Nancy Stimson of the University of California at San Diego nstimson@ucsd.edu alertly asks readers of the DBIO blog:
“Now that the NIH public access policy is mandatory, I'm interested in knowing what, if anything, our members' libraries are doing, or planning to do, to help their researchers comply with the policy.”
Nancy Stimson is to be thanked for bringing to this forum, an important discussion topic: Just how do we help our NIH funded clients in complying with the new NIH policy that their papers be included within a calendar year in PubMed Central. (see websites below for details and some guidance).
I suggest that readers e-mail her and myself tstankus@uark.edu and have their answers posted here for all to learn, critique and perhaps apply.
For my part, I checked the NIH’s own list of journals whose authors would be in virtually automatic compliance because they already send in their articles to PMC. What I discovered was both reassuring and yet provocative. Not too surprisingly the highly successful PLoS series and the somewhat more moderately successful BMC series have virtually all their units represented. Somewhat surprisingly the NIH notes that not all OpenAccess journals are technically in compliance because their depository relationship with PMC is not yet formalized or assured.
The questions for journals not included on this list include:
How soon will they make depository compliance as smooth as those journals already on this list, if ever?
Will they lose a competitive advantage in attracting top manuscripts, by not cooperating quickly and fully?
Will they impose financial costs on authors to comply, by making those authors pay an Open Access permission or “accelerated depository fee” , even if the NIH itself charges nothing?
These questions cannot be answered definitively right now, but there are definitely some interesting “no-shows” who will bear watching because they are very prestigious outlets, and I would venture that a great many of their authors have NIH funded research. This could set up a war within the hearts of many a researcher: take NIH funds and be restricted to where NIH guidelines allow their work to be published, or not take the funds and publish where they think it will do their career and readership in the scientific community best.
Consider the following listed as already smoothly compliant vs. not necessarily so, or not so smoothly so. THe list is by no means complete, but it will be very interesting to see how it changes as this ruling takes full force in April, 2008.
MAJOR MULTISCIENCE JOURNALS: Smoothly compliant Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B- Biological but not necessarily Nature or Science.
MAJOR JOURNALS OF INVESTIGATIVE MEDICINE: Smoothly compliant BMJ, Journal of Clinical Investigation and Journal of Experimental Medicine but not necessarily the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, or the Lancet
BIOCHEMISTRY & MOLECULAR BIOLOGY: Compliant: Biochemical Journal, EMBO Journal , EMBO Reports, but not necessarily the Journal of Biological Chemistry, Biochemistry, the Journal of Molecular Biology, Molecular Cell.
CELL BIOLOGY: Smoothly compliant: Journal of Cell Biology, Eukaryotic Cell, Molecular Biology of the Cell, but not necessarily Cell , Experimental Cell Research, Journal of Cell Science, Nature Cell Biology
GENETICS: Smoothly compliant Genetics and the American Journal of Human Genetics but not necessarily Genes & Development, Molecular Genetics & Genomics, the Journal of Medical Genetic, Human Genetics.
IMMUNOLOGY: Smoothly compliant Immunology and Infection & Immunity but not necessarily the Journal of Immunology or Immunity or Immunobiology
INTERNAL MEDICINE: Smoothly compliant Journal of General Internal Medicine but not necessarily Annals of Internal Medicine, Archives of Internal Medicine.
Some Relevant Websites:
Journals that Submit Articles to PubMed Central. http://publicaccess.nih.gov/submit_process_journals.htm
Office of the Director of the National Institutes of Health . (Release Date: January 11, 2008, Effective Date: April 7, 2008) Notice Number: NOT-OD-08-033. Revised Policy on Enhancing Public Access to Archived Publications Resulting from NIH-Funded Research. http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-08-033.html
Public Access Frequently Asked Questions. http://publicaccess.nih.gov/FAQ.htm
Tony Stankus tstankus@uark.edu, 322 E MULN, University of Arkansas Libraries, 365 North McIlroy Avenue, Fayetteville, AR 72701-4002
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