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 | Publishers: NIH Public Access Mandate Undermines Science Publishing
The NIH mandate is law, but the fight may not be over. The Association of American Publishers (AAP) late last week blasted the recently passed public access mandate for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and pledged to continue its opposition. In a strongly worded statement, AAP officials "reaffirmed that journal publishers who have opposed the policy will continue to pursue their concerns with Congress regarding the policy's negative impact on science publishing." Publishers said they "will urge NIH to conduct a rulemaking proceeding, with opportunity for public comment," before implementing the new policy.
"These issues were never examined by Congress because the statutory authority for the new policy was enacted as a rider on appropriations legislation without hearings or studies to assess its merits," complained Allan Adler, AAP's VP for legal and government affairs. He reiterated the publishers' position that the NIH policy was "unprecedented" and "inconsistent" with intellectual property laws, again raising the specter of a potential challenge that could delay implementation of the policy. "[The policy] undermines publishers' ability to exercise their copyrights in the published articles…threatens the intellectual freedom of authors, including their choice to seek publication in journals that may refuse to accept proposed articles that would be subject to the new mandate," he said.
The NIH mandate, supported by librarians and pushed through after years of heavy lobbying from the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), requires researchers to deposit their final papers funded whole or in part by NIH, in the PubMed Central repository. The papers will then be made publicly available within one year. The previous policy, enacted in 2005, merely "requested" deposit. Deposit rates under that voluntary provision, however, proved dismal, bolstering public access advocates arguments for a mandate. Adler, however, said that a mandate effectively "eliminates the concept of permission," and allows NIH "to take important publisher property interests without compensation including the value added to the article by the publishers' investments in the peer review process and other quality-assurance aspects of journal publication."
Michael Mabe, CEO of STM, the international organization of science publishers, also criticized the NIH, saying the public access mandate was also an "unfunded mandate." "The legislation neither provides compensation for the added-value of services that these manuscripts have received from publishers nor does it earmark funds to ensure the economic sustainability of the broad and systematic archiving this sort of project requires," reads an STM statement.
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The LJ Academic Newswire Newsmaker Interview: SPARC Executive Director Heather Joseph on the NIH Public Access Policy
It's been more than a three year battle for the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) to shepherd the public access mandate through Congress, On December 26, 2007, it was at long last signed into law. Of course, challenges remain. Publishers opposed to the policy are now laying the groundwork to fight implementation of the policy. And perhaps more pressing, advocates must now ensure that the policy is effective. The LJ Academic Newswire caught up with SPARC executive director Heather Joseph, who picked up the National Institutes of Health (NIH) legislative effort from former executive director Rick Johnson, and pushed it over the goal line.
LJ: Publishers this week reiterated their criticism of the NIH policy. Now that the NIH mandate is law, what do you expect will be its immediate effect?
HJ: I think the policy will have two sets of effects, one immediate, and one long-term. In terms of the immediate future, librarians are going to be extremely busy educating their administrators, faculty members, researchers, and students as to how to comply with the policy, and also on what it means to each constituency. Successful implementation of this policy must be a high priority for the coming year.
And over the long term?
Over the longer term, this policy really plays a crucial role. As the policy is implemented, and as more and more researchers deposit material, PubMed Central will become an increasingly valuable—and singular—resource to the research community. As its utility grows, lingering reservations researchers may hold will dissipate and I think we'll see an even greater call for enhanced access to research results. I also think this policy will go a long way in demonstrating that public access will not cause irreparable harm to the journal publishing industry. The sky will not fall.
How do you respond to AAP's criticism that Congress failed to hold proper hearings on the issues involved?
The NIH Public Access Policy has been actively considered by Congress since 2004 and was enacted through all the normal and proper channels. What the AAP [Association of American Publishers] doesn't mention is that the NIH itself conducted an extensive process of soliciting public opinion and comments before enacting the policy. Besides holding public meetings with stakeholder groups, including the publishing community, the NIH published the proposed policy in the Federal Register in 2004, and requested public comment. It received—and made public via its website—more than 6000 comments on the policy. The formulation of this policy has been transparent, straightforward, and has provided plenty of opportunities for all stakeholders to express their concerns, both to the NIH and to Congress.
Publishers also seem to be positioning this as a copyright issue. Are you concerned a copyright challenge could involve the courts or otherwise delay implementation?
The NIH Public Access Policy does not conflict with copyright, and no amount of repeating this "concern" will make it so. It would be a shame if more time and money had to be wasted on groundless challenges instead of focusing on getting the implementation right and working towards the good of the community.
Let's talk a little about the lengthy political process of pushing this mandate through to this point. Any particularly dark moments along the way?
