Expanded Public Access: A New Era with New Challenges
abernard102@gmail.com 2013-04-23
Summary:
Use the link to access the full text of the statement opening as follows: "On February 22, 2013, the world fundamentally changed for the research community when John P. Holdren, Director of the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, directed that within six months each federal research funding agency with R&D budgets of $100 million or more '…develop a plan to support increased public access to the results of research funded by the Federal Government,' including 'peer-reviewed publications and digital data.' Since 2005, NIH’s PubMed Central has demonstrated how improved, long-term preservation and access to research results deposited pursuant to NIH policy increases access and improves research productivity; soon, under this White House policy, new federally funded research will become universally available,
benefiting both the academy and society.Along with many of you since 1988, I have advocated for such access and am gratified that federal policy has been responsive to our interests. But our time for celebration of this advance is brief. During a short six-month period, agencies will develop draft plans for how this long-term preservation and access will occur. Research universities have a significant stake in the plans the Director ultimately approves—universities are responsible to federal research funding agencies for compliance with the regulations attendant to the grants received by their researchers. If we are faced with different deposit requirements for manuscripts and data by each of the 15 and possibly more agencies subject to the directive, the compliance bill could be very expensive and might not reflect the interests of the academy. Given that PubMed Central has established a useful model for deposit of and access to research manuscripts, we can
hope that the example of good practice established by them will be drawn upon by other funding agencies as they establish their own public access policies, and that the resultant products interconnect across and between agencies and external stakeholders that promote effective, seamless public access.But we must do more than hope for a good outcome; the funding agencies are obligated by the directive to solicit our views and take them into account in establishing their policies. Each research university campus, and the APLU and AAU who represent them,should develop a process for soliciting input and recommending to the agencies and Director Holdren desired practices for deposit. Otherwise, we have no one to blame but ourselves if compliance with the deposit policies is expensive, if access is cumbersome, or if the interests of higher education are not fully reflected in the agencies’ policies ..."