Nancy Pontika has released her doctoral dissertation, "The Influence of the National Institutes of Health Public-Access Policy on the Publishing Habits of Principal Investigators."

Here's an excerpt:

The NIH public-access policy did not cause either an increase in the PIs' open-access awareness or a change in their publishing habits. The open-access advocates were supporters of the immediate free access to scientific information before the policy and provided their manuscripts free-of-cost before the policy’s mandate. The non-open-access advocates choose their publications based on quality criteria such as the journal’s prestige, impact factor, speed of publication and the attracted audience, while the article’s open-access availability is considered to be a plus. Furthermore, since a large number of journals comply with the NIH-policy, the participants did not have to change their publishing habits.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography| Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has released public comments to the "Request for Information: Public Access to Peer-Reviewed Scholarly Publications Resulting from Federally Funded Research."

Here is a selection of comments:

Publishers

• ACS Publications
• American Psychiatric Publishing
• Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers
• Elsevier
• John Wiley & Sons
• Oxford University Press
• The Publishers Association
• SAGE Publishing
• Springer Science + Business Media
• Taylor & Francis
• Wolters Kluwer Health Ltd (UK)

Scholarly Professional Associations

• Acoustical Society of America
• American Anthropological Association
• American Association for Cancer Research
• American Association for Dental Research
• American Association for the Advancement of Science
• The American Association of Immunologists
• American Association of Petroleum Geologists
• American Association of Physicists in Medicine
• American Astronomical Society
• American Educational Research Association
• American Geophysical Union
• American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
• American Institute of Biological Sciences
• American Institute of Physics
• American Mathematical Society
• American Physical Society
• American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
• The American Society for Cell Biology
• American Society for Investigative Pathology
• American Society for Nutrition
• American Society of Plant Biologists
• American Society for Pharmacology & Experimental Therapeutics
• American Society of Hematology
• The American Society of Human Genetics
• American Physiological Society
• American Psychological Association
• American Sociological Association
• Archaeological Institute of America
• The Association for Research in Vision and Ophtamology
• Botanical Society of America
• Ecological Society of America
• Genetics Society of America
• The Linnean Society of London
• The Optical Society of America
• Phycological Society of America
• Poultry Science Association
• Protein Society
• SEPM Society for Sedimentary Geology
• Society for Conservation Biology
• Zoological Society of London

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography| Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |

A petition for the Obama administration to oppose the Research Works Act (H.R. 3699) is up at the White House's We the People website.

Here's an excerpt:

HR 3699, the Research Works Act will be detrimental to the free flow of scientific information that was created using Federal funds. It is an attempt to put federally funded scientific information behind pay-walls, and confer the ownership of the information to a private entity. This is an affront to open government and open access to information created using public funds.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

Ten library, publishing, and advocacy organizations have opposed the Research Works Act in a letter sent to the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Here's an excerpt:

We fully respect copyright law and the protection it affords content creators, owners, and users. The NIH Public Access Policy operates fully within current U.S. Copyright law as articles reporting on NIH funded research are copyrightable, and the copyright belongs to the author. The NIH Policy requires only the grant of a non-exclusive license to NIH, fully consistent with federal policies such as Circular A-110 and Circular A-102. The author is free to transfer some or all of the exclusive rights under copyright to a journal publisher or to assign these anywhere they so choose—a freedom crucial to the authors of scientific articles, who rightly want to determine where and how their work is distributed.

Under H.R. 3699, authors of articles reporting on federally funded research would face a new restriction. The proposed bill requires authors to seek the permission of a publisher before their work can be distributed through an online, networked government channel such as NIH’s PubMed Central, even if they themselves—as the author of the work and the relevant rights holder—have already consented to do so, potentially limiting the authors ability to distribute their work as widely as they may wish.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

PEER (Publishing and the Ecology of European Research) has released the final version of the PEER Economics Report.

Here's an excerpt:

This study considers the effect of large-scale deposit on scholarly research publication and dissemination (sharing of research outputs), beginning with the analysis of publishers and institutions managing repositories and their sustainability. The study associates costs with specific activities, performed by key actors involved in research registration, certification, dissemination and digital management: authors, the scholarly community, editors, publishers, libraries, readers and funding agencies. Contrary to most of the existing literature, the study analyses cost structures of individual organizations. The focus of this study is therefore to provide context for the costs to specific organizations and to their choices in terms of scale and scope. . . .

