Thoughts on Public Access… the NREL Perspective

1. Thoughts on Public Access… the NREL Perspective 2013 DOE OSTI STIP Meeting Mary Donahue, NREL April 10, 2013

2. Open Access at NREL • The Numbers & Author Involvement • FY12 – 40 OA articles out of 368 = 11% • FY13(6 mos.) – 21 OA articles out of 196 = 11% • Senior researcher co-editor of Biotechnology for Biofuels (BioMed Central) • Education • Overview presentations on OA • OA Week Posters & Employee Newsletter Article • Senior Management • No lab-wide position on OA • S&T management • Focused on top peer-review journals, not OA • No special funding pool; see as an added cost, not yet as a benefit • NREL Director, Dan Arvizu • National Science Foundation Press Release 13-030, Feb. 22, 2013 http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=127043 National Science Foundation Collaborates with Federal Partners to Plan for Comprehensive Public Access to Research Results  "The National Science Board, as the policy making body for the National Science Foundation, endorses the agency's commitment to public access and looks forward to working with its colleagues and stakeholder communities to support and broaden the availability of federally-funded research data and results," said National Science Board (NSB) Chairman Dan Arvizu. "The NSB understands the importance to the American people that public access brings to the taxpayer and the scholarly community, and that progress in science accelerates when researchers share and build on each other's results."

3. White House OSTP Memorandum • NREL Lab Director involvement through NSF National Science Board • Commitment by NREL Publication Services to support DOE/OSTI implementation • No lab-wide discussion/news • Anticipated response from NREL authors • Will support public access implementation • Will not want to have to do anything special to have it happen (or cost anything) • Easiest if publishers open the articles at the end of the embargo • Possibility of shorter embargo time?

4. Author “Incentives” • More than 60% of journals already allow authors to self-archive content that has been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication… Most of the others ask authors to wait for a time (say, a year), before they archive their papers. However, the vast majority of authors don't self-archive their manuscripts unless prompted by university or funder mandates. • Source: Van Noorden, Richard. Open access: The true cost of science publishing. Nature, vol. 495, p.426–429 (28 March 2013). doi:10.1038/495426a

5. Lessons from National Institutes of Health (NIH) 2005 – Carrot 2013 - Stick • The NIH Public Access Policy ensures that the public has access to the published results of NIH funded research. It requires scientists to submit final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts that arise from NIH funds to the digital archive PubMed Centralupon acceptance for publication… the Policy requires that these papers are accessible to the public on PubMed Central no later than 12 months after publication. • Source: NIH website • “It can be hard to distract scientists from their lab work, but the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) is hoping a threat to their funding could do the trick. On 16 November, the NIH announced that, starting as soon as this spring, any investigator who receives a research grant from the NIH and publishes the results in a scientific journal must submit an electronic version of the final peer-reviewed manuscript to the government's PubMed Central (PMC) repository to continue receiving federal funds.” • Source: Matthews, Susan. NIH will withhold grant money to enforce public-access policy. Nature Medicine vol. 19, p. 3 (2013) doi:10.1038/nm0113-3