The objective of this audit was to assess the interest among NSF’s various constituents for NSF to provide information about the results of the research it funds on its website....
Recent surveys conducted by the U.S. Government Accountability Office and NSF indicate that NSF constituents have an interest in NSF providing more information about the results of the research it funds. Interviews we conducted with executives of organizations representing NSF’s diverse constituents, as well as with NSF program officers, corroborate these results.
The organization executives and NSF program officers expressed an interest in NSF posting more research results, in some format, on its website. They cited multiple advantages to NSF providing this information, such as helping researchers identify possible collaborators and improving the public’s understanding of scientific research. While they also expressed some concerns, such as the premature disclosure of proprietary information or an invention, the advantages appear to outweigh the concerns and could be mitigated by NSF’s policies and practices.
In terms of the best format to convey the research results, organization executives and NSF program officers expressed an overwhelming interest in NSF posting brief summaries of research results and publication citations on its website. They also indicated some interest in NSF posting conference proceedings, abstracts of journal articles, and final project reports.
By providing greater public access to the results of the research it funds, NSF would further the public’s knowledge and understanding of scientific research, assist researchers in building on prior work, and make its operations more transparent and accountable.
Recommendations: In addition to NSF continuing with its plans to make publication citations available on its website, we recommend that NSF use its positions on various government-wide committees to advocate for the inclusion of brief summaries in project reports. These summaries could then be made available to the public. In addition, we recommend NSF consider posting other formats, such as final project reports, conference proceedings, and/or journal abstracts on its website or providing links to these documents if they are available elsewhere.
Agency Response: NSF agreed with the OIG [Office of Inspector General] that access to science is an important issue. We originally recommended that NSF require researchers to submit brief summaries of research results that NSF could then post on its website. However, NSF stated that it would be premature to revise reporting requirements because of government-wide efforts to standardize templates used by researchers to report their results to various federal funding agencies. Accordingly, we modified our report to recommend that NSF use its position on these committees to advocate for brief summaries of research results. NSF agreed with our recommendation to consider posting other forms of results information and is exploring posting journal abstracts or links to these abstracts on the NSF website.
Comment. I'm disappointed that the survey focused so much on citations and abstracts when the crying need is for access to full-text research articles. The Office of Inspector General (OIG) did ask interview subjects about full-text articles, but we don't know whom it interviewed or how the questions were phrased.
[Page 3] We interviewed the executive director (or designee) of seven national organizations that represented educators, libraries, individual librarians, groups currently underrepresented among NSF-funded researchers (women and minorities), science writers and journalists, and researchers....
[Page 9] Finally, the [interviewed] organizations and program officers expressed little support for NSF posting...annual project reports, the full text of published journal articles, and the manuscripts of journal articles accepted by publishers. They stated that the other products, particularly the brief summaries and the publication citations, contain sufficient information on the results of NSF-funded research.
For more detail on the interviewed organizations, but without their names, see pp. 20f.
It appears that the OIG made access to full-text articles a minor emphasis in the interviews. For example, Table D-1 (p. 20) summarizes the interviewee responses "regarding whether or not NSF should post various results formats on its website". It lists five formats (publication citations, brief summaries, conference proceedings, journal abstracts, and final project reports) but omits full-text articles and peer-reviewed author manuscripts.
Note that the NSF is covered by FRPAA. Hence, if FRPAA passes, the NSF would have to mandate open access to full-text peer-reviewed manuscripts based on NSF-funded research.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/14/2006 04:37:00 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.
