Mandates for public access to publications and data on the horizon for US researchers
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Mandates for public access to publications and data on the horizon for US researchers www.ostp.gov
U
S researchers will soon face requirements to publicly share both the peer-reviewed publications and the digital data that result from their federally funded work. In mid-February, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) issued a memorandum that gave federal agencies with over $100 million in annual research and development expenditures a six-month time frame for developing plans to increase public access to federally funded research results. The memo argues that these public access policies will accelerate scientific breakthroughs and enhance economic growth and job creation. The US government has been developing its public access objectives for several years, gathering input from the National Science and Technology Council and public consultation. The OSTP memo follows from a requirement in the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 (P.L. 111-358) for policies to improve the quality, access, dissemination, and long-term stewardship of federally supported research results. The United States is not the only country making the move to public access. The United Kingdom implemented new open access (OA) policies for peer-reviewed publications on April 1, 2013, and the European Commission has plans to expand its OA requirements as well. For publications, the memo requires agencies to “ensure that the public can read, download, and analyze in digital form final peer-reviewed manuscripts or final published documents.” It recommends a 12-month post-publication embargo period before research papers must be made publicly available, but allows agencies to tailor the time frame to accommodate the needs of different disciplines. The National Institutes of Health
already mandates that publications resulting from its funding be deposited in the PubMed Central database within 12 months of publication, and some journals, such as Science, make all of their articles freely available after 12 months. Most journals already offer at least the option for OA publication, either under the Green or Gold OA model. The Green OA model allows authors to deposit articles in non-commercial repositories like arXiv.org, or to post an article to their own website, while the Gold OA model allows free access directly from the publisher’s website, with publication costs covered by the author through grant funds or means other than traditional subscriptions. However, several publishers that depend heavily on subscription revenue to cover their expenses are concerned that a 12-month embargo would jeopardize their financial sustainability. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, for example, has noted that 85% of articles retrieved from its digital library are older
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than 12 months. To remain sustainable, stakeholders advocate that agency procedures accommodate the economic implications of various public access models. The memo leaves open the question of how public access will be achieved, requir
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