This study analyses 22 organizations involved with journal article publication and dissemination. Data were gathered via literature and public document analysis, as well as through individual in-depth interviews in order to assess the cost structure of publishers, OA journal publishers and institutions managing repositories and the conditions for their sustainability.

| Digital Scholarship's Digital Bibliographies | Digital Scholarship |

Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) have introduced the Research Works Act (H.R. 3699), which is aimed at eliminating federal open access policies such as the NIH Public Access Policy. The key passage of the bill states:

No Federal agency may adopt, implement, maintain, continue, or otherwise engage in any policy, program, or other activity that—

1. causes, permits, or authorizes network dissemination of any private-sector research work without the prior consent of the publisher of such work; or
2. requires that any actual or prospective author, or the employer of such an actual or prospective author, assent to network dissemination of a private-sector research work.

The Alliance for Taxpayer Access has issued a call to action and a draft letter that can be modified and sent to legislators. Here's an excerpt from the call:

Supporters of public access need to speak out against this proposed legislation. We strongly urge you to contact these offices to express your opposition TODAY, or as soon as possible. To support you, draft letter text is available.

• Representative Issa
  @DarrellIssa
  http://issa.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=597&Itemid=73
  Fax: (202) 225-3303
• Representative Maloney
  @RepMaloney
  https://maloney.house.gov/contact-me/email-me%20(Using%20zip%20code%2010128-3679) [Navigate from home page to contact page instead.]
  Fax: (202) 225-4709
• Members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee – especially if you’re a constituent.
  http://1.usa.gov/zDqnne
• Your representative – through the ATA Action Center: http://www.congressweb.com/cweb2/index.cfm/siteid/sparc

Also, don’t miss a key opportunity to express support for the expansion of the NIH public-access policy to other federal science and technology agencies. There are six days left to respond to the White House requests for information (RFI) on public access to scholarly publications and data (http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/action/action_access/11-1117.shtml).

Read more about it at "Publishers Applaud 'Research Works Act,' Bipartisan Legislation to End Government Mandates on Private-Sector Scholarly Publishing," "Research Works Act H.R.3699: The Private Publishing Tail Trying to Wag the Public Research Dog, Yet Again," and "Trying to Roll Back the Clock on Open Access: Research Works Act Introduced."

[Regular DigitalKoans posts resume on 1/17/12.]

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

Based on an analysis of about 19,000 journal self-archiving policies in RoMEO, SHERPA estimates that only 5% of these journals prohibit self-archiving.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This chart shows that a remarkable 94% of journals allow archiving of peer-reviewed articles after any embargo period has expired and any additional restrictions have been complied with. Indeed, for nearly a quarter of journals, the publisher's version/PDF itself can be archived. Just 1% of journals only permit the pre-peer review submitted version to be archived. This leaves only 5% of journals that do not permit self-archiving of some form or another. . . .

Unfortunately, assigning journals to policies is not an exact process, due to the vagueness of some publishers' policies and the fact that some publishing houses do work for societies and other third parties whose own open access policies may take precedence. It is therefore difficult to gauge the precision of these figures, but we guestimate that they are accurate to within 2%. The charts do not take into account journals that are not covered by Romeo's own database, but we expect that the relative proportions would be similar.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

Routledge has announced a two-year trial of a new author rights policy for library and information science journals.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Routledge, the social science and humanities imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, is pleased to announce a two-year pilot initiative for the library and information science research community, allowing contributors to its library and information science journals to retain the copyright to their work and to post it within their institutional repository without an embargo period.

This initiative applies to any of Routledge's 35 library and information science journals published from Taylor & Francis' Philadelphia office. Under this scheme, an author may post the peer-reviewed version of his or her article (although not the published pdf.) into their institutional or subject repository (although not commercial servers or for resale) immediately following publication, so long as the original place of publication is referenced and a URL link is made to the Version of Record on Routledge's website. To view a list of included titles please go to: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/pdf/author/lis-journals.pdf

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

PEER (Publishing and the Ecology of European Research has released PEER Behavioural Research: Authors and Users vis-á-vis Journals and Repositories—Final Report.

Here's an excerpt:

Over the period of Phases 1 and 2 of the Behavioural research project the increase in the number of researchers who reported placing a version of their journal article(s) into an Open Access Repository was negligible.

Researchers who associated Open Access with 'self-archiving' were in the minority.

Open Access is more likely to be associated with 'self-archiving' (Green Road) by researchers in the Physical sciences & mathematics and the Social sciences, humanities & arts, than those in the Life sciences and the Medical sciences who are more likely to associate Open Access with Open Access Journals (Gold Road).

There is anecdotal evidence that some researchers consider making journal articles accessible via Open Access to be beyond their remit.

Authors tend to be favourable to Open Access and receptive to the benefits of self-archiving in terms of greater readership and wider dissemination of their research, with the caveat that self-archiving does not compromise the pivotal role of the published journal article.

