Ethics, Public Health and Open Access

[Laidback Al]

Discussion - Should US taxpayer-funded research be open access (FRPAA 2012)?

Discussion - Should US taxpayer-funded research be open access

The US congress is considering legislation (Federal Research Public Access Act of 2012 - FRPAA) that all research funded by US taxpayer dollars be made available online for free, for everyone.

Background Information on FRPAA (link):

Congress last week introduced the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2012 (FRPAA), a bill that would mandate free public online access to taxpayer-funded research for all federal agencies with extramural research budgets over $100 million. The bill was introduced in identical versions in both the House and the Senate, staking out a position counter to the publisher-backed Research Works Act (RWA), a bill that would bar federal agencies from requiring public access as a condition of funding. It is the third time FRPAA has been introduced since 2006. . . .

If passed, FRPAA would require that each taxpayer-funded manuscript, whether funded whole or in part, be deposited in a government-maintained digital archive, and that each final paper be made freely available to the public online, no later than six months after the article has been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

?Americans have the right to see the results of research funded with taxpayer dollars,? said the bill?s sponsor in the House, Congressman Mike Doyle (D-PA), in a statement. In addition, Doyle said the measure would ?encourage broader collaboration? in the scientific community, and would ?lead to more innovative research outcomes and more effective solutions in the fields of biomedicine, energy, education, and health care.? . . .
?It was pretty amazing to see the issue's champions in the House and the Senate coordinate simultaneous introduction of identical bills,? Joseph told PW. ?Bipartisan and bicameral action in 2012, and on public access no less.?

PLoS (Public Library of Science), one of the premier publishers of open access journals, posted an editorial yesterday calling for the US public to support this legislation.

In part, PLoS states (link):

We invite you to take part in a campaign of direct action to let congress know that we support broader access to research. The Alliance for Taxpayer Access (ATA) has many different ways for you to get involved (and they make it easy to participate):

Ask your representative to co-sponsor FRPAA
Thank the representatives that re-introduced the bill
Ask your organization to write a letter in support of the bill or make a public statement about it
Sign the ATA petition
Show everyone that you care by displaying the I support Public Access banner
Like SPARC?s Facebook Page and follow them on Twitter, then share with your friends and followers

Remember, the more you do the more congress will know how we feel, so let?s get busy in support of FRPAA!

For-profit scientific journals and publications want to restrict access to this publicly funded research and charged outrageous fees to view these research articles and data. If my tax dollars are paying for this research, then I ought to be able to view them for free without paying additional costs to some private publishing company.

What do you think?

[JJackson]

Re: Discussion - Should US taxpayer-funded research be open access (FRPAA 2012)?

I am not a US tax payer but if you change the question to

Should taxpayer-funded research be open access?

I would definitely say YES.

[Laidback Al]

Re: Discussion - Should US taxpayer-funded research be open access (FRPAA 2012)?

Thanks for your comment. I made the post about the US because soon the US Congress will be considering legislation to make publicly funded research freely available to all. I don?t know how other countries handle the issue of dissemination research results for projects that were tax-payer funded.

I agree with you that research supported by public funds should be openly available in all countries around the world.

[Emily]

Re: Discussion - Should US taxpayer-funded research be open access (FRPAA 2012)?

Yes, publicly-funded research should be as open access.

[sharon sanders]

Re: Discussion - Should US taxpayer-funded research be open access (FRPAA 2012)?

Open access will be crucial to maintain public confidence in science
Making research papers freely available is about much more than breaking the monopoly of rich academic publishers

Posted by
Peter Coles
Friday 20 April 2012 08.18 EDT

snip

Research, especially scientific research, thrives in an atmosphere that allows the free exchange of ideas and information: open discussion and debate are essential if the scientific method is to operate properly. Before the arrival of the internet, academic publishers provided a valuable service that was a real benefit to the scientific community. Not any more.

