[BOAI] Fwd: SPARC Statement in Response to Dept. of Energy Public Access Plan

[Peter Suber]

[Forwarding from SPARC.  --Peter Suber.]


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Sparc Media <sparcmedia at arl.org>
Date: Mon, Aug 4, 2014 at 1:05 PM
Subject: SPARC Statement in Response to Dept. of Energy Public Access Plan
To: media at sparc.arl.org


*FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE*

Contact: Ranit Schmelzer, 202.538.1065

             media at sparc.arl.org



*SPARC Statement on the Department of Energy’s Plan for Increasing Public
Access to the Results of Federally-Funded Research*



Washington, DC – Following is a statement by Heather Joseph, Executive
Director of SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources
Coalition), on the Department of Energy’s (DOE) plan
<http://www.energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan> for increasing
public access to the results of federally-funded scientific research.
Twenty-one agencies and departments were required to draft plans under a
landmark White House Directive
<http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/ostp_public_access_memo_2013.pdf>
issued
by the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) on February 22, 2013.



“The White House Directive affirmed the principle that the public has a
right to freely *access, search, download* and *analyze* the entire
collection of articles and data resulting from research funded by the U.S.
government. This will accelerate the pace of discovery and innovation, fuel
economic growth and strengthen our global competitiveness. There are three
key principles of the Directive – ensuring timely access, ease of access,
and the ability to fully reuse these research results. SPARC will use these
measures as we evaluate each agency’s plan, to ensure that the intent of
the White House Directive is fully realized.



“The Administration has made open access a priority, and that is a huge
step forward. The Department of Energy’s plan is the first opportunity we
have to see how the Administration will deliver on this vision – and there
are clearly mixed results. The DOE’s plan takes steps towards achieving the
goals of the Directive, but falls short in some key areas.



“Most critically, the DOE plan does not adequately address the *reuse
rights* that are necessary for the public to do more than simply *access *
and *read *individual articles. Without clearly articulating these reuse
rights, the public’s ability to download, analyze, text mine, data mine,
and perform computational analysis on these articles is severely limited,
and a crucial principle of the White House Directive cannot be fully
realized.



“We note that in its accompanying plan for ensuring access to digital data,
the DOE specifically recognizes the need for data contained in its articles
to be made open and machine-readable. We call on the DOE to work with the
research community – and other Federal Agencies – to develop and provide
clear, consistent reuse rights requirements for both articles and data
resulting from their funded research.



“In terms of providing *timely access* to results of DOE funded research
articles, while SPARC believes that immediate access is preferable, we are
pleased that the plan conforms with OSTP’s recommendation that articles be
made available no later than 12 months after publication. The plan does
allow for articles to be made available sooner than 12 months, and we
encourage DOE-funded researchers to choose the shortest possible embargo
period for their work.



“The DOE plan is a mixed bag in terms of *ease of access*. While we applaud
DOE for providing access to its articles through a variety of locations,
including its own Agency database, through institutional repositories, as
well as via publisher websites, the plan misses crucial opportunities. The
establishment of the PAGES portal provides a first step towards locating
DOE articles on these distributed web sites. However, we are concerned that
the plan places too strong an emphasis on defaulting to versions of
articles residing on publishers’ websites, where terms and conditions of
use may be restricted. SPARC encourages DOE to ensure that articles are
deposited into repositories immediately upon publication and are made
available via channels where their reuse can be fully leveraged.



“The DOE’s plan suggests they are approaching the development of their
public access plan as an iterative process and that community feedback will
be welcomed and incorporated as the plan evolves. SPARC, and the entire
open access community, are committed to working with the DOE – and all
Federal Agencies – to ensure their plans meet the intent of the White House
Directive.  In doing so, we are confident that the public will truly have
timely, unfettered access to the research results and the ability to fully
utilize it.”



###



SPARC®, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, is an
international alliance of academic and research libraries working to
correct imbalances in the scholarly publishing system. Developed by the
Association of Research Libraries, SPARC has become a catalyst for change.
Its pragmatic focus is to stimulate the emergence of new scholarly
communication models that expand the dissemination of scholarly research
and reduce financial pressures on libraries. More information can be found
at www.sparc.arl.org and on Twitter @SPARC_NA.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/pipermail/boai-forum/attachments/20140804/1b341497/attachment.html