Public access policy challenge

Library Journal reports that the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property of the House of Representatives' Judiciary Committee is scheduled to meet on September 11th to hear publishers' concerns that public access policies conflict with copyright and intellectual property laws. Although no text for proposed legislation has been released, it is reported that it is tentatively titled the "Fair Copyright in Research Works Act."

Publishers contend that public access policies, the NIH policy in particular, undermine publishers' ability to exercise their copyrights in published articles and threatens the intellectual freedom of authors.

Anticipating such concern, library organizations (ALA, ARL & SPARC) released a memo a year ago asserting that the policy does not create a statutory exception or limitation to copyright but rather requires as a condition of its grant of funding the agreement to make the article publicly available.

LJ also reports that submissions to PubMed Central in July 2008 were at an all time high of 3,999 compared to 721 in July 2007 when the program was voluntary.

Clarifying NIH Public Access Policy

Authors have been trying to determine how their current publisher agreements fit with the new NIH Public Access Policy that goes into effect next week. Even copyright scholars are seeking advice from each other regarding the interpretation of the more subtle nuances of the requirements. Fortunately, Kevin Smith at Duke has written a brief guide. He emphasizes that there are three distinct elements:

1. Authors must retain sufficient rights in their articles to give NIH a license to make their work publicly accessible (this requires retaining these rights in copyright transfer agreements with publishers).
2. The article must be submitted to PubMed Central (PMC).
3. The author(s) will need to obtain the PMC reference numbers for the articles to include in subsequent documents for NIH (such as future grant applications, renewal requests, progress reports).
   

He goes on to suggest that universities need to create structures that support compliance and make it easy for authors to complete the steps outlined above. At the very least, it requires significant educational efforts but may indicate a need for an active role in copyright management.

Potential strategies:

• Authors publish in journals that will deposit research in PMC
  
• Universities create a license that gives the institution rights to deposit, educate researchers that such a license exists and may conflict with publisher agreements, and develop short-term compliance strategies
• Universities provide comprehensive assistance to authors and develop a sample submission letter and author's addendum

In my role as a copyright specialist for the libraries, I am happy to assist authors and the greater University community develop local strategies for compliance.

Harvard faculty require open access for research

Here's the full text of the motion that passed unanimously:
"The Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University 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 President and Fellows of Harvard College permission to make available his or her scholarly articles and to exercise the copyright in those articles. In legal terms, the permission granted by each Faculty member is a nonexclusive, irrevocable, paid-up, worldwide license to exercise any and all rights under copyright relating to each of his or her scholarly articles, in any medium, and to authorize others to do the same, provided that the articles are not sold for a profit. The policy will apply to all scholarly articles written while the person is a member of the Faculty except for any articles completed before the adoption of this policy and any articles for which the Faculty member entered into an incompatible licensing or assignment agreement before the adoption of this policy. The Dean or the Dean’s designate will waive application of the policy for a particular article upon written request by a Faculty member explaining the need.

To assist the University in distributing the articles, each Faculty member will provide an electronic copy of the final version of the article at no charge to the appropriate representative of the Provost’s Office in an appropriate format (such as PDF) specified by the Provost’s Office. The Provost’s Office may make the article available to the public in an open-access repository.

The Office of the Dean will be responsible for interpreting this policy, resolving disputes concerning its interpretation and application, and recommending changes to the Faculty from time to time. The policy will be reviewed after three years and a report presented to the Faculty."

NIH-funded research must be made available to the public via PubMed Central

Open access to publicly funded research allows researchers to build upon the work of others to further advance knowledge for the public good. While much of the research is done at academic institutions, the same institutions pay to receive the results of the research in journals whose subscription prices have skyrocketed several times the rate of inflation.

The federal government spends over fifty five billion dollars annually to fund research in a variety of fields (ACRL Legislative Agenda). "Research sponsored by the National Institutes of Health alone results in over 60,000 peer-reviewed articles per year." On December 26, 2007, President Bush signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2007 (H.R. 2764). This mandates that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) provide online public access to findings from its funded research. Effective April , 2008, researchers will be required to deposit electronic copies of their manuscripts into PubMed Central.

Researchers who must comply with these requirements can find out more:
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-08-033.html
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/