Readers have concerns about the authority of article content and the extent to which it can be cited when the version they have accessed is not the published final version. These concerns are more prevalent where the purpose of reading is to produce a published journal article, and are perceived as less of an issue for other types of reading purpose.

Academic researchers have a conservative set of attitudes, perceptions and behaviours towards the scholarly communication system and do not desire fundamental changes in the way research is currently disseminated and published.

Open Access Repositories are perceived by researchers as complementary to, rather than replacing, current forums for disseminating and publishing research.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

OpenAccess.se's Steering Committee has issued a statement that objects to Elsevier's self-archiving policy's position on open access mandates.

Here's an excerpt:

Elsevier now requires specific agreements with universities or research funders if there is an open access mandate to deposit and disseminate articles in a specific open archive. These agreements may involve long embargo periods and restrict availability of research results. . . .

We recommend that Swedish universities with open access mandates refrain from concluding separate agreements with Elsevier. Instead, this issue should be managed along with negotiations over national license agreements with Elsevier.

Previously, UKB, a consortium of the thirteen Dutch university libraries and the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, issued a statement about the policy.

Here's an excerpt:

The [Elsevier] clause states that an author "has the right to post a revised personal version of the text of the final journal article (to reflect changes made in the peer review process) on your personal or institutional web site or server for scholarly purposes, incorporating the complete citation and with a link to the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) of the article (but not in subject-oriented or centralized repositories or institutional repositories with mandates for systematic postings unless there is a specific agreement with the publisher. . . .

UKB is deeply concerned about the fact that Elsevier has recently adapted its Open Access policy and has taken the initiative to negotiate directly with universities and research institutions about the conditions under which their authors may deposit manuscripts of their own articles in repositories. UKB aims to expand the digital availability of Dutch scientific output and is an advocate of publication in Open Access. UKB therefore deplores every action that results in the restriction of that accessibility, such as unacceptably long embargo periods. In addition, UKB is concerned about the consequences of this clause, namely that it will become even less clear for authors whether and according to which conditions they are allowed to post their article in a repository. This in turn will create an extra obstacle preventing authors from doing so. It is the view of UKB that an author should in principle have the right to deposit his own article, preferably in the version produced by the publisher but in any case in the final author’s version, a right which should not become dependent on (subsequent) agreements with publishers. UKB is particularly concerned about the fact that publishers may overrule agreements made between authors and funding bodies by means of this policy.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography |

Peter Suber has published "Seeking Custody" in the latest issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter.

Here's an excerpt:

If we want to make a digital file OA, and we already have an OA repository, then we face just two hurdles. We need a copy of the file and we need permission. We can call these the custody and copyright conditions. "Custody" here doesn't mean ownership of the rights, just possession of a copy. If we have possession and permission, then we don't need ownership.

The OA movement has given far more attention to the copyright or permission problem than to the custody or possession problem. This may have the effect of sweeping a difficult problem under the rug. We often have permission when we lack custody, and often find that solving the permission problem is easier than solving the custody problem. Here are some examples of what could be called permission success and custody failure.

(1) You've published an article in a TA journal which allows green OA or self-archiving. But the journal only allows deposit of the final version of the author's peer-reviewed manuscript, not the published version. You're fine with that and eager to make the manuscript OA. But you can't put your hands on the version you're allowed to deposit. You think it's on your hard drive somewhere, or in your email archive. But you're not sure. You haven't had time to look, or you've looked and found six versions. You don't have time to figure out which one, if any, is the deposit-eligible, peer-reviewed manuscript, or you've taken the time and you're still unsure. Or you have the version you submitted to the journal, and all the correspondence with the editor, but you don't have time to reconstruct the version approved by peer review. Or you might have deleted the relevant version in a fit of spring cleaning, as a superseded version not worth saving, or you might have failed to copy it over from your last computer when you upgraded. With enough detective work you could find out, but you don't know how much time it would take and you're pretty sure it would take more than you have.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Institutional Repository Bibliography |

John W. Houghton has published "The Costs and Potential Benefits of Alternative Scholarly Publishing Models" in the latest issue of Information Research.

Here's an excerpt:

The costs and benefits associated with alternative scholarly publishing models demonstrate that research and research communication are major activities and the costs involved are substantial. Our preliminary analysis of the potential benefits of more open access to research findings suggests that returns to research are also substantial and that different scholarly publishing models might make a material difference to the returns realised as well as the costs faced. It seems likely from this preliminary analysis that more open access could have substantial net benefits in the longer term and, while net benefits may be lower during a transitional period they would be likely to be positive for both open access journal publishing and self-archiving alternatives.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography |