Elias Zerhouni Director, NIH Dear Dr. Zerhouni,
On January 2, I suggested that the very useful COPR recommendation to NIH to support open-access journal publication costs would generate vastly more open-access articles if it were coupled with an NIH policy encouraging or even mandating open-access provision using *ether* of the two BOAI strategies, whichever is suitable, rather than just BOAI-2 (open-access journal publishing): http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3350.html Unified Dual Open-Access-Provision Policy: http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml BOAI-2 ("gold"): Publish your article in a suitable open-access journal whenever one exists. http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/boaifaq.htm#journals BOAI-1 ("green"): Otherwise, publish your article in a suitable toll-access journal and also self-archive it. http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/ May I just add that prcisely the same thing can be said about the more recent open letter sent to you by Richard Johnson, Director of Sparc: http://www.arl.org/sparc/resources/OpenAccess-Zerhouni.pdf Richard Johnson too makes the useful recommendation that NIH should support open-access journal publishing and help pay the cost, and so it should. But at no extra cost, NIH can help generate an order of magnitude more open-access to biomedical research articles if it couples this support for BOAI-2 with support for the other open-access provision strategy, BOAI-1, as well. Sincerely, Stevan Harnad On Fri, 2 Jan 2004, Stevan Harnad wrote: > Dear Dr. Zerhouni, > > The COPR recommendation that NIH should follow up on your predecessor, > Harold Varmus's efforts on behalf of open access to biomedical journal > articles through PubMedCentral by supporting publication costs in PLoS > journals is extremely welcome and helpful: > > http://copr.nih.gov/public_library_science.shtm > > But may I make a suggestion that will substantially increase its > helpfulness as well as the amount of open access to biomedical journal > articles that it generates -- at no additional cost to NIH? > > Publishing in open-access journals such as the PLoS journal -- also known > as the Budapest Open Access Initiative's open-access provision strategy > 2 (BOAI-2) -- is only one of the two ways to provide open access to > biomedical journal articles. And because there are still very few such > open-access journals, it is not the fastest or fullest way to do so. > > The other open-access provision strategy, BOAI-1, is self-archiving > copies of articles published in toll-access journals in the author's > institution's own open-access archive. > > Because open-access journals like PLoS exist today for only about 5% > of the annual number of journal articles published (there are 24,000 > peer-reviewed journals in all, across all disciplines, and only 5% of > them, about 1000, are open-access journals like PLoS) the solution for > the remaining 95% is for their authors to self-archive them in their > institutional open-access archives. > http://www.doaj.org/ > > Fifty-five percent of journals already formally endorse > author/institutional self-archiving, and many of the remaining 45% > will agree if asked. > http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ls/disresearch/romeo/Romeo%20Publisher%20Policies.htm > > So the power and scope of the COPR recommendation for NIH to support open > access can be immediately enhanced from its present one (probably better > than 5% in the biomedical sciences, which includes the biggest > open-access publisher, BioMedCentral [BMC], hence probably closer to > 10-15% today) to at least 55% and potentially 100% by simply enhancing the > recommendation (with no further cost implications) from the present one: > > 1. The NIH should offer support for PLoS by explicitly stating that > NIH grant recipients may legitimately apply funds from their > projects toward the modest publication fees envisioned for PLoS. > > 2. Consideration should be given to awarding administrative > supplements to relevant NIH-funded research, if only for a limited > "introductory" time period, as further means of expressing both real > and symbolic support for this program. > > to the following enhanced one: > > 1. The NIH should offer support for open-access to biomedical > journal articles by explicitly stating that NIH grant recipients > may legitimately apply funds from their projects toward the modest > publication fees envisioned by open-access journals such as PLoS > or BMC if a suitable one exists for their article. Otherwise they > should publish it in a suitable toll-access journal and provide > open access to it by self-archiving it in their institutional > open-access archives. > > 2. Consideration should be given to awarding administrative > supplements to relevant NIH-funded research, if only for a limited > "introductory" time period, as further means of expressing both real > and symbolic support for this program. The administrative > supplements for covering open-access journal-publication costs > should be available to researchers and institutions that are also > implementing open-access provision by self-archiving for those > articles for which a suitable open-access journal does not yet exist. > > I hope this small amendment to the COPR recommendation can be considered, > as its adoption would greatly enhance the intended effect. > > Sincerely, > > Stevan Harnad > > NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open > access to the peer-reviewed research literature online is available at > the American Scientist Open Access Forum (1998-2004): > To join the Forum: > > http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html > Post discussion to: > [email protected] > Archive: > http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html > > Unified Dual Open-Access-Provision Policy: > BOAI-2 ("gold"): Publish your article in a suitable open-access > journal whenever one exists. > http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/boaifaq.htm#journals > BOAI-1 ("green"): Otherwise, publish your article in a suitable > toll-access journal and also self-archive it. > http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/ > http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml > http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php >
