ARL Comments on Plan to Increase Public Access to USDA-Funded Research – Association of Research Libraries

“On September 27, 2023, and October 10, 2023, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) held stakeholder listening sessions around their 2023 Implementation Plan to Increase Public Access to USDA-Funded Research Results, which included scheduled oral comments from stakeholders. The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) presented oral comments at the October 10, 2023, session. ARL is pleased to now offer the following written comments in response to this request….”

Q&A: Phillip Sharp and Amy Brand on the future of open-access publishing | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

“A group of MIT scholars is releasing a new white paper about academic open-access publishing. The paper gathers information, identifies outstanding questions, and calls for further research and data to inform policy on the subject.

 

The group was chaired by Institute Professor Emeritus Phillip A. Sharp, of the Department of Biology and Koch Institute of Integrative Cancer Research, who co-authored the report along with William B. Bonvillian, senior director of special projects at MIT Open Learning; Robert Desimone, director of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research; Barbara Imperiali, the Class of 1922 Professor of Biology; David R. Karger, professor of electrical engineering; Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga, professor of science, technology, and society; Amy Brand, director and publisher of the MIT Press; Nick Lindsay, director for journals and open access at MIT Press; and Michael Stebbins of Science Advisors, LLC.

 

MIT News spoke with Sharp and Brand about the state of open-access publishing….”

Access to Science and Scholarship: Key Questions about the Future of Research Publishing

“The health of the research enterprise is closely tied to the effectiveness of the scientific and scholarly publishing ecosystem. Policy-, technology-, and market-driven changes in publishing models over the last two decades have triggered a number of disruptions within this ecosystem:

Ongoing increases in the cost of journal publishing, with dominant open access models shifting costs from subscribers to authors

Significant consolidation and vertical (supply chain) integration in the publishing industry, and a decline in society-owned subscription journals that have long subsidized scientific and scholarly societies

A dramatic increase in the number of “predatory” journals with substandard peer review

Decline in the purchasing power of academic libraries relative to the quantity and cost of published research To illustrate how researcher behavior, funder policies, and publisher business models and incentives interact, this report presents an historical overview of open access publishing.

The report also provides a list of key questions for further investigation to understand, measure, and best prepare for the impact of new policies related to open access in research publishing, categorized into six general areas: access and business models, research data, preprint publishing, peer review, costs to researchers and universities, and infrastructure.”

Request for Information (RFI) on NSF Public Access Plan 2.0: Ensuring Open, Immediate, and Equitable Access to National Science Foundation Funded Research Survey

“NSF is seeking public input from the science and engineering research and education community on implementing NSF Public Access Plan 2.0: Ensuring Open, Immediate, and Equitable Access to National Science Foundation Funded Research. This plan, described in the SUPPLEMENTARY SECTION of this Federal Register notice, represents an update to NSF’s current public access requirements in response to recent White House Office of Science and Technology Policy guidance….”

Federal Register :: Request for Information (RFI) on NSF Public Access Plan 2.0: Ensuring Open, Immediate, and Equitable Access to National Science Foundation Funded Research

“The National Science Foundation (NSF) is seeking public input from the science and engineering research and education community on implementing NSF Public Access Plan 2.0: Ensuring Open, Immediate, and Equitable Access to National Science Foundation Funded Research. This plan, described in SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION, represents an update to NSF current public access requirements in response to recent White House Office of Science and Technology Policy guidance. A primary consideration during the development of NSF’s plan has been potential equity impacts of public access requirements. NSF’s goal is to improve equity throughout the research life cycle, making data and opportunities available to all researchers, including those from marginalized communities and historically under-resourced institutions of higher education in the U.S. NSF is committed to considering the needs of the diverse US research community, including identifying possible unintended consequences that the plan and its implementation could produce.”

 

Report to Congress on Financing Mechanisms For Open Access Publishing of Federally Funded Research

 

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) submits this report to the Appropriations Committees of the Senate and the House in fulfillment of the requirement in the Committee Report accompanying the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023 (P.L. 117-328) for financing mechanisms for open access publishing of federally funded research.1 According to that Report, “The Committee recognizes the considerable progress made by OSTP” and “encourages OSTP to continue its efforts to coordinate the implementation of public access policies across Federal departments and agencies and to identify additional opportunities to enhance access to the results of Federally funded research.” At the same time, the Committee expressed concern about how mechanisms for financing open access publishing “may present growing barriers to knowledge generation and sharing,” noting that there are “limited data on the subject.”

As defined by UNESCO, the term “open access publishing” refers to “the provision of free access to peer reviewed, scholarly and research information to all. It requires that the rights holder grants worldwide irrevocable right of access to copy, use, distribute, transmit, and make derivative works in any format for any lawful activities with proper attribution to the original author.”2 Recent technological and policy changes around the world have enabled free and immediate access to publicly funded research. OSTP, in collaboration with its federal partners and in consultation with external stakeholders, has been tracking the trends in opening public access to federally funded research, including trends in open access publishing. These efforts illustrate a highly complex, rapidly evolving, and vitally important scholarly communication ecosystem. Within this system, academic publishers can be viewed as a platform that matches research readers with research writers. By providing distributional and certification services, these publishers help mediate research incentives, interactions, and impact.

