Libraries Take on Policy: Support for Open Access and Open Data

Abstract

Anneliese Taylor Libraries Take on Policy: Support for Open Access and Open Data The growth of open access (OA) journal publishing has exploded in the last decade. The number of full, immediate OA articles went from 2% to 11% of all articles published between 2000 and 2011. When hybrid and embargoed open access articles are included in the count, the 2011 total jumps to 17% across all disciplines. And looking at biomedical journals specifically, 36% of articles published were OA 1 . Alongside this impressive growth in what’s commonly referred to as gold open access publishing has been a multi-pronged effort to expand access to published articles through “green” open access. Green OA is the process of depositing a version of a published article in an open access repository, whether that be an institutional repository (IR) or a disciplinary repository, or even placing articles on an openly accessible web site. “Self-archiving” is frequently used interchangeably with green OA. It does not require authors to pay an article processing charge as many gold OA models do. Many publishers have a history of allowing authors to self-archive a version of their article. The version is typically the accepted author’s manuscript, incorporating changes from the peer-review process, but before the publisher has copyedited, formatted, and branded the manuscript for final publication. A very few publishers allow the final, published version to be uploaded via self-archiving. There may or may not be a delay period after publication before the manuscript can be made accessible. Open access policies passed at the institutional level or by research funders are an attempt to broaden public access on a larger scale. The potential to open up access via a formalized policy is significant, but not without some effort. The next sections will highlight health sciences libraries and their roles with green OA policies in the United States. NIH Public Access Policy The single largest influencer on the growth of green OA articles in the health sciences to date is the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy, passed in 2008. This policy requires peer- reviewed scholarly articles published by NIH-funded researchers to be submitted to PubMed Central (PMC). The articles are made publicly available no later than twelve months after the official publication date. 2 PMC is NIH’s freely accessible, full text article repository, with close to 3 million articles currently deposited. NIH Policy manuscripts are about 10% of this amount. The rest of the content comes from publishers that voluntarily deposit their articles, usually after a publication delay. Many health sciences (HS) libraries got involved in 2008 or earlier with support for researchers at their academy needing to comply with the policy. Efforts range from offering workshops and individual consultations to notifying authors which of their articles are non-compliant and what steps to take to make them compliant. There are a number of excellent NIH Policy LibGuides (e.g. Duke University and University of Washington) and video tutorials (e.g. New York University and Harvard University) created by librarians to assist researchers. An informal survey in 2013 of Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries (AAHSL) member involvement in supporting the Policy indicated a high level of activity amongst health sciences libraries. Of the 25 responses, all but four were actively involved with a support role. It’s remarkable that HS