Apparently the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy reads Surprisingly Free (we can hope, right?), as they have just announced a Policy Forum on Public Access to Federally Funded Research. The OSTP, working with the Open Government Initiative, will provide a place for those with an interest in the issue to comment on three topics:
- Implementation (Dec. 10 to 20): Which Federal agencies are good candidates to adopt Public Access policies? What variables (field of science, proportion of research funded by public or private entities, etc.) should affect how public access is implemented at various agencies, including the maximum length of time between publication and public release?
- Features and Technology (Dec. 21 to Dec 31): In what format should the data be submitted in order to make it easy to search and retrieve information, and to make it easy for others to link to it? Are there existing digital standards for archiving and interoperability to maximize public benefit? How are these anticipated to change.
- Management (Jan. 1 to Jan. 7): What are the best mechanisms to ensure compliance? What would be the best metrics of success? What are the best examples of usability in the private sector (both domestic and international)? Should those who access papers be given the opportunity to comment or provide feedback?
The first session (on Implementation) began yesterday and the comments are demonstrating some of the issues that make data transparency such an important issue. For example, most of the comments are supportive of the idea of “open access” for journal articles that are the result of government funding. But, as Jerome Helffrich points out:
Some thought must be given to the treatment of the results of work that was funded partially by government and partially by industry, a large-scale example of that being Sematech. It does not seem appropriate to make all of that research publicly available, but defining what part of it should be is difficult. Similar considerations exist with work that is funded by a combination of say NIH and private foundations. Perhaps some form of documentation throughout the research process can signify what is public and what is not.
Furthermore, the current model of academic publishing means that there are a number of publishers who charge subscription fees for the articles they publish in order to recoup the cost of being the middle-man between the researcher and the consumers of the research. If the government were to suddenly mandate an “open access” regime, with no thought given to how this would effect publishers, the demand for journal subscription might fall to the point where publishers close down shop. In another comment, Tom Boellstorff, the Editor-in-Chief of the American Anthropologist ($458 for a print and online yearly subscription), claims that:
If American Anthropologist (or a substantial number of the articles published in American Anthropologist) are available for free on an open-access basis, then the fear is that our subscription base will decrease to the point where the journal is no longer viable.
Thus, one idea that I’d provisionally set out (and this is very provisional, as my high workload means I must write this comment quickly) is that if scholarly journals received more federal support, then it would be easy to make them open access for all. This is the model in many countries.
While publishers’ concerns may be legitimate (see the comment from Evans Boney, a PhD student at Cal Tech, for a different point of view), federal funding of scholarly publications seems to face the same objections as government funding of newspapers. Though the traditional publishing model may not work under a system geared more towards data transparency, the same new technologies that allow data transparency should make it cheaper to publish academic journals. To take one obvious example, an online-only model would save on printing and shipping costs.
This is an important issue, so check out the comments on the OSTP blog and leave one with your ideas and suggestions.
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