For research readers, substantial progress has been made in making new articles available to everyone quickly and without charge through various models for open access publishing. These readers include students, researchers, policymakers, advocates, and members of the broader public, who may not have access to paywalled articles through institutional subscriptions or who may not be able to pay to read an article. In its 2022 public access guidance, OSTP holds that: “Financial means and privileged access must never be the pre-requisites to realizing the benefits of federally funded research that the American public deserves.”3 The goal of federal public access policies is therefore to ensure that federal investments go towards unlocking knowledge supported by American taxpayers so the benefits of federally supported research can benefit all of America.

 

Full article: Open science gathers momentum: Implications for medical and scientific research

“The open science movement has fueled the development of public access options, including open access journals, preprint servers, open peer review, and open data and data repositories. Journals that have paywalls are often hybrid models that offer authors ways to make their articles available through “gold” open access and “green” open access options (

Citation6).

To address the growing requirements for public access, journal publishers are implementing new peer-reviewed article types that support the objectives of open science by extending access to relevant assets such as datasets, research protocols, and advances in research methods, toward the goal of fostering new collaborations across disciplines….”

Federal Register :: Public Inspection: Request for Information: Public Access Plan 2.0: Ensuring Open, Immediate, and Equitable Access to National Science Foundation Funded Research

“SUMMARY: The National Science Foundation (NSF) is seeking public input from the science and engineering research and education community on implementing NSF Public Access Plan 2.0: Ensuring Open, Immediate, and Equitable Access to National Science Foundation Funded Research. This plan, described in SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION, represents an update to NSF current public access requirements in response to recent White House Office of Science and Technology Policy guidance. A primary consideration during the development of NSF’s plan has been potential equity impacts of public access requirements. NSF’s goal is to improve equity throughout the research life cycle, making data and opportunities available to all researchers, including those from marginalized communities and historically under-resourced institutions of higher education in the U.S. NSF is committed to considering the needs of the diverse US research community, including identifying possible unintended consequences that the plan and its implementation could produce. 

This is the preprint version of the NSF RFI. The final version will appear later today (November 16, 2023) at this URL:

https://www.federalregister.gov/public-inspection/2023-25267/request-for-information-public-access-plan-20-ensuring-open-immediate-and-equitable-access-to

US Repository Network launches pilot to enhance discoverability of content in repositories

“COAR has been working with the US Repository Network (USRN) to connect and strengthen the position of repositories in the US.  With the advent of the recent OSTP Memorandum requiring Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research – which directs government research funders and agencies to adopt policies that require adopt immediate public access to articles – the need has become more urgent, especially in terms of effectively tracking research outputs.

The USRN is launching a pilot project aimed at improving the discoverability of articles in repositories. This pilot project involves the use of services from CORE (a not-for-profit aggregator based at Open University in the UK) to evaluate and improve local repository practices. Additional technical support will be provided by Antleaf Ltd.

The one-year project involves 18 repositories representing a variety of institutions, software types and repository models and will result in concrete recommendations and best practice guidelines for machine and human discoverability of research articles in US repositories.  The project will also lead to greater international interoperability of US research outputs.”

STATEMENT OF ADMINISTRATION POLICY H.R. 5893 — Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2024

” The [Biden] Administration is concerned that section 552 of the bill would prevent agencies from funding their public access programs, chilling scientific innovation, and limiting the reach of American ingenuity funded by the Federal Government.”

House Releases Details of Its Science Budget Proposals – AIP.ORG

“The document also elaborates on provisions in the legislation that would block the White House’s policy on public access to research publications, reinstate the Justice Department’s China Initiative, and defund workforce diversity programs at science agencies. The counterpart legislation in the Democrat-controlled Senate does not include any analogous provisions and House Democrats have cited the restrictions on diversity programs as among their reasons for opposing the legislation….”

IPLC Response to the Article Development Charge Proposed by the American Chemical Society – Ivy Plus Libraries

“The 13 Ivy Plus libraries are both surprised by and united in opposition to the zero embargo option announced by the American Chemical Society (ACS) on 21 September 2023. This unexpected new charge is a clear challenge to both authors’ rights and the developing scholarly communications ecosystem. According to this policy, an Article Development Charge (ADC) of $2,500 would be charged to authors who seek to retain and exercise the right to deposit a pre-publication version of their article in an open repository once their manuscript enters the ACS peer review process….”

After the “Nelson Memo”: Key Considerations for Delivering on the Promise of Open & Equitable Scholarship

“This resource details practical steps that individuals and organizations can take to ensure that the emerging open-centric research ecosystem is optimized for equity, inclusivity, efficiency. replicability, transparency, trust, and engagement. It provides guidance to colleges and universities, public and private funders, professional societies, and others for aligning their processes and their incentive structures with open scholarship values. Additionally, It highlights a range of organizations that are exhibiting good practices in the field.”

What Does the OSTP Memo Mean for Your Research? – Yale Library Study Spaces Scheduling – Yale University Library

“In August 2022, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy released a memo stating that all federal funding agencies must develop or update policies for researchers and scholars to provide immediate open access to data and scholarship funded by their agencies.  As a researcher what do you need to know about this memo? What does it mean for your research, scholarship, and data? How can administrators and librarians support your work?…”