Poor understanding of publishers' agreements

16 March 2009

The Publishing Research Consortium has published another in its series of reports, Journal authors' rights: perception and reality. (18 pages)

For both the submitted and the accepted version of their manuscript, the majority of publishers' agreements (as calculated by the number of articles they publish) allow authors to provide copies to colleagues, to incorporate into their own works, to post to a personal or departmental website or to an institutional repository, and to use in course packs; just under 50% also permit posting to a subject repository. However, far fewer authors think they can do any of these than are in fact allowed to do so.
The published PDF version is the version that authors would prefer to use for all the above purposes; again, publishers' agreements exceed authors' expectations for providing copies to colleagues, incorporating in subsequent work, and use in course packs. However, the picture is turned on its head when it comes to self-archiving; more than half of authors think that publishers allow them to deposit the final PDF, whereas under 10% of publishers actually permit this - probably because of serious concerns about the long-term impact on subscriptions.

New OA Chemistry Journal from Chemistry Central

The Journal of Systems Chemistry is a forthcoming peer-reviewed OA journal published by Chemistry Central. See the March 19 announcement. There are currently no author-side fees. Authors retain copyright and articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution License.

MIT adopt Open Access self-archiving policy

Passed by Unanimous of the Faculty, March 18, 2009The Faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is committed to disseminating the fruits of its research and scholarship as widely as possible. In keeping with that commitment, the Faculty adopts the following policy: Each Faculty member grants to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology nonexclusive permission to make available his or her scholarly articles and to exercise the copyright in those articles for the purpose of open dissemination........

Press release and further information available via Peter Suber's OA blog here:
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/03/more-on-mit-policy.html

NIH Public Access policy made permanent

2009 Consolidated Appropriations Act ensures NIH public access policy will persist
Washington, D.C. – March 12, 2009 – President Obama yesterday signed into law the 2009 Consolidated Appropriations Act, which includes a provision making the National Institutes’ of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy permanent. The NIH Revised Policy on Enhancing Public Access requires eligible NIH-funded researchers to deposit electronic copies of their peer-reviewed manuscripts into the National Library of Medicine’s online archive, PubMed Central (PMC). Full texts of the articles are made publicly available and searchable online in PMC no later than 12 months after publication in a journal.
The NIH policy was previously implemented with a provision that was subject to annual renewal. Since the implementation of the revised policy the percentage of eligible manuscripts deposited into PMC has increased significantly, with over 3,000 new manuscripts being deposited each month. The PubMed Central database is a part of a valuable set of public database resources at the NIH, which are accessed by more than 2 million users each day.
The new provision reads in full:
The Director of the National Institutes of Health shall require in the current fiscal year and thereafter that all investigators funded by the NIH submit or have submitted for them to the National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central an electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts upon acceptance for publication to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication: Provided, That the NIH shall implement the public access policy in a manner consistent with copyright law.
“This is a significant moment for all of us in the health community, and for efforts in health reform. With free access to health research, individuals are empowered with the knowledge necessary to understand the health threats they and their families face,” said Sharon Terry, President and CEO of Genetic Alliance. “Congress recognizes the incredible power of technology and innovation in enabling new solutions for the proactive management of health, consumer-driven healthcare, and novel partnerships and collaborations in research. Congratulations to us all.”
The NIH Public Access Policy addresses the public’s growing need for high-quality health information and promotes accelerated scientific advancement in the biomedical sciences.

Science Foundation Ireland's Open Access mandate is now effective

ScienceFoundation Ireland's Open Access mandate is now effective (from February 1st2009).

Science Foundation Ireland is Ireland's largest funding council.

The policy is clearly outlined on the SFI website under 'Grant policies':http://www.sfi.ie/content/content.asp?section_id=471&language_id=1#oa

The full text of the policy is available here:
http://www.sfi.ie/uploads/documents/upload/SFI_OA_policy_2009_v3.pdf
It covers peer-reviewed papers, conference papers, reports, monographs anddatasets and generally follows the EURAB recomendations.

Now all Irish funding councils but one have open access policies: the HigherEducation Authority (HEA), the Irish Research Council for Science, Engineeringand Technology (IRCSET), Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) and the HealthResearch Board (HRB) - the latter has OA recommendation which are expected tobecome mandatory later this year). All of the others have Open Access mandatesin line with the EURAB recommendations.

Apparently discussions are underway inthe only Irish research funding council without an OA policy, the IrishResearch Council for Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS).

Columbia University joins NEREUS

Columbia University became the first U.S. institution to join the Network of European Economists Online (NEEO), an international economics research project to which UCD economic researchers are also participating with UCD Library

Spain to introduce OA mandate

Next Wednesday, [Spain's] Minister of Science and Innovation, Cristina Garmendia, will formally present the draft of the new and awaited Law of Science and Technology ... Regarding the dissemination of results, Chapter III establishes the obligation to publish in open access texts that have been accepted for publication in scientific journals where these have been financed with public funds from the General Administration of State. ...