[GOAL] Second shoe drops: new White House Directive mandates OA

[Peter Suber]

I just posted this news to my blog.
https://plus.google.com/109377556796183035206/posts/8hzviMJeVHJ


The Obama White House today directed federal agencies to develop
open-access policies within the next six months. The directive comes from
John Holdren <http://goo.gl/T02gj>, President Obama's chief Science Advisor.

White House announcement
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/02/22/expanding-public-access-results-federally-funded-research

Directive itself
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/ostp_public_access_memo_2013.pdf

This is big. It's big in its own right, and even bigger when put together
with FASTR <http://bit.ly/hoap-fastr>, the bipartisan OA bill introduced
into both houses of Congress just eight days ago. We now have OA mandates
coming from both the executive and legislative branches of government.

The two approaches complement one another. FASTR does not make the White
House directive unnecessary. FASTR may never be adopted. And if it is
adopted, it will be after some time for study, education, lobbying,
amendment, negotiation, and debate. By contrast, the White House directive
takes effect today. The wheels are already turning. Compared to this
executive action, FASTR is slower. (Thanks to Becky Cremona for this good
line.)

Similarly, the White House directive does not make FASTR unnecessary. On
the contrary, we need legislation to codify federal OA policies. The next
president could rescind today's White House directive, but could not
rescind legislation. (One lesson: Don't let up in efforts to persuade
Congress to pass FASTR.)

The White House directive and FASTR pull in the same general direction, but
they are not identical. Here are the key points of similarity and
difference:

* Both ask a wide range of federal funding agencies to require OA for the
results of the research they fund. But the new directive applies to more
agencies. FASTR covers all the agencies spending at least $100 million/year
funding extramural research. The directive covers all the agencies spending
at least $100 million/year funding extramural research *or development***.
FASTR applies to about 11 agencies and the directive to about 19. Among the
agencies omitted by FASTR but covered by the directive are USAid and the
Smithsonian Institution.

* Both put a limit on permissible embargoes, but the directive allows
longer embargoes. FASTR caps embargos at six months, and the directive caps
them at 12 months. Under the directive, agencies may ask White House
permission to allow even longer embargoes, but they must submit data to
support their requests.

* Both ask agencies to develop their own policies within certain
guidelines. FASTER gives them a year to do so (starting when FASTR is
adopted) and the directive gives them half a year to do so (starting today).

If FASTR is eventually adopted, then all the FASTR-covered agencies will
already have OA policies under today's directive. Some agencies may have to
revise their policies to comply with FASTR guidelines, for example,
reducing permissible embargoes to a maximum of six months or tweaking their
libre or open-licensing requirements.

* FASTR is silent on data, but the White House directive requires OA for
articles (Section 3) and OA for data (Section 4).

* Both FASTR and the directive are solid green mandates, requiring deposit
in an OA repository (green OA) and remaining silent about publishing in OA
journals (gold OA). In that sense, both initiatives build on the successful
green OA mandate at the NIH, and reject the gold-favoring approach adopted
by the Research Councils UK.

* Both FASTR and the directive require agency policies to permit libre OA
or to license repository deposits for reuse. They use different language to
describe the desired type of freedom, and do not specify individual
licenses.

.....

The Obama White House has twice collected public comments on federal OA
policy. One public consultation ended in January 2010 and the other ended
in January 2012. The new directive builds on those comments, which
overwhelmingly supported OA. Here are the two sets of comments received.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/03/08/public-access-policy-update
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/01/30/your-comments-access-federally-funded-scientific-research-results

The White House was also pressured by a May 2012 "We the people" petition
that only needed 25k signatures in the first 30 days to elicit an official
response. It received that many in 14 days, and today has 65,700+
signatures. While we reached the response threshold eight months ago, I
think it's fair to say that today's response is what we were waiting for.
http://wh.gov/6TH

Today's directive is accompanied by a separate, direct response to the
petition.
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/increasing-public-access-results-scientific-research

This is another in a series of blog posts on FASTR and other federal
actions to support OA to federally-funded research. I'll pull the series of
posts together for an article in the March issue of the SPARC Open Access
Newsletter.

     Peter

Peter Suber
Director, Harvard Open Access Project
Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society
Senior Researcher, Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition
bit.ly/suber-gplus
Open Access, MIT Press, 2012 <bit.ly/oa-book>
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