Federally Funded Research Results to Be Available Online Free a Year After Publication

OSTP has looked into the issue “for some time” and reached out twice to the public, asking for input on “democratizing” the results of research, Holdren said. Such research “spurs scientific breakthroughs and economic advances when research results are made available to innovators,” and “Americans should have easy access to the results of research they help support” through tax dollars. Agencies must adopt “similar policies” to those of the National Institutes of Health, Holdren said. An NIH appropriations bill provision requiring free online availability 12 months after publication drew criticism on Capitol Hill from copyright-industry supporters.

The governmentwide policy strikes a “balance” between public access and “the need to ensure that the valuable contributions that the scientific publishing industry provides are not lost,” Holdren said. The 12-month “embargo period” should be used by agencies both as a guide for developing their policies and as a “mechanism for stakeholders” to petition the agencies to change the embargo period, he said. The OSTP memo also directs agencies to improve their management and sharing of federally funded scientific data. “Access to pre-existing data sets,” such as “open weather” and genome sequences, “can accelerate growth by allowing companies to focus resources and efforts on understanding and fully exploiting discoveries instead of repeating basic, pre-competitive work already documented elsewhere,” he said: Such availability “will create innovative economic markets for services related to data curation, preservation, analysis, and visualization, among others."

The policy covers “any results published in peer-reviewed scholarly publications that are based on research that directly arises from Federal funds,” the OSTP memo said (http://1.usa.gov/VBkFJv): “It is preferred that agencies work together, where appropriate, to develop these plans.” Agency plans must include “a strategy for leveraging existing archives, where appropriate, and fostering public-private partnerships with scientific journals”; a strategy to help the public “locate and access digital data”; an approach for “optimizing search, archival, and dissemination features that encourages innovation in accessibility and interoperability”; a plan for notifying awardees and other researchers “of their obligations” under the policy; a way of “measuring and, as necessary, enforcing compliance with its plan”; identifying budget resources to implement it; an implementation timeline; and “special circumstances” that keep the agency from meeting the memo’s objectives. Draft plans are due in six months. Each agency must update OSTP and the Office of Management and Budget on its implementation by Jan. 1 and July 1 each year for two years following its final plan.

Open-access advocates cheered the policy. The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition said the “landmark” decision follows “a ten-year campaign by ... scientists, universities, libraries, technology leaders, patient advocates, entrepreneurs, students, and every-day Americans” to open such access. “In 2013, we should be taking full advantage of the digital environment to disseminate the results of publicly funded research, not keep this knowledge locked away” in “expensive and often hard-to-access” journals, said President Heather Joseph. She also cited the public-domain availability of the Human Genome Project -- a $3.8 billion project -- as having an estimated $800 billion impact, and said the NIH policy has been a success, drawing 700,000 users daily to its research repository. The policy is “pro-Internet” and “pro-science,” said Michael Carroll, director of American University’s Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property and board member of the Public Library of Science (http://bit.ly/YiLaE4). Requiring not just scholarly articles but also research data to be public is important, he said: “Agencies should embrace these opportunities to increase the value and impact of the research they fund with vigor and creativity."

Public Knowledge said the memo “complements” a bill offered in the House and Senate earlier this month, the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR), which also has a $100 million funding threshold for agencies to devise open-access plans (http://1.usa.gov/XBYZcR). “We need today’s White House action to make rapid change in federal policy, and we need legislation to codify the benefits of a sensible open-access policy for the long term,” said Peter Suber, director of PK’s Open Access Project (http://bit.ly/YiMLtE). He said in a separate blog post (http://bit.ly/YrIOyQ) the White House action was necessary in the event FASTR never passes, and in any case, it would only pass “after some time for study, education, lobbying, amendment, negotiation, and debate. ... Compared to this executive action, FASTR is slower.” The executive and legislative approaches have some differences, Suber said: The White House directive covers both research and development, whereas the bill covers research only; the directive applies to 19 agencies and FASTR “about 11”; FASTR caps the embargo at six months, rather than 12, and only the directive lets agencies ask for longer embargoes; FASTR gives agencies a year to develop policies rather than six months; and the directive explicitly requires open access to data, not just articles.

The Association of American Publishers called the policy a “reasonable, balanced resolution of issues” of public access to research, and preferable to “angry rhetoric and unreasonable legislation offered by some,” saying FASTR “ignores the realities of scientific communication.” It said partnerships between publishers and specific agencies “have been underway for several years with demonstrable results” -- and “at little or no cost to the government” -- but the OSTP policy will provide a “comprehensive, consistent strategy for collaboration.” AAP also cheered the policy’s 12-month embargo and its allowance for agencies to tailor their plans based on needs “unique to each field.” AAP President Tom Allen said the “key” to the policy’s success was “how the agencies use their flexibility to avoid negative impacts to the successful system of scholarly communication that advances science, technology and innovation.” AAP’s Professional and Scholarly Division represents 120 nonprofit, commercial, university press and professional society publishing organizations, it said.