[Insight-developers] OPEN ACCESS: Bill for Public Access to Research

[Luis Ibanez]

 From PLoS:

http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0040257

...

Senators John Cornyn (Texas) and Joseph Lieberman (Connecticut) have
introduced a bill whereby federal agencies with research expenditure
over US$100 million per year must ensure that research articles produced
from their grants are deposited in an Internet-accessible public archive
within six months of acceptance by a peer-reviewed journal. The bill,
called the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006 (S.2695) (FRPAA),
explains its rationale: “Congress finds that the Federal Government
funds basic and applied research with the expectation that new ideas and
discoveries that result from the research, if shared and effectively
disseminated, will advance science and improve the lives and welfare of
people of the United States and around the world” [1]. And, no doubt
gratifying to the bill's sponsors, a recent Harris poll shows that the
American public is overwhelmingly in support of public access to
federally funded research [2].

Last year, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) instituted a policy
recommending, but not requiring, its grantees to deposit their research
articles into its archive, PubMed Central, within one year of acceptance
for publication [3]. One year later, compliance remains low, perhaps not
surprising given the voluntary nature of this process and the opposition
expressed to it by many publishers. When the NIH was first called on to
consider its policies on access to research—a result of direct
recommendations from Congressional appropriators—several publishing
organizations lobbied hard against the NIH's efforts. Those groups are
taking the same tack with this new legislation, presenting doomsday
scenarios that predict public access will undermine the very peer-review
process that supports scientific progress. And yet the evidence from
publishers who have moved voluntarily in the direction outlined by the
FRPAA is entirely contrary to these doomsayers. Incentives to subscribe
to such journals will remain—by virtue of the six-month delay in public
access, the value that publishers add in the final published form of the
article, and the fact few journals will contain only content that is
affected by this bill. Evidence from the physics community is that
extensive open-access archives have no adverse impact on subscription
revenue [4].

If enacted, the legislation proposed in the FRPAA would avoid several
pitfalls of the earlier NIH policy. First and foremost, it requires,
rather than recommends, that articles be deposited in public archives.
It states that the article to be deposited is the accepted version of
the author's peer-reviewed manuscript, incorporating all changes during
peer review, allowing publishers the option of replacing the manuscript
with the final publication. Importantly, the legislation also overcomes
the sticky issue of copyright. Rather than making deposition of the
article subject to publisher consent, federal agencies would be required
to “make effective use of any law or guidance relating to the creation
and reservation of a Government license that provides for the
reproduction, publication, release, or other uses of a final manuscript
for Federal purposes.”

Of course, the Public Library of Science espouses full and immediate
access to final published articles as the end-game of what will no doubt
be a long process in publishing reform. In that regard, we view it as
equally important that this legislation would also stimulate publishers
to explore new models to support their business, potentially paving the
way for a fundamental shift in the subscription-based model.

Looking more internationally, the United States would not be alone in
mandating public access to its research. A pioneer in promoting open
access, the Wellcome Trust (a biomedical research funder based in the
United Kingdom), has already instituted a similar policy, mandating that
grantholders make their work available within six months of publication
via a public repository [5]. The Wellcome Trust has also taken the
essential next step by providing funds to pay for publication in
open-access journals. And recently, a report for the European Commission
entitled “Study on the Economic and Technical Evolution of the
Scientific Publication Markets in Europe” similarly recommended a move
to make public access to research publications a condition of funding [6].

Funding the dissemination of research results should be of critical
concern to the research funders, who want to maximize their research
investment. Publishing is already being paid for by funding agencies and
institutions; the question is how to channel this money most effectively
to meet the need for wider access. That this need is sometimes
overlooked by those at well-funded institutions is not surprising; a
researcher I met recently from University College London simply did not
believe me when I said I could not freely access a relatively common
journal in his field. Indeed, a recent survey by the Publishing Research
Consortium came to the conclusion that supporting open access to
research is not the most critical concern for researchers at the bench
of well-funded universities, where many are not even aware of where
their subscription access comes from [7]. Paradoxically, the same survey
indicated that over one third of these researchers do not have access to
all the articles they need.

As part of its investment in restoring the infrastructure of Iraq, the
United States government has recently spearheaded an initiative to make
a large corpus of scientific literature available to scientists working
in Iraq [8], much larger, in fact, than is readily available to the
American taxpayer. If passed, the FRPAA would benefit scientific
progress at home, in Iraq, and around the world, regardless of political
boundaries; and the United States would still be at the vanguard in
producing change in the way we disseminate science. You can help, by
showing your support for the FRPAA.

Visit
http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/frpaa/index.html
for more details.



References


1. Cornyn J, Lieberman J (2006) S. 2695 [Federal Research Public Access
Act of 2006]. 109th Congress, 2nd Session. Available:
http://cornyn.senate.gov/doc_archive/05-02-2006_COE06461_xml.pdf.
Accessed: 3 June 2006.

2. Harris Poll (2006 May 31) Large majorities of U.S. adults support
easy—and free—online access to federally-funded research findings on
health issues and other topics. Available:
http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=671.
Accessed: 3 June 2006.

3. National Institutes of Health (2005) NIH public access: Policy on
enhancing public access to archived publications resulting from
NIH-funded research. Available: http://publicaccess.nih.gov/policy.htm.
Accessed 3 June 2006.

4. Swan A, Brown S (2005) Open access self-archiving: An author study.
Cornwall: Key Perspectives. Available:
http://www.keyperspectives.co.uk/openaccessarchive/reports/Open%20Access%20II%20(author%20survey%20on%20self%20archiving)%202005.pdf.
Accessed 3 June 2006.

5. Terry R (2005) Funding the way to open access. PLoS Biol 3: e97 DOI:
10.1371/journal. pbio.0030097. Find this article online

6. Directorate-General for Research European Commission (2006) Study on
the economic and technical evolution of the scientific publication
markets in Europe. Brussels: European Commission. Available:
http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/pdf/scientific-publication-study_en.pdf.
Accessed 3 June 2006.

7. Rowlands I, Olivieri R (2006) Overcoming the barriers to research
productivity: A case study in immunology and microbiology. London:
Publishing Research Consortium. Available:
http://www.publishingresearch.org.uk/. Accessed 3 June 2006.

8. Iraqi Virtual Science Library (2006) Homepage. Available:
https://ivsl.org/. Accessed 3 June 2006.