[ccccip] Top IP of 2007 article

Wed Feb 6 21:24:07 EST 2008

Hello everyone,

If you've volunteered to write an article for the Top IP Developments
of 2007 collection, I thought you might want to see an example of one.
This is my article on the NIH Open Access Mandate. You can see that
it's not very long or theoretically complex; I did all the research
and writing over a three-day period. If you want to give me feedback,
I'll appreciate it, but I don't plan on doing any major revisions. I'm
definitely going to clean up the Works Cited, though.

As a reminder, I am aiming to get this published by mid-March as a
promotion of the Caucus to help boost attendance. Since I'm due to
give birth in early May, I'm especially anxious to get all my active
projects done as soon as possible.

The article is pasted below sans formatting, but you can access a PDF
of it here with formatting:

http://culturecat.net/files/NIHopenaccess.pdf

Clancy

Clancy Ratliff
University of Louisiana at Lafayette

The National Institutes of Health Open Access Mandate: Public Access
for Public Funding

In December 2007, President Bush signed into law the NIH Open Access
policy, which concretized what had been an agenda item in the open
access movement for over three years. This policy requires scholars
who receive NIH funding for their research to submit copies of
publications based on that research to PubMed Central, an open access
repository. They must do this within 12 months of the article's
publication in a professional journal or other scholarly venue. In the
following report, I will describe the timeline and reasons for the
policy, how the policy works, and its implications for research in
disciplines other than the medical sciences, including rhetoric and
composition.

Original Proposal and Rationale for Open Access to NIH-Funded Research

What is now the open access mandate was for over two years prior only
voluntary. The original policy was proposed in 2004 by the House
Appropriations Committee and sponsored by Ralph Regula, a Democratic
congressional representative from Ohio. A report filed by the
Committee in July 2004 explains the need for an open access policy
(emphasis mine):

		The Committee is very concerned that there is insufficient public
access to 			reports and data resulting from NIH-funded research. This
situation, which 		has been exacerbated by the dramatic rise in
scientific journal subscription 		prices, is contrary to the best
interests of the U.S. taxpayers who paid for this 		research. The
Committee is aware of a proposal to make the complete text of
		articles and supplemental materials generated by NIH-funded research
			available on PubMed Central (PMC), the digital library maintained
by the 			National Library of Medicine (NLM).

The problem of subscription rates for scholarly journals and the
public interest argument come directly from open access rhetoric,
including positions taken by members of the CCCC Intellectual Property
Caucus. Arguing from the taxpayers' interest in this context also sets
an important precedent for government-funded research in other
disciplines. It is unclear exactly why such an open access policy
would originate in research in the health sciences, but one obvious
speculation is the need, from a public health standpoint, to share
research results quickly and inexpensively in the service of
eradicating chronic conditions and infectious disease. Another is the
relationship between researchers in the health sciences and
pharmaceutical companies, which can be complex and necessitate a
distancing move and a claim of the research by the public. The July
2004 report goes on to recommend:

		The Committee supports this proposal and recommends that NIH develop
a 		policy, to apply from FY 2005 forward, requiring that a complete
electronic copy 		of any manuscript reporting work supported by NIH
grants or contracts be 		provided to PMC upon acceptance of the
manuscript for publication in any 		scientific journal listed in the
NLM's PubMed directory.
The proposed policy continued to gain ground, and in February of 2005,
the NIH issued a report announcing details of the policy. They gave
the following reasons as an explanation of the need for an open access
initiative ("Policy on Enhancing Public Access"):

		The Policy is intended to: 1) create a stable archive of
peer-reviewed research 		publications resulting from NIH-funded
research to ensure the permanent 		preservation of these vital
published research findings; 2) secure a searchable 		compendium of
these peer-reviewed research publications that NIH and its 		awardees
can use to manage more efficiently and to understand better their
		research portfolios, monitor scientific productivity, and
ultimately, help set 		research priorities; and 3) make published
results of NIH-funded research more 		readily accessible to the
public, health care providers, educators, and scientists."

These reasons demonstrate the potential of an open access repository,
especially an organized and searchable one, to provide an aerial view
of the history and evolution of a discipline for any interested
reader. In rhetoric and composition, a similar (though not open
access) effort is Collin Brooke and Derek Mueller's transformation of
CCC Online into a dynamic, categorized, searchable archive.

In addition to laying out the intentions of the policy, the February
2005 report addressed several objections to it, including its
perceived incompatibility with copyright law and its conflict with the
market interest, particularly that of journal publishers. The NIH
responded to these criticisms by citing the government purpose
license, which applies generally to work by government contractors and
allows government agencies some rights to copyrighted or patented
work. They also pointed out one of the policy's provisions, which
states that authors may wait up to twelve months to post their
articles to PubMed Central. The holding period is a concession for
journal publishers to address the objection that they may lose
subscriptions as a result of the policy.

