A. Jay Block, Richard S. Irwin, and Stephen J. Welch, The NIH Public Access Policy, CHEST, May 2005. Excerpt: 'This editorial is intended to state the position of CHEST and its publisher/parent society, the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP), in response to the NIH Public Access Policy. This NIH policy will affect authors whose NIH-funded research has been accepted for publication in CHEST....The NIH policy dictates that the PI is responsible for the final approval of the materials submitted to the PubMed Central repository. CHEST and other publishers have long believed that as the owners of the copyrighted material and holders of the final, peer-reviewed, copyedited, published article files, it would be easiest for all involved if the publishers could oversee the process from start to finish. Unfortunately, this is not the case, and the NIH policy firmly puts the onus on the PI....Because the PI, during the deposit process, must stipulate when the manuscript will be made freely available to the public on PubMed Central, there is the potential for violation of the copyright agreement between the PI and coauthors, and journals. CHEST wants to alert PIs to this potential pitfall....PIs may inadvertently choose a time frame that makes the article free on the NIH PubMed Central site sooner than a journal’s policy allows. This would be in violation of the journal's copyright policies, putting the PI in an awkward position..... If authors abide by CHEST's policy of making articles free online in the NIH repository 12 months after publication, this will not only satisfy CHEST's copyright agreement but also the NIH policy....Because the NIH policy instructs the PIs to deposit the accepted, peer-reviewed manuscript upon its acceptance by the journal, there is a risk that the PI will deposit an inaccurate version of the manuscript....Therefore, a number of journals, including CHEST, have modified their copyright statements and added disclaimers so that journals are not held responsible for uncorrected deposited content. Our revised statement and disclaimer appear in our Instructions to Authors as well as on the journal Web site....Because the NIH policy is voluntary, we believe that a better alternative would be for the PI to wait until the final, edited manuscript is published by the journal, and then submit that file to the NIH at that time. This brief delay will not prevent PIs from meeting the requirement of the NIH and CHEST of depositing the accepted manuscript within 12 months of its acceptance. CHEST is implementing a policy that we will provide the final, edited, PDF file to the PI if PIs request it. We hope PIs will consider this option because it is in the best interest of everyone. The most accurate version of the article is the one that should be made available to the public.'
Posted by
Peter Suber at 5/16/2005 09:50:00 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.
