K-State Libraries: Scholarly Communication

No open access for creative writing theses

The Chronicle of Higher Education (3/28/08, p. A15) had an interesting Hot Type sidebar on open access theses. As many institutions do, the University of Iowa makes its students theses available online according to typical open access methods. A group of creative writing students protested the inclusion of their works in this program, noting that in their discipline, the texts may well have future commercial value should their author land a publishing deal for the piece, or a piece based on the thesis. As one student put it:

"For those who are writing or have written scholarly dissertations, this may not be a bad thing [online open access publication], but for those of us who graduated from the Writers' Workshop or one of the other creative-writing programs at Iowa, it's pretty infuriating."

I'm no fan of restrictions on open access, but they do seem to have a legitimate argument here. What's encouraging is that the dispute was resolved without a lot of mayhem or hyperbole from either side.

NIH Policy Mandating Open Access Sets Date for Compliance

Researchers with funding from The National Institutes of Health must now comply with legislation requiring them to deposit their published work in NIH’s PubMed Central.  NIH recently published guidelines and an extensive FAQ explaining the policy and how to comply.  As of April 7, 2008 researchers who receive NIH funding must submit their final peer-reviewed manuscripts to PubMed Central no later than 12 months after journal publication.  PubMed Central is the NIH digital archive of full-text, peer-reviewed journal articles.  The content is publicly available.

In addition, beginning May 25, 2008 all researchers submitting applications, proposals or progress reports to NIH must include a PubMed Central reference number when citing articles that they have authored or co-authored with support from NIH funds.

According to the policy, researchers are responsible for ensuring that publishing or copyright agreements on submitted articles comply with the NIH policy.

Although researchers and their institutions are responsible for meeting the deposit requirements some journals already submit to PubMed Central on behalf of their authors.  NIH has a list of over 300 of these journal titles.  If you publish in one of these journals, no further action is needed to comply with the submission policy.

K-State Libraries is prepared to work with you to understand and comply with this important new submission policy. Contact us with any questions you have. 

Open Access Now Mandated at NIH

Yesterday, President Bush signed the Omnibus Spending Bill (H.R. 2764) which includes a requirement that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) mandate open access for NIH-funded research. Researchers will now be required to deposit electronic copies of their peer-reviewed articles in the National Library of Medicine's database, PubMed Central.  Full text of the articles will be publicly available online no later than 12 months after journal publication. Heather Joseph, Executive Director of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) - of which K-State is a member - states, "Congress has just unlocked the taxpapers' $29 billion investment in NIH.  This policy will directly improve the sharing of scientific findings, the pace of medical advances, and the rate of return on benefits to the taxpayer."

What does this mean for K-State researchers?  According to the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs, K-State received extamural funds in the amount of $13,485 million in FY2006 from the Department of Health and Human Services - much of that amount from NIH.  Future published research findings resulting from these grants, will need to be deposited in PubMed Central.  K-State librarians will stay on top of information researchers need to comply with this mandate including timelines and the negotiation of copyright agreements with publishers to allow direct deposit.

Integrity of Impact Factor Data Questioned

In an editorial  published in the Journal of Cell Biology this week  (http://www.jcb.org/cgi/content/full/179/6/1091 ), the authors question the integrity of the data used by Thomson Scientific (formerly ISI) to calculate impact factors.  Using data purchased from Thomson Scientific, the editors of the Journal of Experimental Medicine and the Journal of Cell Biology were unable to replicate published impact factors for their own and other journals and reveal numerous errors in several data sets.  They question the validity of both Thomson's dataset and their published impact factors.  Many evaluative decisions such as where to publish, the success of grant applications, and tenure/promotion are influenced by impact factors. The authors hope that their account will encourage the scientific community to question the validity of impact factors as a metric of quality.  They state, "Just as scientists would not accept the findings in a scientifc paper without seeing the primary data, so should they not rely on Thomson Scientific's impact factor, which is based on hidden data."

Bold move by the Max Planck Society

As has been widely announced elsewhere, the Max Planck Society, one of the largest research societies (23,000+ employees in 78 institutes) in Europe, opted to cancel its contract for scientific journals with Springer, the world's second-largest publisher of scientific journals. Many institutions rattle their sabers with the major STM publishers, but few ever take such radical measures to express their dissatisfaction with what many view as excessive pricing.

It's worth noting that K-State Libraries has a contract with Springer, offering access to ~1200 Springer journals. One wonders what would happen were we and many others to follow the MPS's lead. It also bears mentioning that this is a publicly-funded German institution withholding money from a largely German-owned firm.

Esposito on open access

In a recent article in The Scientist, Joseph Esposito takes some interesting views on the current state of open access before proposing his own alternatives. While I don't agree with many of his points, not least his near blanket dismissal of open access as a naive enterprise and his very inflated numbers for what it costs to build and maintain a repository--with that kind of money, anyone could hopefully do many more things than just that one--he does raise some interesting ideas about the current state of affairs. At the very least, it was useful to see that the very first comment asked Mr. Esposito to reveal his affiliations and backgrounds. That's a wise thing to do with anyone who speaks of open access and publishing.