COMPREHENSIVE BRIEF ON OPEN ACCESS TO PUBLICATIONS AND RESEARCH DATA FOR THE FEDERAL GRANTING AGENCIES Commissioned by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada June 2011 Author: Kathleen Shearer, Consultant For further information, please contact: Canadian Institutes of Health Research 160 Elgin Street, 9th Floor Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0W9 www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada 350 Albert Street Ottawa, Ontario K1A 1H5 www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada 350 Albert Street P.O. Box 1610 Ottawa, Ontario K1P 6G4 www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca Available on the Web in PDF format June 2011 The opinions expressed are those of the consultant, and do not necessarily reflect the views of CIHR, NSERC or SSHRC. TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Acronyms ........................................................................................................................... 1 Foreword ........................................................................................................................................ 3 Executive Summary ....................................................................................................................... 5 I. Publications ................................................................................................................................ 7 1.1 Introduction .............................................................................................. 7 1.2 Policy Environment .................................................................................... 8 1.3 Typical Policy Elements ............................................................................... 9 1.4 Canadian Context .................................................................................... 10 1.5 Implementation ....................................................................................... 11 1.6 Disciplinary Differences ............................................................................. 12 1.7 International Models ................................................................................. 12 1.8 Perspectives of Stakeholder Communities ....................................................... 18 1.9 Relationships with Other Policies .................................................................. 22 1.10 Challenges for Policy Implementation ........................................................... 23 II. Research Data ......................................................................................................................... 27 2.1 Introduction ........................................................................................... 27 2.2 Policy Environment .................................................................................. 28 2.3 Canadian Context .................................................................................... 29 2.4 Implementation ....................................................................................... 31 2.5 International Models ................................................................................. 32 2.6 Perspectives of Stakeholder Communities ....................................................... 36 2.7 Challenges for Policy Implementation ............................................................ 37 III. Conclusions ............................................................................................................................ 40 LIST OF ACRONYMS AAP: Association of American Publishers ACS: American Chemical Society ANDS: Australian National Data Service CARL: Canadian Association of Research Libraries CAURA: Canadian Association of University Research Administrators CERN: European Organization for Nuclear Research CFHSS: Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences CFI: Canada Foundation for Innovation CIHR: Canadian Institutes of Health Research CISTI: Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information CRIS: Current Research Information System DANS: Data Archiving and Networked Services (Netherlands) DCC: Digital Curation Centre (UK) DARIAH: Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities EU: European Union FP7: European Commission Seventh Framework Program FRPAA: Federal Research Public Access Act (US) IPY: International Polar Year NARCIS: National Academic Research and Collaborations Information System NIH: National Institutes of Health (US) NRC: National Research Council NSERC: Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada NSF: National Science Foundation (US) OA: Open access OCI: Office for Cyberinfrastructure (NSF) OECD: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development PAGSE: Partnership Group for Science and Engineering PIPEDA: Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act PMC Canada: PubMed Central Canada RCUK: Research Councils UK RDSWG: Research Data Strategy Working Group 1 REBs: Research Ethics Boards SCOAP3: Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics SPARC: Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition SSH: Social sciences and humanities SSHRC: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada STEM: Science, technology, engineering and mathematics TCPS: Tri-Council Policy Statement on the Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans 2 FOREWORD Canada’s major public funding agencies make investments in research and research training for the benefit of all Canadians, and the world. New knowledge and insights gained through research provide solutions to many of the issues most important to Canadians: to improve the quality of our environment and health; enhance public safety and security; develop sound public policies; understand human experience and the complexity of our relations across cultures, languages, religions and histories; protect endangered species; advance economic prosperity; and so on. As such, research agencies have a fundamental interest in ensuring that the results of the research they fund are disseminated as widely as possible. Canada’s research funding agencies have been involved in open access and open data activities to varying degrees. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) have been monitoring open access and its implications with respect to their own research communities, and assessing the feasibility of implementing more specific policies and practices. The ultimate goal of the three agencies is to develop and implement joint policies on access to research results and data management requirements, wherever possible. This briefing paper provides an up-to-date review of open access in order to assist the agencies in moving forward with their policy development, both individually and across the three agencies. The review outlines key recent developments in Canada and abroad with respect to sister agencies in the US, Europe, and Australia, and discusses specific challenges for Canadian granting agencies and the communities they serve. It also addresses the role of post-secondary institutions in the implementation of agency policies on open access and the potential barriers (social, cultural, structural, infrastructure, cost, etc) for the agencies in moving towards the implementation of a joint open access policy. Although the underlying principles of open access to publications and data are similar, there are significant differences in policy elements, implementation requirements and challenges. Therefore, the paper has been divided into two sections: publications and data. 3 4 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Sharing and openness are the hallmarks of the scholarly tradition. Researchers publish their results, not for financial return, but to enable other researchers to build upon them and to contribute to the progress of knowledge in their fields. The Internet has fundamentally changed the practical and economic realities of distributing the results of research. Throughout the world, funding agencies, institutions, and others in the research community have turned to open access as a means to more widely disseminate the results of the research they fund and ensure that greater benefits are derived from that research. Open access (OA) is a movement in the scholarly community to provide free and unrestricted access to the products of research. Greater access to research results is expected to accelerate the progress of research, democratize access to knowledge world-wide, and ensure that publicly funded research is available to the public. There is a growing number of examples that illustrate how open access to research data and publications have contributed to advances in knowledge. Open access publications are used and cited more widely by other researchers. In relation to the wider community, open access contributes to the ‘informed citizen’ and ‘informed consumer’. In addition, there is a growing body of evidence that open access would result in significant economic benefits at the national level as well.1 Over the last decade the momentum for open access has been steadily growing. Numerous funding agencies and institutions across the world have implemented policies requiring that the publications and data resulting from the research they support be made freely available. Despite initial