The American Psychological Association has publicly released its comment on the NIH OA plan. Excerpt: 'APA shares the goals of broad dissemination of research results to the scientific community and to the public, and we applaud the intent of NIH's draft policy on open access. However, we believe that these goals can be achieved in ways that are far more efficient than those proposed by NIH. Further, we are concerned that the current proposed policy may have a number of unanticipated and damaging consequences for the integrity, diversity and impact of scientific results....Rather than requiring the full, final manuscript to be deposited in PubMed Central (PMC), limit the deposited material to a full citation, including the final, published abstract. This will allow NIH to build a searchable electronic resource of NIH-funded research, but without creating an undue burden on itself, on publishers, or on authors. Each such deposited record should include a hyperlink to the publisher's own system for [presumably non-OA] access to the complete publication....Creating a repository of technical and scientific publications is not the most effective way to inform the public about new and emerging health care research findings. A better approach is to create daily press releases, weekly news alerts.' (PS: What burden on authors? OA to full-text is a benefit to authors, not a burden. What burden to NIH? Providing OA to full-text is no more burdensome than providing OA to abstracts. Researchers need access to full text, not just abstracts or press releases.)
At the same time, Merry Bullock, the Executive Director of the American Psychological Association, published an article about the APA position, What is Open Access? in the Psychological Science Agenda, November 2004. Excerpt, after describing OA and the NIH plan: 'Where does psychology and where does APA fit into the picture? One outcome of such a policy, which would likely expand to cover all federally funded research, not just that funded by NIH, would be to shift who bears the cost of scientific publishing away from publishers and subscribers to authors and funders. Many believe such a shift this would have a host of unintended consequences across science fields on the vitality and quality of science. One consequence would be a decrease in the number of journals, thus reducing the available number of high quality publication outlets. Another is a decrease in the resources available for the editorial and peer review infrastructure. Reducing the value added by the peer review and editorial processes would take away an important piece of the process that ensures rigorous and high quality science. In addition, shifting to an "author pays" model may undermine attempts to increase diversity in science if easier access to scientific publishing requires access to greater financial resources. At present only about a third of published articles in psychological journals report a source of funding. These concerns are articulated in APA's comments on the proposed policy (available here in PDF format).'
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/21/2004 01:52:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
