concerning to the OSTP policy as it relates to publications. A second meeting was held on May 16 to focus on data ... Through this meeting, stakeholders were invited to offer their input. After a series of introductory addresses, the meeting was turned over to speakers who had requested the opportunity in advance to address participants. Public comment sessions were organized into the following groups:           Session 1: Private Individuals; Digital Repositories and Organizations ... Session 2: Libraries and Library Organizations; Universities and University Organizations; Researchers and Students ... Session 3: Publishers (Group 1); Walk-In Registrants (if any)  ... Session 4: Publishers (Group 2) Heather Joseph, executive director of SPARC, presented four “elements” that she believes are crucial for public access policies: 1) Full re-use rights: 'We need both barrier-free access to and full digital re-use of the full text of digital articles,' 2) Short or (preferably) no embargoes: 'Where access is concerned, faster is really better,' 3) Use of the existing repository infrastructure, which supports interoperability: 'We strongly encourage agencies to consider leveraging the significant public investment in the highly successful NIH PubMed Central repository infrastructure, as well as the investments made by higher education institutions and their libraries in non-proprietary digital archives,' and 4) Consistency among policies: '31 flavors may be great for ice cream, but it isn’t a practical approach for research access policies.' Joseph’s statements were echoed by others from within the library community; many focused on the 'green' road for open access (OA) via repositories and librarians’ experiences supporting faculty compliance with the existing NIH public access policy. However, one new point that was introduced during the session was from Jesse Lambertson of the Arlington County Public Library who used his time to remind the audience of the importance of public access to research rather than focus on specifics of policy implementation. Lambertson’s key point was that subscription-based access is quite limiting; public libraries are not able to provide access to much of the body of scholarly literature. Statements made on behalf of publishers were less consistent. Alicia Wise, director of universal access for Elsevier, notes the Elsevier position in a blog post: The publishing giant is 'encouraged by the OSTP memo,' specifically due to its interpretation that the OSTP memo 'promotes gold open access funded through publishing charges and flexible embargo periods for green open access.'  While Wise and many of the other representatives from publishers opened by acknowledging their support for the OSTP memo, their statements generally focused on pushing for embargo periods of 24 months—longer than suggested in the OSTP memo—and on the details of gold OA. As Wise explains via email: 'Green open access is not a business model and therefore has no revenue stream associated with it. Author self-archiving is only sustainable if the costs of publication are covered by a supporting business model. If the business model is gold open access, with funding in place for the costs of publication, then self-archiving can happen immediately and be sustainable. If the aim is to graft green open access on to the existing reader-pays subscription business model, then this requires time to work—and sustainable embargo periods are essential if green open access is not to undermine the journals in which academics choose to publish.'  John Baillieul from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and Phillip DiVietro from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers offered statements in a similar vein. Baillieul pushed for embargoes of at least 24 months; DiVietro pushed for raw data and reports to be made publicly available but not peer-reviewed articles.  On the other hand, the Modern Language Association (MLA) was the lone publisher to offer full support for a new model for scholarly communication. Kathleen Fitzpatrick, director of scholarly communication at MLA, spoke about the tensions facing scholarly publishers between generating revenue and pushing for free OA to publications: 'There is still reason for some benefits of membership in a scholarly society to be exclusive to members if we rethink the role of scholarly society in the digital age. The shifts I have described require us to consider the possibili