Order Code RL33023
CRS Report for Congress
Received through the CRS Web
Open Access Publishing and Citation Archives:
Background and Controversy
July 26, 2005
Genevieve J. Knezo
Specialist, Science and Technology
Resources, Science, and Industry Division
Congressional Research Service ˜ The Library of Congress

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Open Access Publishing and Citation Archives:
Background and Controversy
Summary
Controversies about open access publishing and archiving in science and
technology confront issues of copyright, governmental competition with the private
sector, and impacts upon the pace of scientific research. Different from traditional
publishing which requires fee-based subscriptions, most open access systems give
readers free online access to bibliographic citations or the full text of published and
non-published literature. There are also free, online, peer reviewed open access
scientific journals, sponsored by government or by nongovernmental publishers.
Some systems provide access to information in specific scientific and technical
fields, or at academic institutions, academic consortiums’ websites, or on author’s
websites. Open access publishing is estimated to constitute between 1% and 2% of
the scientific journal publishing market, which is estimated at $9 billion, annually.
Support for the open access “movement” stems from some librarians’ and
scientists’ objections to rising costs of subscriptions to journals; peer reviewers’
objections to providing free reviews for journals rapidly escalating in price; rapid
technological developments in computing capabilities; and the belief that scientific
collaboration, advancement, and utilization will be hastened by free access to
citations and articles. Traditional commercial publishers and some scholarly
scientific associations object to most open access efforts on the grounds that they
duplicate what publishers sell and erode profits. Some critics seek to limit free
government-run, citation repositories to include only federally sponsored research
results. Some oppose open access publishers’ requirements that charge authors fees
in the thousands of dollars to pay the costs of publishing articles. Others say that
foundation donations that sustain some open access activities are unreliable.
In 2003, a bill was introduced to encourage federal agencies to provide free
access to published results of all federally funded basic scientific research. In 2004,
congressional report language mandated that authors funded with National Institutes
of Health (NIH) research and development (R&D) support voluntarily submit within
12 months of publication, copies of their journal articles to NIH’s free access
database, PubMed Central. Many publishers opposed this policy. In 2005,
congressional report language on H.R. 3010 endorsed NIH’s new policy to archive
journal articles and mandated NIH to work with commercial publishers in expanding
its open access repository, PubChem, to avoid duplication with private efforts.
Controversial issues that could draw congressional attention include modifying
NIH’s Public Access policy to require that, instead of allowing readers direct access
to a published article, the government provide links to the original journal’s website
to allow publishers to charge fees; limiting federal systems to information derived
from federally funded R&D; monitoring the added costs of expanding PubMed
Central; determining if other agencies will use governmental nonexclusive licensing
to allow access to federally funded, commercially published journal articles
regardless of copyright ownership by a publisher; assessing the quality of science
published in open access journals; and evaluating the economic impacts of open
access publishing on traditional publishing. This report will be updated as needed.

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Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Definitions of Open Access Publishing and Database Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Selected Illustrations of Nongovernmental Open Access Activities . . . . . . . . . . 3
Open Access Journal Publishers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Public Library of Science (PLoS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
BioMedCentral . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Faculty of 1000 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Illustrations of Academic-Related Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
EScholarship Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
DSpace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Highwire Press . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Illustrations of Dedicated Subject or Disciplinary Archives . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
arXIV.org . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
CogPrints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
patientINFORM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Major Issues Relating to Open Access Publishing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Journal Publishing Costs and Sources of Revenue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Who Pays?: Traditional Journals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Who Pays?: Open Access Journals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Federal Policies For Paying Publication Costs in Relation to the
Future of Open Access Publishing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Rising Subscription Costs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
The Role of Foundation Support for Open Access Journals . . . . . . . . 13
Publishing Revenues Support Scientific Societies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Commercial and Open Access Publisher Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Journal Enhancements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Timing of Free Access to Journal Articles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Self-Archiving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Commercial and Open Access Search Engines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Copyright Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Economic Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Peer Review and Quality of Articles In Open Access Journals . . . . . . . . . . 17
National Institutes of Health “Enhanced Public Access Policy” . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Legislative Origins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
NIH’s Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
NIH’s PubMed Central (PMC) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Government Purpose License and Copyright Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Legislative Action 109th Congress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Criticisms of “NIH’s Enhanced Public Access Policy” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Issues Relating to Federal Open Access Database Archives and Publishing . . . 27
Federal Open Access Scientific and Technical Archival Databases . . . . . . 27
Objections to Government-Controlled Databases: Censorship and
Competition in the Free Market . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

