public access to federally funded research - acrl sts update, january 2015
TRANSCRIPT
Public Access to Federally Funded Research
Richard Huffineformer Library Director, U.S. Geological Survey
former Library Program Manager, US Environmental Protection Agency
Current Status and Future DirectionsFebruary 1, 2015
ACRL/STS Federal Agency UpdateAmerican Library Association
2015 Midwinter Meeting
Overview
• Definition
• Federal Mandate
• Don’t Forget the Data!
• Current State
• Role of Providers
• Future State
• *A Note About Copyright
• Questions and Feedback
• Open Access – “literature [and data that] is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
– Peter Suber, co-founder of the Open Access Directory (OAD) (with Robin Peek)
• Using the term open access typically means that research is available without a fee and that there are some rights provided for re-use, redistribution, etc.
• The term Public Access does not carry those same assumptions. Public Access policies may leave the question of rights to the authors and their publishers.
– This is the case with the NIH Public Access policy today.
• Public Domain, on the other hand, applies to research produced by the Federal government or by employees in the course of their daily work. Public Domain material has no copyright associated with it.
– Publishers may, however, assert copyright over the format of research produced by federal employees.
– Some federal employees have also signed copyright over to publishers even though there was no copyright to relinquish.
Definition
U.S. Federal Government Mandate
• In lieu of legislation, the National Institutes of Health instituted a public access policy in 2005 that applied to all research funded by the NIH.
• That policy was codified in appropriations legislation in 2008 [see Division G, Title II, Section 218 of PL 110-161 (Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008)]
U.S. Federal Government Mandate
• The Obama Administration took on a series of conversations with funders, researchers, publishers, and academic institutions.
• Those conversations culminated in a February 22, 2013 memoranda from the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), directing Agencies develop plans to support increased public access to the results of research funded by the Federal Government.
U.S. Federal Government Mandate
• The OSTP Memo does not specify Open Access publishing or self-archiving.
• It doesn’t directly address the copyright of works funded by the government either.
• It does address the potential for embargo periods, to be established based in part on the “challenges and public interests that are unique to each field and mission combination.”
• It is unique in that it doesn’t stop with makingthe published results of research publicly accessible. It also identifies objectives for public access to scientific data in digital formats.
U.S. Federal Government Mandate
• With the 2014 Omnibus Spending Bill, Congress codified Public Access requirements for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education
(page 1,020 of the 1,582 page bill, H.R. 3547)
• The specifics in the Omnibus bill include:
– Submission of a “machine-readable version” of the author’s final, peer-reviewed manuscripts
– Free online public access of either the manuscripts or published versions not later than 12 months after the official date of publication, and
– Compliance with all relevant copyright laws
• Congress also asked all of the other Departments and Agencies identified in the OSTP memo to report on their progress within 45 days and with semi-annual updates thereafter.
Don’t Forget the Data!
• The OSTP Memo goes beyond the established practices of open access mandates to direct Agencies to also maximize access, by the general public and without charge, to digitally formatted scientific data created with Federal funds.
• Agency plans must also address requirements for data management plans from all intramural (government employees) and extramural (Federal grantees and contractors) researchers
– The National Science Foundation began requiring Data Management Plans in 2011 of all of their extramural grantees.
Current State
• Federal agencies impacted by the OSTP Memo (those with over $100 million in annual conduct of research and development expenditures) have been meeting in two groups (publications and data) since the memo was released.
• Draft plans were due to OSTP by late August 2013. They were to provide feedback quickly.
• Only one plan – Department of Energy – has been released.
• Once adopted, modifications to contract and grant language will be required for implementation.
• Expectations are that most plans will allow for a 1-year embargo; encourage publishersto provide access to the published version;and rely on academic institutions to manageaccess to data repositories.
Role of Providers
• The OSTP Memo encourages Agencies to work together to address the issues and to leverage archives and strategies for accomplishing the goal of broader public access.
• The Association of American Publishers (AAP) has developed a solution for the challenge, the Clearinghouse for the Open Research of the United States or CHORUS.
• SHared Access Research Ecosystem (SHARE) is another alternative that has been proposed by Proposed by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), Association of American Universities (AAU), and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU)
Role of Providers
• The National Institutes of Health system, PubMedCentral is presumed to meet the requirements of the OSTP Memo for NIH and other agencies that can use that system
• The Department of Energy has developed a prototype clearinghouse for DOE funded research that will be able to link to articles wherever they are provided by the authors, publishers, or institutions.
• Researchers will have the choice of publishing in Open Access journals, working with commercial publishers to comply with the policy or self-archiving their research in order to comply with the policy.
• The strategy for releasing the data associated with research will likely also have a number of options for compliance.
Role of Providers
• Options for providing access to both the publications and the data will continue to evolve with new business models continuing to develop.
• A number of efforts are underway to improve discovery and access, including:– DOIs and Handles for persistent linking to digital objects
– ORCID for linking the works of a specific individual
– VIAF and ISNI for linking the work funded or conducted by specific institutions or organizations
– FUNDREF for linking the outcomes of specific funding efforts
– DATA CITE for linking to data
Future State
• Open Access publishing and archiving are growing activities in a number of research disciplines today.
• The business models for providing open access and public access are evolving and a number of examples exist that have proven viable and accepted in their communities.
• The U.S. Federal Government has chosen to implement policies that take advantage of these new strategies for publication and dissemination.
• The ultimate outcome will likely continue to be a variety of strategies, depending onthe maturity of the research discipline and the willingness of researchers, institutions, societies, publishers, and funders to work together.
*A Note About Copyright
• As mentioned earlier, the OSTP Memo does not explicitly mention copyright in their guidance. We do not know if the Agency Plans will explicitly address it.
• It is presumed that authors of federally funded research will continue to retain, transfer, and define the copyrights associated with their work.
• Work by government employees, done in the course of their daily jobs, is considered in the public domain and cannot have copyright assigned or transferred.
• Whether publishers can or will wish to copyright the format, structure or presentation of publications and data will potentially determine how the policies address what is made available and with what permissions.
• Works can be controlled under copyright and still be made Open Access or publicly accessible. Licensing like Creative Commons can also be used to communicate permissions in such an instance.