Recent advances in digital technology should have made the publication and dissemination of research much cheaper. Instead of falling, however, journal subscription fees have rocketed, even for online-only editions. This has had the effect of locking out those researchers whose institutions can't afford to pay the extortionate access charges.

The cost of supporting this parasitic industry is stifling science. Enough is enough.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2012/apr/20/open-access-crucial-public-confidence-science?intcmp=239

[sharon sanders]

Researchers begin posting article PDFs to twitter in #pdftribute to Aaron Swartz



Researchers begin posting article PDFs to twitter in #pdftribute to Aaron Swartz

January 13, 2013 ?

Yesterday, as I was completing my morning coffee and internet ritual, @le_feufollet broke the sad news to me of Aaron Swartz?s death. Aaron was a leader online, a brilliant coder and developer, and sadly a casualty in the fight for freedom of information. He was essential in the development of two tools I use every day (RSS and Reddit), and though his guerilla attempt to upload all papers on JSTOR was perhaps unstrategic, it was certainly noble enough in cause. Before his death Aaron was facing nearly 35 years in prison for his role in mass-downloading JSTOR articles, which is an insane penalty for attempting to share information. We don?t know why Aaron chose to take his life, but when @la_feufollet and I tried to brainstorm a tribute to him, my first thought was a guerilla PDF uploading campaign in honor of his fight for open access. I?m not much of an organizer, so I posted in one of the many rising reddit threads and hoped for the best:

more...

http://neuroconscience.com/2013/01/13/researchers-begin-posting-article-pdfs-to-twitter-in-pdftribute-to-aaron-swartz/

[sharon sanders]

Re: Ethics, Public Health and Open Access

Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR)
Published Feb 14, 2013

Today (February 14, 2013), Senators Cornyn (R-TX) and Wyden (D-OR) and Representatives Doyle (D-PA), Yoder (R-KS), and Lofgren (D-CA) introduced the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research (FASTR) Act, a bill that will accelerate scientific discovery and fuel innovation by making articles reporting on publicly funded scientific research freely accessible online for anyone to read and build upon.

Every year, the federal government funds over sixty billion dollars in basic and applied research. Most of this funding is concentrated within 11 departments/agencies (e.g., National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation (NSF), and Department of Energy). This research results in a significant number of articles being published each year ? approximately 90,000 papers are published annually as result of NIH funding alone.

Because U.S. taxpayers underwrite this research, they have a right to expect that its dissemination and use will be maximized, and that they will have access to articles reporting on the results. The Internet has revolutionized information sharing and has made it possible to make the latest advances freely available to every researcher, student, teacher, entrepreneur, business owner and citizen so that the results can be read and built upon as efficiently as possible.

FASTR will make these articles freely available for all potential users to read and ensure that articles can be fully used in the digital environment, enabling the use of new computational analysis tools that promise to revolutionize the research process.

FASTR will accelerate science, fuel innovation, and improve the lives and welfare of Americans and those around the world. This is an achievable goal ? today. Now is the time to push for this groundbreaking legislation, and let Congress know that the public deserves access to the research that they paid for.

more...

http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/action/FASTR_calltoaction.shtml

[sharon sanders]

Re: Ethics, Public Health and Open Access

Academic Senate approves open access policy Email this article
Date: 2013-08-02
Contact: See contacts listed below
Phone:
Email:
Contacts: Professor Christopher Kelty, UCLA
(310) 880-2433; ckelty@ucla.edu
Professor Richard Schneider, UC San Francisco
(415) 305-7992; rich.schneider@ucsf.edu
Professor Robert Powell, Chair, Academic Council
(510) 987-0711; robert.powell@ucop.edu

