Heather Joseph, Executive Director

1

THE SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING ACADEMIC RESOURCES
COALITION21 Dupont Circle NW, Suite
800Washington, DC 20036(202) 296-2296 www.arl.or
g/sparc
The Growing Call for Public Access

• Heather Joseph, Executive Director
• The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources
  Coalition

2
Why is Public Access Important?

• Dissemination of results is an essential,
  inseparable component of research and of the US
  Governments investment in science. It is only
  through use of findings that funders obtain value
  from their investment.
• The research funded by public institutions is
  simply not widely available. This works against
  the public interest since federally funded
  research is not being fully used and applied.

3
Selected Proposed Policies Worldwide

• The European Commission
• Research Councils UK
• Canadian Institute of Health Research
• Ukrainian National Parliament
• South African Research Council
• German Research Fund (DMG)
• Chinese Academy of Science
• U.S. National Institutes of Health
• U.S Federal Research Public Access Act

4
Public Access Facilitates Research

• Recognition of the importance of public access is
  rapidly expanding. In a letter to the U.S.
  Congress 25 Nobel Laureates noted
• Science is the measure of the human races
  progress. As scientists and taxpayers too, we
  therefore object to barriers that hinder, delay
  or block the spread of scientific knowledge
  supported by federal tax dollars including our
  own works.
• - Open letter to the US Congress, August 26,
  2004

5
Public Access Spurs Innovation

• Once a critical mass is reached, text mining
  will enable new facts to be discovered that would
  not be possible by humans, such as information
  about gene associations. Data meshing will also
  start to happen where, for example, you could
  look at associations between supermarket loyalty
  cards (to find out what people eat), their health
  records and gene make up. This will have a huge
  impact on public health.
• --Robert Terry, Senior Policy Advisor, The
  Wellcome Trust (Research Information, June/July
  2006)

6
Public Access is Central to Higher Education

• The broad dissemination of the results of
  scholarly inquiry and discourse is essential for
  higher education to fulfill its long-standing
  commitment to the advancement and conveyance of
  knowledge. Indeed, it is mission critical.
• --25 University Provosts, in an Open Letter to
  the Higher Education Community, 7/24/06

7
Public Access is a Market Issue

• From industry analysts at Credit Suisse First
  Boston
• We would expect governments (and taxpayers)
  to examine the fact that they are essentially
  funding the same purchase three times
  governments and taxpayers fund most academic
  research, pay the salaries of the academics who
  undertake the peer review process and fund the
  libraries that buy the output, without receiving
  a penny in exchange from the publishers for
  producing and reviewing the content....We do not
  see this as sustainable in the long term, given
  pressure on university and government budgets.
• - (Credit Suisse First Boston, Sector Review
  Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishing.
  April 6, 2004.)

8
Public Access Is Important toTaxpayers
9
Public Access is Important toUniversities and
Libraries

• Even the wealthiest private research institution
  in the U.S. can afford access to less than 70 of
  the peer reviewed research, and for thousands of
  public and private colleges, universities, and
  research centers in the U.S. the situation is
  even worse.

10
Public Access is Important toResearchers
Lawrence, Steve (2001). Free online availability
substantially increases a paper's impact.
Nature, Vol. 411, No. 6837, p. 521
11
Public Access is Important toPatients and
Health Care Professionals

• When we went to try to find information on
  PXE, we discovered that it was very hard to get.
  We lived in the Boston area at the time and were
  lucky to be able to go to one of the best medical
  libraries in the world. We went to the Harvard
  University library and found that we had to pay
  25 to get in the door, which we understood
  because it's a private university. So we paid the
  25, but after about ten trips to the library we
  decided we couldn't afford to continue that way.
  
• - Sharon Terry, President, Genetic Alliance and
  mother of two children with rare genetic disease,
  PXE

12
What is the Federal Research Public Access Act?

• The Federal Research Public Access Act (S. 2695)
  was introduced on May 2, 2006 by Sens. Cornyn
  (R-TX) Lieberman (D-CT).
• It is a bill designed to ensure that the results
  of scientific research funded by the public are
  made accessible to the public in a timely, cost
  effective manner.

13
The Federal Research Public Access Act Requires

• Federally funded researchers to submit copy of
  final manuscript that has been accepted for
  publication in a peer-reviewed journal
• Manuscripts be preserved in a stable digital
  repository that permits free public access,
  interoperability, and long-term preservation
• Free access to each manuscript be available as
  soon as possible, and no later than six months
  after the article has been published in a
  peer-reviewed journal.