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Allegations of Governmental Censorship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Curbs on Department of Energy Information Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Attempts to Curtail the Federal Database: PubChem . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Speculation About Differences in Federal Agency Policies . . . . . . . . 32
Interagency Activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
International Activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Summary of Policy Issues and Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Copyright . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Quality Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Monitoring of NIH Public Access Activities and Other Federal
Initiatives, Including PubChem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Who Pays? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Economic Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Appendix 1. Open Access Publishing: Selected Questions in Academia . . . . . . 38

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Open Access Publishing and Citation
Archives: Background and Controversy
Introduction
This report begins with an inventory of basic information: definitions and guides
to histories of the growth of open access publishing and citation archives and
descriptions of selected major open access activities. It moves on to summarize
major points of difference between proponents and opponents of nongovernmental
open access publishing and databases, and then highlights federal, including National
Institutes of Health (NIH), open access activities and contentious issues surrounding
these developments. The report also briefly describes open access developments in
the United Kingdom (where a number of governmental and nongovernmental
initiatives have occurred) and in the international arena. Finally, controversial issues
which could receive attention in the 109th Congress are summarized.
Definitions of Open Access Publishing and
Database Models
The “open access movement” is said to have begun in 1966.1 The term
describes a variety of activities that includes access to archives of indexed citations
of articles, access to separate journal articles that were published in traditional
journals, and access to free, online journals.2
1 With the inception of Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC), launched by the
U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Research and Improvement and the
National Library of Education. This database contains bibliographic citations for privately
published journal articles and allows retrieval of the text of other nonpublished materials.
Medline, a bibliographic system, was launched by the National Library of Medicine in 1966
(but not free until 1997). Source: “Timeline of the Open Access Movement,” by Peter
Suber, last revised Apr. 13, 2005, at [http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/timeline.htm].
This is an extensive history since 1966, with hotlinks to different systems and databases.
2 See the following information about open access publishing: Martin Frank, Margaret
Reich, and Alice Ra’anan, “A Not-For-Profit Publisher’s Perspective on Open Access, as
it was planned to be published in Serials Review, vol. 30, no. 4, 2004; “Budapest Open
Access Initiative,” available at [http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml]. See also
Peter Suber, “What You Can Do to Promote Open Access,” Last revised April 5, 2005, 11
p. [http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/do.htm]; “Budapest Open Access Initiative:
F r e q u e n t l y A s k e d Q u e s t i o n s , ” l a s t r e v i s e d M a r c h 2 7 , 2 0 0 5
[http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/boaifaq. htm]. Several open access online journals and
(continued...)

