Re: [Foundation-l] OSTP Request for Comment on Open Access to Federally Funded Research
On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 10:11 AM, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: Possibly of interest to Wikimedians: the U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy is requesting public comment on making federally funded scientific research open access. The deadline is Jan. 7. - Forwarded Message - From: Charles W. Bailey, Jr. cwbai...@digital-scholarship.com To: st...@ala.org Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2009 10:50:30 AM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific Subject: [STS-L] OSTP Request for Comment on Open Access to Federally Funded Research The Office of Science and Technology Policy is requesting input regarding enhanced access to federally funded science and technology research results, including the possibility of open access to them. Comments can be e-mailed to publicacc...@ostp.gov. The deadline for comments is January 7, 2010. Here's an excerpt from the announcement (http://bit.ly/5J1ZAp): Input is welcome on any aspect of expanding public access to peer reviewed publications arising from federal research. Questions that individuals may wish to address include, but are not limited to, the following (please respond to questions individually): 1. How do authors, primary and secondary publishers, libraries, universities, and the federal government contribute to the development and dissemination of peer reviewed papers arising from federal funds now, and how might this change under a public access policy? Note: Comments on the OSTP open access policy close today -- the comment period was extended to January 21st. People in the US may wish to sneak in a last-minute comment today. Sorry for the late notice -- I meant to send a reminder sooner! Here's the text of the email I sent to OSTP. Thanks to Esther Hoorn of WM-NL Melissa Hagemann of the advisory board for helping with ideas. - I support expanding open access policies for federally funded research across all funding agencies, following the NIH model. As an academic science and engineering librarian, I see first-hand the benefits of having broad access to current research for students and researchers alike. As a public university, our budget has been deeply impacted by the current recession, which means that our library has to reduce our purchases of expensive scientific journals. This unfortunately impacts student education -- students who are attending a university funded with public tax dollars, who need access to research that is also funded by public monies in order to stay up-to-date in their field, cannot get access to that same research because of the high prices charged by commercial scientific publishers. Open access means that more information would be available regardless of economic situation through the medium that people use the most to do research -- the Web. I am also a contributor to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation projects. Wikipedia is currently the fifth largest website and the largest single reference work in the world, accessed by millions of people every day to get information about all topics, including current scientific and technical issues. Wikipedia's mission is to provide technically accurate, up-to-date information that is well-referenced so all readers can also find out more about the topics they are interested in. However, many Wikipedia contributors and readers do not have access to the expensive and exclusive university libraries that are currently required to access most technical and scientific information. Instead, they rely on the resources currently available on the Web. Requiring that the results of federally funded research be made available online means that a vast world of up-to-date, reliable and important information would become available for use by Wikipedia and other projects that seek to make technical knowledge accessible to the public. As John Willinsky writes in the journal First Monday (itself open access), increasing the availability of open access research citations would increase the quality and educational value of Wikipedia (First Monday, v. 12(3), 5 March 2007). All federal open access policies should require the following to make them of most use to scientists, students, researchers and internet users: * Public access should be a requirement across all funding agencies, and agency policies should be coordinated to make them compatible with one another. * All articles that result from federal funding should be made freely accessible within no more than six months of publication (ideally less), and housed in widely publicized archives that ensure permanent public search and retrieval. These archives should be coordinated with currently available databases of federally-funded information as well, such as DOE's Information Bridge. * Articles should be posted in a standard, non-proprietary digital format, such as XML, in addition to pdf or other common formats; both pre- and post- prints should be allowed for deposit. Continued project funding
[Foundation-l] OSTP Request for Comment on Open Access to Federally Funded Research
Possibly of interest to Wikimedians: the U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy is requesting public comment on making federally funded scientific research open access. The deadline is Jan. 7. - Forwarded Message - From: Charles W. Bailey, Jr. cwbai...@digital-scholarship.com To: st...@ala.org Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2009 10:50:30 AM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific Subject: [STS-L] OSTP Request for Comment on Open Access to Federally Funded Research The Office of Science and Technology Policy is requesting input regarding enhanced access to federally funded science and technology research results, including the possibility of open access to them. Comments can be e-mailed to publicacc...@ostp.gov. The deadline for comments is January 7, 2010. Here's an excerpt from the announcement (http://bit.ly/5J1ZAp): Input is welcome on any aspect of expanding public access to peer reviewed publications arising from federal research. Questions that individuals may wish to address include, but are not limited to, the following (please respond to questions individually): 1. How do authors, primary and secondary publishers, libraries, universities, and the federal government contribute to the development and dissemination of peer reviewed papers arising from federal funds now, and how might this change under a public access policy? 2. What characteristics of a public access policy would best accommodate the needs and interests of authors, primary and secondary publishers, libraries, universities, the federal government, users of scientific literature, and the public? 3. Who are the users of peer-reviewed publications arising from federal research? How do they access and use these papers now, and how might they if these papers were more accessible? Would others use these papers if they were more accessible, and for what purpose? 4. How best could federal agencies enhance public access to the peer-reviewed papers that arise from their research funds? What measures could agencies use to gauge whether there is increased return on federal investment gained by expanded access? 5. What features does a public access policy need to have to ensure compliance? 6. What version of the paper should be made public under a public access policy (e.g., the author's peer reviewed manuscript or the final published version)? What are the relative advantages and disadvantages to different versions of a scientific paper? 7. At what point in time should peer-reviewed papers be made public via a public access policy relative to the date a publisher releases the final version? Are there empirical data to support an optimal length of time? Should the delay period be the same or vary for levels of access (e.g., final peer reviewed manuscript or final published article, access under fair use versus alternative license), for federal agencies and scientific disciplines? 8. How should peer-reviewed papers arising from federal investment be made publicly available? In what format should the data be submitted in order to make it easy to search, find, and retrieve and to make it easy for others to link to it? Are there existing digital standards for archiving and interoperability to maximize public benefit? How are these anticipated to change? 9. Access demands not only availability, but also meaningful usability. How can the federal government make its collections of peer- reviewed papers more useful to the American public? By what metrics (e.g., number of articles or visitors) should the Federal government measure success of its public access collections? What are the best examples of usability in the private sector (both domestic and international)? And, what makes them exceptional? Should those who access papers be given the opportunity to comment or provide feedback? In The Obama Administration Wants OA for Federally-Funded Research (http://bit.ly/8fZ6Yh), Peter Suber says: This is big. We already have important momentum in Congress for FRPAA. The question here is about separate action from the White House. What OA policies should President Obama direct funding agencies to adopt? This is the first major opening to supplement legislative action with executive action to advance public access to publicly-funded research. It's also the first explicit sign that President Obama supports the OA policy at the NIH and wants something similar at other federal agencies. In Please Comment on Mandate Proposal by President Obama's Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) (http://bit.ly/8OQUEF), Stevan Harnad provides his answers to the OSTP's questions. -- Best Regards, Charles Charles W. Bailey, Jr. Publisher, Digital Scholarship http://bit.ly/Z6HFx ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
