SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHING
U.S. agencies fall in line on public access Major research funders move to make papers free to all By Jocelyn Kaiser
Public access policies at U.S. science agencies
AGENCY
BUDGET
MODEL
EXPECTED PAPERS PER YEAR
RESEARCH FUNDED AFTER
NIH
$30.3 billion
Central archive
104,000
2008
DOE
$5.07 billion (Office of Science)
Linked abstracts
20,000–30,000
1 October 2014*
NSF
$7.3 billion
Linked abstracts
40,000
1 January 2016
DOD
$2.3 billion (basic
Central archive
40,000
1 October 2016
Central archive
20,000
1 January 2016
HHS agencies $13.1 billion (besides NIH)
Central archive
6000
1 October 2015
NASA
$3 billion (research)
Central archive
10,000
1 January 2015
NIST
$864 million
Central archive
1300
1 October 2015
research)
USDA
$1.1 billion (agricultural research)
Not yet released: USGS, EPA, NOAA. *Office of Science; other offices 1 October 2015
A growing trove of full-text biomedical research papers Since 2008, NIH has required grantees to submit full-text papers to PubMed Central either directly or via the journal. Journals deposit many more papers that are not funded by NIH. 500 450 400 350 300 250 200 150 100 50 0 2005
2006
2007
Author submissions
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
Total papers*
*Includes back issues added from 2006 to 2008 and papers deposited directly by journals
SCIENCE sciencemag.org
10 APRIL 2015 • VOL 348 ISSUE 6231
Published by AAAS
167
Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on April 11, 2015
Researchers must make papers freely available within a year, either through abstracts that link to publisher websites or a central full-text archive like PubMed Central.
Papers added to PubMed Central annually
CREDITS: (DATA SOURCE) NIH; DOE; NSF; DOD; USDA; HHS; NASA; NIST; (GRAPH) NIH MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSION SYSTEM; NCBI
A
fter a decade of often fierce debate over whether the public should have free access to the scientific papers produced by their tax dollars, advocates for so-called open access celebrated a notable victory last month: The National Science Foundation (NSF) unveiled a plan to require its grantees to make their research freely available. NSF’s move meant that the federal agencies that provide the bulk of the nation’s basic and applied research funding have now complied with a 2013 White House order to make the peer-reviewed papers they fund freely available within 12 months of publication. The order, which applies to federal agencies that spend more than $100 million a year on research and development, will ultimately make hundreds of thousands of scientific papers once hidden behind paywalls available to anyone with an Internet connection (see table). For the typical U.S. scientist with a federal research grant, the new public access mandate means they will need to follow the example of researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Since 2008, NIH grantees have been required to send their accepted manuscripts or final published paper to the agency’s PubMed Central full-text archive. Researchers may deposit the paper themselves through a special Web portal, or the journal may do it for them. At most agencies, those who ignore the mandate will not get credit for their papers during reviews of funding proposals or job performance. The details of how the public will get access to the full-text papers vary by agency. Some, including NASA, will share papers through a full-text archive similar to PubMed Central, which has grown to hold more than 3 million full-text papers (see graph). Open-access advocates prefer this model because they say it allows for simpler text and data mining across an entire corpus of articles. But two agencies, NSF and the Department of Energy, have heeded concerns from publishers that full-text archives will divert eyeballs from their sites and cut into advertising revenue. They are building portals that provide only a paper’s abstract and other metadata; links will take users to the full-text article on the publisher’s website. ■
U.S. agencies fall in line on public access Major research funders move to make papers free to all By Jocelyn Kaiser
Public access policies at U.S. science agencies
AGENCY
BUDGET
MODEL
EXPECTED PAPERS PER YEAR
RESEARCH FUNDED AFTER
NIH
$30.3 billion
Central archive
104,000
2008
DOE
$5.07 billion (Office of Science)
Linked abstracts
20,000–30,000
1 October 2014*
NSF
$7.3 billion
Linked abstracts
40,000
1 January 2016
DOD
$2.3 billion (basic
Central archive
40,000
1 October 2016
Central archive
20,000
1 January 2016
HHS agencies $13.1 billion (besides NIH)
Central archive
6000
1 October 2015
NASA
$3 billion (research)
Central archive
10,000
1 January 2015
NIST
$864 million
Central archive
1300
1 October 2015
research)
USDA
$1.1 billion (agricultural research)
Not yet released: USGS, EPA, NOAA. *Office of Science; other offices 1 October 2015
A growing trove of full-text biomedical research papers Since 2008, NIH has required grantees to submit full-text papers to PubMed Central either directly or via the journal. Journals deposit many more papers that are not funded by NIH. 500 450 400 350 300 250 200 150 100 50 0 2005
2006
2007
Author submissions
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
Total papers*
*Includes back issues added from 2006 to 2008 and papers deposited directly by journals
SCIENCE sciencemag.org
10 APRIL 2015 • VOL 348 ISSUE 6231
Published by AAAS
167
Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on April 11, 2015
Researchers must make papers freely available within a year, either through abstracts that link to publisher websites or a central full-text archive like PubMed Central.
Papers added to PubMed Central annually
CREDITS: (DATA SOURCE) NIH; DOE; NSF; DOD; USDA; HHS; NASA; NIST; (GRAPH) NIH MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSION SYSTEM; NCBI
A
fter a decade of often fierce debate over whether the public should have free access to the scientific papers produced by their tax dollars, advocates for so-called open access celebrated a notable victory last month: The National Science Foundation (NSF) unveiled a plan to require its grantees to make their research freely available. NSF’s move meant that the federal agencies that provide the bulk of the nation’s basic and applied research funding have now complied with a 2013 White House order to make the peer-reviewed papers they fund freely available within 12 months of publication. The order, which applies to federal agencies that spend more than $100 million a year on research and development, will ultimately make hundreds of thousands of scientific papers once hidden behind paywalls available to anyone with an Internet connection (see table). For the typical U.S. scientist with a federal research grant, the new public access mandate means they will need to follow the example of researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Since 2008, NIH grantees have been required to send their accepted manuscripts or final published paper to the agency’s PubMed Central full-text archive. Researchers may deposit the paper themselves through a special Web portal, or the journal may do it for them. At most agencies, those who ignore the mandate will not get credit for their papers during reviews of funding proposals or job performance. The details of how the public will get access to the full-text papers vary by agency. Some, including NASA, will share papers through a full-text archive similar to PubMed Central, which has grown to hold more than 3 million full-text papers (see graph). Open-access advocates prefer this model because they say it allows for simpler text and data mining across an entire corpus of articles. But two agencies, NSF and the Department of Energy, have heeded concerns from publishers that full-text archives will divert eyeballs from their sites and cut into advertising revenue. They are building portals that provide only a paper’s abstract and other metadata; links will take users to the full-text article on the publisher’s website. ■