The Academic Senate of the University of California has passed an Open Access Policy, ensuring that future research articles authored by faculty at all 10 campuses of UC will be made available to the public at no charge. "The Academic Council's adoption of this policy on July 24, 2013, came after a six-year process culminating in two years of formal review and revision," said Robert Powell, chair of the Academic Council. "Council's intent is to make these articles widely ? and freely ? available in order to advance research everywhere." Articles will be available to the public without charge via eScholarship (UC's open access repository) in tandem with their publication in scholarly journals. Open access benefits researchers, educational institutions, businesses, research funders and the public by accelerating the pace of research, discovery and innovation and contributing to the mission of advancing knowledge and encouraging new ideas and services.
Chris Kelty, Associate Professor of Information Studies, UCLA, and chair of the UC University Committee on Library and Scholarly Communication (UCOLASC), explains, "This policy will cover more faculty and more research than ever before, and it sends a powerful message that faculty want open access and they want it on terms that benefit the public and the future of research."
The policy covers more than 8,000 UC faculty at all 10 campuses of the University of California, and as many as 40,000 publications a year. It follows more than 175 other universities who have adopted similar so-called "green" open access policies. By granting a license to the University of California prior to any contractual arrangement with publishers, faculty members can now make their research widely and publicly available, re-use it for various purposes, or modify it for future research publications. Previously, publishers had sole control of the distribution of these articles. All research publications covered by the policy will continue to be subjected to rigorous peer review; they will still appear in the most prestigious journals across all fields; and they will continue to meet UC's standards of high quality. Learn more about the policy and its implementation here: http://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/openaccesspolicy/
UC is the largest public research university in the world and its faculty members receive roughly 8% of all research funding in the U.S. With this policy UC Faculty make a commitment to the public accessibility of research, especially, but not only, research paid for with public funding by the people of California and the United States. This initiative is in line with the recently announced White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) directive requiring "each Federal Agency with over $100 million in annual conduct of research and development expenditures to develop a plan to support increased public access to results of the research funded by the Federal Government." The new UC Policy also follows a similar policy passed in 2012 by the Academic Senate at the University of California, San Francisco, which is a health sciences campus.
"The UC Systemwide adoption of an Open Access (OA) Policy represents a major leap forward for the global OA movement and a well-deserved return to taxpayers who will now finally be able to see first-hand the published byproducts of their deeply appreciated investments in research" said Richard A. Schneider, Professor, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and chair of the Committee on Library and Scholarly Communication at UCSF. "The ten UC campuses generate around 2-3% of all the peer-reviewed articles published in the world every year, and this policy will make many of those articles freely available to anyone who is interested anywhere, whether they are colleagues, students, or members of the general public"
The adoption of this policy across the UC system also signals to scholarly publishers that open access, in terms defined by faculty and not by publishers, must be part of any future scholarly publishing system. The faculty remains committed to working with publishers to transform the publishing landscape in ways that are sustainable and beneficial to both the University and the public.

http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/29858

[Laidback Al]

Ethics, Public Health and Open Access

From the Program Director of International Society for Infectious Diseases -

[quote]
ISID is delighted to announce that the International Journal of Infectious Diseases (IJID) will become an open access journal starting January 1, 2014. With no subscription charge, an Open Access Publishing Fee, payable by the author or research funder will be requested after peer review and acceptance for all articles submitted after Friday, August 16th, 2013.
IJID welcomes manuscripts in the following categories: epidemiology, clinical diagnosis, treatment and control of infectious diseases with particular emphasis placed on those diseases that are most common in less-developed countries.

Submit your next paper to IJID and benefit from:

• Articles published in IJID will be immediately free to read by academics, health professionals and the public throughout the world, without restriction.
• Authors can choose from a selection of Creative Commons licenses, determining how they want their work to be used.
• Peer review: Rigorous peer review by experts in the field
• Rapid online publication
• Community connections: share your research with your peers around the world.

For full information on publishing your paper open access in IJID, visit http://www.elsevier.com/openaccess


Sincerely,
Eric Summers
ISID Program Director

[sharon sanders]

Re: Ethics, Public Health and Open Access

Funders punish open-access dodgers
Agencies withhold grant money from researchers who do not make publications openly available.