It's been a long haul. Over three years of persistent, day-in-day-out effort to keep this issue front and center. And sure, yes, absolutely there were some notable dark moments. One stands out in particular: this October, after years of work, we saw the language included in an Appropriations Bill that passed the U.S. House of Representatives, and then, incredibly, included in the Senate version of the bill as well. After several days of holding our breath during the Senate proceedings, we heard, at the filing deadline on a Friday afternoon, that two amendments which would have gutted the provision had been proposed by Senator Inhofe (R-OK) and the Bill, and the proposed amendments were slated to come up for vote the following Tuesday morning. We had the weekend to muster the troops to educate Senate offices as to the devastating effect the amendments would have. Not my favorite weekend of 2007, for sure.
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| Joseph: NIH policy "an Enormous Step Forward"
The LJ Academic Newswire Newsmaker Interview continued:
The publishing industry raised a slew of other concerns: the collapse of peer review, potential for government censorship, scientific fraud. How did you counter them?
That was tough on many levels. It's one thing to work through reasoned responses to objections being raised out of genuine concern. For example, will libraries cancel subscriptions? It's another thing altogether to see objections that are clearly rhetorical devices designed to confuse the debate. Our approach was to always focus on the benefits of public access and the opportunities for all stakeholders, and to do this in a data-driven way. We worked hard to be consistent at presenting data, evidence and facts wherever possible, and also being honest in saying where we simply didn't have data to counter a claim. That approach was helpful in separating legitimate concerns from rhetorical devices.
Was there one argument or conception you really had to battle?
The issue of peer review was one we spent quite a lot of time discussing. Peer review is not a process that many people are intimately familiar with, and there were quite a few misconceptions that we had to work hard to correct. In particular, very few people realized that the bulk of the quality control for journals is done by scientists who are not paid by the journal for their efforts. They tended to think of the publication process as one where an author submits a paper, and a paid employee of the journal decides on its publication. I have to say I was thankful for my years as a journal managing editor: it was really helpful to be able to sit down with people and say "OK...an author submits a paper to a journal, here's what happens." We did a lot of that.
Those opposing the policy question the wisdom of creating a requirement to deposit articles into a central government database. Any thoughts on that?
In terms of the wisdom of establishing a central repository, the NIH was clear that one of its ultimate goals for the policy is to ensure that its research results are readily available not only to this generation of researchers, but to future generations as well. I think that establishing a permanent, central archive of this material is critical to making sure that this happens. We may see distributed solutions evolve over time, and that's fine, but this is a necessary starting point. Also, I go back to the notion of the opportunity for PubMed Central to continue to grow in utility as a resource. Having a complete digital collection of the results of NIH-funded research for the agency to build on is an incredibly compelling notion.
On another hand, some open access advocates say that the yearlong embargo is too long and could essentially set a de facto embargo period for publishers. How do you respond to those arguments?
I completely understand the concerns of those who think a year is too long an embargo period, but from a pragmatic standpoint, this was a necessary compromise. This policy represents a sea change in the parameters of the scholarly communications marketplace. We've gone, in one fell swoop, from information being locked up behind perpetual, exclusive distribution licenses to an embargo period limited to no longer than one year. That's an enormous step forward. Also, the policy allows the researcher to determine the embargo period. It is not a static 12-month requirement. This puts more power in the research community's hands to determine what they feel is best in terms of timing.
What were the keys to your eventual success?
Delving this deeply into the policy arena was very new to SPARC, and there were two things that I'd highlight as being keys to our success. The first was building a strong coalition that collaborated extremely closely on this issue. There is truth to the old adage that there is strength in numbers. Very early on, SPARC created an Open Access Working Group, which brought together seven major library organizations. That was critical in creating and maintaining a strong, united stance on this issue across the entire library community. We took this concept further to build a larger coalition, the Alliance for Taxpayer Access (ATA), which encompassed a wider variety of groups with a shared interest in unlocking the potential of publicly funded research, patient advocates, consumer groups, public interest groups, students, etc.
A second key element was working with our coalition members to develop a clear, concise message—why public access to research matters to you—and delivering that message persistently and consistently. A lot of legwork went into this campaign for all of us.
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| UNC Libraries Will Host Literary Festival in 2009 After All
There will be a next chapter for the North Carolina Festival for the Book after all. Officials at the University of North Carolina (UNC) said that a recent commitment of support from UNC Chancellor James Moeser will offer a "good financial foundation for the 2009 festival," reversing an earlier decision to pass on UNC's turn to organize and host the event. University Librarian Sarah Michalak said she was delighted with the chancellor's decision to support the festival for 2009—and beyond. "We and the university heard from so many people about the importance to them and to the region of this festival," said Michalak. "We look forward to working with the community in planning an outstanding event in 2009 and also in thinking about how to make this a sustainable program into the future."
The festival was founded in 1998, sponsored by the Center for the Study of the American South at UNCCH. Recently, however, the Raleigh News & Observer reported that the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (UNCCH) library would "pass" on its turn to organize the biennial literary festival—hosted on a rotating basis by UNCCH, North Carolina State University (NCSU), and Duke University—apparently unable to commit to organizing the event while in the midst of executing its strategic plan. The popular event is a major undertaking. The 2006 festival at Duke operated with a $280,000 budget (half of which reportedly was raised by the university).
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Library Journal Academic Newswire
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