14
What are the Goals of Public Access Policies
S.2695?

• To expedite, expand and strengthen our national
  ability to leverage our collective investment in
  scientific research
• To provide new avenues to stimulate use of
  federally funded research results to stimulate
  new discoveries and new innovations.

15
S.2695 is Cost Effective

• Proposed bill recognizes that sharing of research
  results is part of the research process -
  progress can be maximized with minimal
  investment.
• For example, the NIH estimates its public access
  program would cost 3.5 million if 100 of its
  65,000 eligible manuscripts were deposited
  annually - an amount equal to 0.01 of the
  agency's 28 billion budget.

16
S.2695 is Cost Effective

• By comparison NIHs costs are only a small
  fraction of the 30 million per year the agency
  spends on page charges and other subsidies to
  subscription-based journals.
• S. 2695 is structured to minimize development
  costs. Each agency is not required to develop its
  own repository, and can achieve economies of
  scale - by leveraging use of existing platforms
  and infrastructure, or partnering with other
  agencies/institutions.

17
S.2695 is Not a Threat to the Peer Review System

• S.2695 contains two key provisions that protect
  journals
• A delay of up to six months in providing access
  to articles via the public archive (versus
  immediate access for journal readers).
• Inclusion in the public archive of the authors
  final manuscript rather than the publishers
  formatted, paginated version preferred for
  citation purposes.

18
Public Access can be a Competitive Advantage

• Genetics (Genetics Society of America)
• Journal of Cell Biology (Rockefeller University
  Press)
• Journal of Clinical Investigation (American
  Society for Clinical Investigation)
• Journal of Experimental Medicine (Rockefeller
  University Press)
• Journal of Neuroscience (Society for
  Neuroscience)
• Molecular Biology of the Cell (American Society
  for Cell Biology)
• Nucleic Acids Research (Oxford Univesity Press)
• Pediatric Research (American Pediatric Society)
• Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
  (National Academy of Sciences)
• RNA (The RNA Society)

• American Journal of Pathology (American Society
  for Investigative Pathology)
• American Journal of Human Genetics (American
  Society for Human Genetics)
• Annals of Family Medicine (American Academy of
  Family Physicians)
• Annals of Internal Medicine  (American College of
  Physicians)
• Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (American
  Society for Microbiology)
• (note ASM has 9 primary journals with 6 month
  embargos)
• Applied and Environmental Microbiology (American
  Society for Microbiology)
• Canadian Medical Association Journal (Canadian
  Medical Association)
• Clinical Medicine Research (Marshfield Clinic)
• Clinical and Vaccine Immunology (ASM)
• Development (Company of Biologists)
• Diabetes (American Diabetes Association)

19
S.2695 is Not a Threat to the Peer Review System

• A recent survey by the Association of Learned and
  Professional Society Publishers clearly shows
  that a 6-month embargo is not a threat to
  institutional journal subscriptions
• Availability of content via delayed open
  access was not an important factor in journal
  cancellations. From examination of all kinds
  of embargoed content.it is clear that the
  embargo has to be very short indeed to compete
  with a subscription for 82 it had to be 3
  months or less

20
S.2695 is Not a Threat to the Peer Review System

• The ALPSP report concludes
• Repositories are clearly not seen by librarians
  as a substitute for properly managed journal
  holdings they point to concerns over long-term
  availability, stability, completeness and
  integrity the faculty want the real journal
  embargoes of even 3 months are a major obstacle
  and postprints (let alone preprints) are not seen
  as an adequate substitute for the
  journal article.

21
S.2695 is Not a Threat to the Peer Review System

• The large majority of librarians do not know
  whether the content of archives overlaps with
  their holdings, and most do not plan to introduce
  systems to measure this.
• Availability via OA archives was ranked a far
  behind the needs of faculty, usage and price in
  determining cancellations.
• Three times as many respondents thought there
  would be no impact on holdings compared with
  those that thought there would be some impact.

22
Worldwide Trend Towards Greater Access

• Trend towards considering greater access to
  research results in general - not just peer
  reviewed articles, but data
• Indicative of new understanding of opportunities
  presented by digital research environment to more
  fully exploit results of research we collectively
  fund
• Viewed as competitive advantage

23
Further information

• For more information on progress of these (and
  other) emerging Open Access policies in the U.S.,
  please see
• www.arl.org/sparc/soan
• www.taxpayeraccess.org
• www.earlham.edu/peters/fos/fosblog.html
• www.nih.gov/about/publicaccess/