Richard Van Noorden
09 April 2014

For years, two of the world?s largest research funders ? the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Wellcome Trust in the United Kingdom ? have issued a steady stream of incentives to coax academics to abide by their open-access policies.

more...

http://www.nature.com/news/funders-punish-open-access-dodgers-1.15007

[sharon sanders]

Re: Ethics, Public Health and Open Access

Libraries Applaud Landmark Copyright Ruling Affirming Fair Use

Posted by Jonathan Band on June 10, 2014

The Library Copyright Alliance is extremely pleased with today?s decision by the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Authors Guild v. HathiTrust, finding in favor of fair use. The Library Copyright Alliance filed an amicus brief (PDF) in the case, supporting HathiTrust?s position and the lower court?s finding of fair use. Jonathan Band, counsel for the Library Copyright Alliance, said, ?The decision is a significant victory for the public.?


more....

http://infojustice.org/archives/32826

[sharon sanders]

Re: Ethics, Public Health and Open Access

WHO policy on open access

WHO supports open access to the published output of its activities as a fundamental part of its mission and a public benefit to be encouraged wherever possible.

The new WHO policy on open access applies to all articles or chapters published in non-WHO publications that are authored or co-authored by WHO staff or produced by individuals or institutions funded in whole or in part by WHO.

From 1 July 2014, articles authored or co-authored by WHO staff will have to be published in an open-access journal or a hybrid open-access journal under the terms of a Creative Commons 3.0 intergovernmental organization (IGO) ported licence, or in a subscription journal that allows for the depositing of the accepted author manuscript in Europe PubMed Central (Europe PMC) within 12 months of the official publication date.

Similarly, articles produced by recipients of WHO funding will have to be published in an open-access journal or a hybrid open-access journal under the terms of a standard Creative Commons licence or in a subscription journal that allows for the depositing of the article in Europe PMC within 12 months of the official publication date.

WHO will include the costs of open-access charges, where appropriate, in its applications to donors who support WHO?s work. It will also invite external entities applying for project support from WHO to include such costs, where appropriate, in their applications.

Any articles or chapters published before July 2014 that fall within the scope of the policy may also be deposited in Europe PMC.

WHO will continue to support free access to and downloading of its own publications via the WHO Institutional Repository for Information Sharing (IRIS) and encourage reuse for educational and research purposes.

http://www.who.int/about/policy/en/

[sharon sanders]

• NEWS
• 21 April 2023

Editors quit top neuroscience journal to protest against open-access charges

Members of the departing editorial teams say that the fees to publish articles are unsustainable.

Neuroimaging research is at the centre of a row about open-access publishing fees.

More than 40 editors have resigned from two leading neuroscience journals in protest against what the editors say are excessively high article-processing charges (APCs) set by the publisher. They say that the fees, which publishers use to cover publishing services and in some cases make money, are unethical. The publisher, Dutch company Elsevier, says that its fees provide researchers with publishing services that are above average quality for below average price. The editors plan to start a new journal hosted by the non-profit publisher MIT Press.

The decision to resign came about after many discussions among the editors, says Stephen Smith, a neuroscientist at the University of Oxford, UK, and editor-in-chief of one of the journals, NeuroImage. “Everyone agreed that the APC was unethical and unsustainable,” says Smith, who will lead the editorial team of the new journal, Imaging Neuroscience, when it launches.

The 42 academics who made up the editorial teams at NeuroImage and its companion journal NeuroImage: Reports announced their resignations on 17 April. The journals are open access and require authors to pay a fee for publishing services. The APC for NeuroImage is US$3,450; NeuroImage: Reports charges $900, which will double to $1,800 from 31 May. Elsevier, based in Amsterdam, says that the APCs cover the costs associated with publishing an article in an open-access journal, including editorial and peer-review services, copyediting, typesetting, archiving, indexing, marketing and administrative costs. Andrew Davis, Elsevier’s vice-president of corporate communications, says that NeuroImage’s fee is less than that of the nearest comparable journal in its field, and that the publisher’s APCs are “set in line with our policy [of] providing above average quality for below average price”.


more... https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01391-5