OFFICE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY Compilation of E-Mailed Comments for Public Access Policy Forum Part 1 Compiled on February 1st 2010 I am in favor of Open Access after a reasonable time period ... so as to not disrupt current practices and divert research funding to satisfy the needs of only a few researchers that do not have immediate access thru their organization. It costs money to maintain an effective peer review system as shown by responsible society publishers ... such as the APS, ACS, RSC, etc. Dana L. Roth Millikan Library Caltech Please mandate public access for federally-funded research. The taxpayers are footing the bill, let's see what we're getting. Open access advances research and saves the time of researchers, too! -Jodi Schneider I am pleased to have an opportunity to comment: I am frustrated that research that has been funded publicly (through CDC, VA Administration, etc) is only available online by paying for the service. That means that I, as a taxpayer, are paying for the research and paying again for the benefit of reading it. This seems patently unfair. The problem for me is exacerbated by the fact that I have limited income. I am on social security disability and a VA disability compensation claim and thus my resources are very limited. I live on about $30K a year which, while adequate, is not a lot. In the course of preparing my VA claim there are many articles published by the VA or those working for the VA that can only be viewed by going to a university library collection (for which there is often a charge) or by buying a copy of the article from one of the many publication services that have found a way to make money selling the tax-funded research back to the public (who paid for it in the fist place). The price of these articles is not cheap. Often it is in excess of $20. Given that the service provided for the $20 is a few minutes access to an existing document. That prices seems excessive. 2 I would hope that some provision could be made for research funed directly by government or conducted by those on the government payroll (e.g. The VA, NIH) could be made available to taxpayers for a small reproduction or download fee. Thanks again for the opportunity to comment. John Dowd Alan I. Leshner, CEO, AAAS OSTP e-mail comment on Open access to peer reviewed pulished papers. This includes aside commentary based upon my personal experience with related issues. SEE ATTACHMENT (MicroSoft Office Word Document) Michael R. Himes [Note: No document attached] Dear Sir or Madam, We respectfully request an extension of the January 7, 2010 deadline for comment submissions. Because of the holiday season, this short time period does not allow for thoughtful responses from the society and scholarly publishers that will be affected by the proposed changes. Thank you for your consideration. Sincerely, Nina Tristani Director of Publications American Public Health Association (APHA) Hello! I've been working with a colleague (user ID dgraves) to try and help 3 her post a comment to http://blog.ostp.gov/2009/12/10/policy-forum-on-public-access-to-federally-funded-research- implementation/, but haven't had any luck. Her post is below. She tried Safari, IE and Firefox on Mac and PC, but came up with a blank screen each time, and the post never went through. She even deleted some of the URL strings, but it still wouldn't go through. I understand she'll be emailing the post to you with a request to make public. In the meantime, would you please advise on these technical challenges? Thank you!!! Jennifer The issue of versions is an important one. While access to the final published version of an article is preferable, access to the authors’ peer-reviewed manuscript is an acceptable substitute. It should be clearly identified as such, and include a link to the final published article. Agencies should also follow the practice established by NIH and other research funders of encouraging publishers to replace the author’s peer-reviewed manuscript with the published edition if they so choose. Requiring access to the authors’ final manuscript is a common practice for research funders with public access policies. (See http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/juliet/). The practice evolved as a mechanism to protect subscriptions and balance the need for journal publishers to earn a return on their investment in the copyediting, formatting and other value-added services that they may put into the final published version. While some have raised concerns that the author’s manuscript may contain errors or omissions that are only corrected during the copyediting process, the reality is that many journal publishers already have programs that routinely provide access to the author’s manuscript on their own Web site prior to the journal’s publication. These programs have been in use for years, and frequently cite the faster time to publication as a benefit to scholarly society members as well as to the wider scientific community. Some examples of publishers in a wide variety of disciplines who do this include: The American Diabetes Association http://care.diabetesjournals.org/papbyrecent.shtml The American Geophysical Union http://www.agu.org The American Meteorological Society http://ams.allenpress.com 4 The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association http://jslhr.asha.org/papbyrecent.dtl The Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry http://www.setacjournals.org The American Physiological Society, http://www.the-aps.org/publications/articles_in_press.htm The evolution of Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) has also provided an industry-accepted standard mechanism to facilitate the identification, location, and linking of electronic articles and manuscripts, as well for components of these articles (images, graphs, etc.) , and is important to consider. ------------------------------------- Jennifer McLennan Director of Communications SPARC To the OSTP: I tried several times to post a comment on the OSTP public access blog yesterday, but was unable to do so. I saw an error note on the website when I used Internet Explorer, which I will reproduce here. Webpage error details http://blog.ostp.gov/2009/12/10/policy-forum-on-public-access-to-federally-funded-research- implementation/ Rather than continue to fight a balky web page :), I am sending my comments here. If you can post them, please do so; otherwise, please accept my input! Here it is: The issue of versions is an important one. While access to the final published version of an article is preferable, access to the authors' peer-reviewed manuscript is an acceptable substitute. It should be clearly identified as such, and include a link to the final published article. Agencies should also follow the practice established by NIH and other research funders of encouraging publishers to replace the author's peer-reviewed manuscript with the published edition if they so choose. Requiring access to the authors' final manuscript is a common practice for research funders with public access policies. (See http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/juliet/). The practice evolved as a mechanism to protect subscriptions and balance the need for journal publishers to earn a return on their investment in the copyediting, formatting and other value-added services that they may put into the final published version. 5 While some have raised concerns that the author's manuscript may contain errors or omissions that are only corrected during the copyediting process, the reality is that many journal publishers already have programs that routinely provide access to the author's manuscript on their own Web site prior to the journal's publication. These programs have been in use for years, and frequently cite the faster time to publication as a benefit to scholarly society members as well as to the wider scientific community. Some examples of publishers in a wide variety of disciplines who do this include: The American Diabetes Association http://care.diabetesjournals.org/papbyrecent.shtml The American Geophysical Union http://www.agu.org/contents/journals/ViewPapersInPress.do?journalCode=GL The American Meteorological Society http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-static&name=papers_appear The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association http://jslhr.asha.org/papbyrecent.dtl The Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry http://www.setacjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-toc-aop&issn=1552-8618 The American Physiological Society, http://www.the-aps.org/publications/articles_in_press.htm The evolution of Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) has also provided an industry-accepted standard mechanism to facilitate the identification, location, and linking of electronic articles and manuscripts, as well for components of these articles (images, graphs, etc.) , and is important to consider. Diane J. Graves University Librarian and Professor Trinity University San Antonio, TX To whom it may concern, On behalf of the American Society of Agronomy, the Crop Science Society of America and the Soil Science Society of America, I am writing to request an extension of the comment period regarding access to publicly funded research. I understand that the White House Roundtable on Scholarly Publishing will issue their report the first week of January - with just a day or two between that report 6 coming out and the OSTP deadline. At minimum, scholarly publishers should have time to review this report prior to providing formative comments to OSTP with regard to public access. Additionally, the Council of Scientific Society Presidents (CSSP), of which our Societies are active participants, will be hosting a meeting of e-publishers in May, 2010 and plans to issue a report. This report has tremendous potential to provide additional valuable insights into Open Access and scholarly publishing based on the publishing activities of a wide variety of scientific societies.