Starting in 2005, per the Appropriation Committee's recommendation,
recipients of NIH funding were encouraged -- but not required -- to
submit their publications to PubMed Central, a government repository
of open-access medical research publications. According to Peter
Suber, a senior researcher at the Scholarly Publishing and Academic
Resources Coalition (SPARC),  compliance rates were low under the
voluntary system: in February 2006, the rate was below 4% ("NIH FAQ").
Throughout 2006 and most of 2007, the House and the Senate argued over
specific matters related to language in the bill and budgetary
concerns, as  PubMed Central is part of the NIH budget, and the costs
rise with the number of submissions and the heft of repository use
("SPARC Open Access Newsletter, August 2007"). After passing in the
House and the Senate, President Bush signed the open access policy
into law on December 26, 2007, the language of which states:

		The Director of the National Institutes of Health shall require that
all 			investigators funded by the NIH submit or have submitted for
them to the 		National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central an
electronic version of their 		final, peer-reviewed manuscripts upon
acceptance for publication to be made 		publicly available no later
than 12 months after the official date of publication: 		Provided,
That the NIH shall implement the public access policy in a manner
		consistent with copyright law.

While open access advocates have expressed disappointment that the
"embargo period" is not shorter than twelve months, most agree that
the NIH's policy is progressive and moves research in general closer
to the public interest. The policy will help researchers in the health
sciences share their research on a global scale and will, ideally,
enable innovation. It will go into effect on April 7, 2008.

Implications for Research in Other Fields, Including Rhetoric and Composition

Rhetoric and composition studies are not fields that are historically
well funded by government agencies such as NIH (a possible exception
being technical communication), but the NIH Open Access Mandate, with
its driving argument as the issue of fairness and the public interest
– the public funded it, so the public should have access to it – has
two key implications for research in the sciences, social sciences,
and humanities, including rhetoric and composition:

1.Other government funding organizations (National Science Foundation,
National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the
Humanities, Dept. of Ed.) may decide to implement similar policies.
Open access advocacy will be necessary for this effort, and publishers
will lobby against it, but a precedent has been set nonetheless. The
Alliance for Taxpayer Access, an alliance of 84 different libraries
and advocacy groups for sufferers of specific diseases such as cystic
fibrosis and AIDS, will continue with SPARC to push for open access to
all government-funded research. I recommend that members of the CCCC
IP Caucus create awareness of this organization on our individual
campuses and encourage our libraries to join the ATA.
2.This policy may encourage similar policies at the state or
university level, such as ScholarWorks at the University of Kansas.
Faculty at the University of Kansas, starting in March 2005, have been
encouraged to submit their research to ScholarWorks on the grounds
that doing so will increase its visibility and cause it to be cited
more often, and administration at KU has provided faculty with
language to use when requesting publishers' permission to post work to
ScholarWorks ("Resolution on Access"). The University of California
system and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology also have such
repositories.

Works Cited

Policy on Enhancing Public Access to Archived Publications Resulting
from NIH-Funded Research.
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-05-022.html

Public Access Frequently Asked Questions. http://publicaccess.nih.gov/FAQ.htm

Suber, Peter. "NIH Public-Access Policy Frequently Asked Questions."
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/nihfaq.htm

Suber, Peter. "OA mandate at NIH now law."
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007/12/oa-mandate-at-nih-now-law.html

Suber, Peter. "Welcome to the SPARC Open Access Newsletter, issue
#112." 2 Aug 2007. 6 Feb 2008.
 http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/08-02-07.htm#nih

Suber, Peter. "Welcome to the SPARC Open Access Newsletter, issue
#115." 2 Nov 2007. 6 Feb 2008.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/11-02-07.htm#nih

Suber, Peter. "Welcome to the SPARC Open Access Newsletter, issue #116
." 2 Dec 2007. 6 Feb 2008.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/12-02-07.htm

KU: About KU ScholarWorks. http://www2.ku.edu/~scholar/ 6 Feb 2008

Resolution on Access to Scholarly Information Passed by the KU
University Council.
http://www2.ku.edu/~scholar/docs/ScholarlyInformationResolution.pdf

PubMed Central Homepage. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/ 6 Feb 2008

House Report 108-636 - DEPARTMENTS OF LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN
SERVICES, AND EDUCATION, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATION BILL,
2005. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/?&db_id=cp108&r_n=hr636.108&sel=TOC_338641
6 Feb 2008.

-- 
Clancy Ratliff
Assistant Professor and Director of First-Year Writing
Department of English
University of Louisiana at Lafayette
http://culturecat.net/