[Insight-users] OPEN ACCESS: OSTP: NIH Public Access Policy for Other Federal Agencies

[Luis Ibanez]

http://news.slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&type=story&sid=09/12/12/0457241

<quote>
"Currently, the National Institutes of Health require that research
funded by its grants be made available to the public online at no
charge within 12 months of publication. Now the Office of Science and
Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President is
launching a 'Public Access Policy Forum' to determine whether this
policy should be extended to other science agencies and, if so, how it
should be implemented. 'The NIH model has a variety of features that
can be evaluated, and there are other ways to offer the public
enhanced access to peer-reviewed scholarly publications,' OSTP says in
the request for information. 'The best models may [be] influenced by
agency mission, the culture and rate of scientific development of the
discipline, funding to develop archival capabilities, and research
funding mechanisms.' The OSTP will conduct an interactive, online
discussion that will focus on three major questions: Should this
policy be extended to other science agencies and, if so, how it should
be implemented? In what format should the data be submitted in order
to make it easy to search and retrieve information? What are the best
mechanisms to ensure compliance? 'It's very encouraging to see the
Obama Administration focus on ensuring public access to the results of
taxpayer-funded research [reg. required] as a key way to maximize our
collective investment in science,' says Heather Joseph, executive
director of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources
Coalition."
</quote>


Discussion at:
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=09/12/12/0457241

<quote>

As a professor myself, I hope that the unintended consequence will be
that we move away from the restrictive, expensive, academic journal
publishers like Elsevier and toward an open model of academic
publication where your recognition and peer review come from broad,
open, dissemination.

I, for one, would like to see a peer review system where articles are
posted on-line and evaluations (i.e. referee reports) are also posted
in an open, strongly authenticated, way. I don't know about you, but
one thing that really annoys me is to receive a referee report on a
paper where it is obvious that the referee hasn't even read past the
introduction. I believe that forcing the evaluations to be open, and
strongly-authenticated (so that everyone knows exactly who is writing
it) would improve the quality and credibility of research.

I suspect that some people would claim that if referee reports aren't
anonymous, then they won't be honest. But, a referee report should not
be about opinions, it should be a straight forward analysis of the
results reported in the paper. If it's really science, then it should
be completely objective, thus opinion and personality should have
nothing to do with it. Hence, there should be no need for anonymity.
When I grade my students' papers, it certainly isn't anonymous, but it
doesn't need to be because I am giving them objective feedback (e.g.
"this is wrong because you said cos(x+h) = cos(x) + cos(h) which is
not true.").

Using an open system would allow articles to receive recognition and
ranking based upon the open discussion of their merits. Individuals
doing the ranking could also receive recognition for the quality of
their work, which is important because it can sometimes take weeks of
work to thoroughly understand a new result. That work should receive
more acknowledgment in the academic system than it currently does. (I
suspect it's the current lack of acknowledgment for refereeing which
makes many people into lazy referees. After all, why bother putting
much effort into that referee report when it won't count toward
promotion. You are better off spending that time writing your own
papers.)

Finally, using an open system gives the public greater credibility in
the system. When people want to know why paper A is considered correct
and paper B isn't, the analysis and discussion will be available, too.

</quote>




You can post your opinion to the
Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP) at:
http://blog.ostp.gov/2009/12/10/policy-forum-on-public-access-to-federally-funded-research-implementation/