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CRS-2
In traditional publishing, the publisher, who holds the copyright to an article,
pays most printing and distribution costs and, in order to read an article, the journal
subscriber pays subscriber fees, whether for hard-copy or online versions.
Sometimes an author is required to pay printing page charges for complex graphics
or color presentations.
“Open access” publishing generally means that the author or publisher, who
holds the copyright to an article, grants all users unlimited, free access to, and license
to copy and distribute, a work published in an open access journal (which may be
published initially electronically or in hardcopy). Users can also make copies for
their personal use, if authorship is properly attributed. Open access publishing often
requires an author to pay for publishing or posting of a paper (fees range from about
$1,500 to $4,000). Generally, open access publishers require that a complete version
of the work and related materials be deposited electronically in an online database
that permits open access, distribution, interoperability (allowing users to extract and
use the data in other research), and long-term archiving.3
In “free access” publishing neither an author nor a reader pays for articles to be
published or posted on the Internet,4 but other open access features may not be
mandatory.
A few commercial publishers have adopted some open access features in their
business models. However, the fundamental difference is that traditional publishers
generally require readers to pay to read or print an article, or to search indexes of
abstracts or citations. Open access publishers generally do not require readers to pay
for these services. Some traditional publishers say they already provide open access
in that they may make papers freely available online — but this is usually a year or
two after publication. However, they still hold copyright, and they may or may not
allow the author to post his or her published articles in an open access repository or
database, or on the author’s own website.
The scope of open access repositories or archives varies. Some contain
published journal articles or nonpublished “grey literature” in all fields of science or
in specific scientific disciplines. Some archive a specific university’s researchers’
2 (...continued)
indexes of collections of these are available. For instance, see Open Access Bibliography:
Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-prints and Open Access Journals, information is
available at [http://www.escholarlypub.com/oab/oab.htm]; “List Issues: Open Access
( J o u r n a l ) C o l l e c t i o n s : E l e c t r o n i c R e s o u r c e s i n L i b r a r i e s , ”
[http://www.joanconger.net/ERIL/list_issues_openaccess. html]; SCIELO, available at
[http://scielo.org]; HighWire Press [http://highwire.stanford.edu/lists/freeart.dtl], and
PubMed Central, at [http://pubmedcentral.com].
3 Based on “Definition of Open Access,” which uses a modified version of the “Bethesda
Meeting on Open Access,” [http://www.plos.org/about/openaccess.html]. See “Open-
Access Publication of Medical and Scientific Research,” a Public Library of Science
Background Paper, Dec. 12, 2003.
4 Joanne S. Hawana, “Multiple Publishing Models Critical To Advancing Science, Journal
Publishing Societies Argue,” Washington Fax, Mar. 17, 2004.

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preprints, articles, or research reports; or, as in the case of the National Institutes of
Health model, published journal articles or other materials funded by a particular
federal agency or discipline. Some open access repositories archive only citations for
articles or other materials; some archive both citations and full text materials; some
allow free downloading and some do not.
Selected Illustrations of Nongovernmental Open
Access Activities
A variety of nongovernmental open access publishing activities is illustrated
next with summaries of some current major open access information systems or
publishers. These are categorized by general type, including commercial open access
systems academic-sponsored systems; and subject or disciplinary systems. NIH’s
PubMed Central system is described in detail in the section of this report that focuses
on NIH.
Open Access Journal Publishers
Public Library of Science (PLoS). PLoS is a nonprofit group, spearheaded
in large part by Dr. Harold Varmus, former NIH director. It provides readers with
free access to peer reviewed articles published in PLoS’s electronic journals. The
activity is supported by author payments starting at $1,500 per article and multi-
million dollar philanthropic foundation contributions. PLoS’s journals include PLoS
Biology, PLoS Medicine, PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS Genetics, and PLoS
Pathogens.5 PLoS seeks to launch journals in other disciplines. It has the goal of
publishing highly selective, top-quality articles competitive with the quality of
articles in traditional journals like Science and Nature. Different from traditional
publishing, which requires authors to cede copyright to the publisher, authors who
publish in PLoS retain copyright to an article, but are required to deposit a copy of
the article in an open access, online repository that allows long-term archiving.6
Reportedly, one of the group’s major goals is to make research more accessible by
eliminating publishers as copyright holders and by ending the “balkanization” of
scientific information in separate databases. Under PLoS’s editorial policy, “any data
can be integrated into new work as long as the original author is credited
appropriately. The model is inspired by GenBank, the central repository of DNA
sequence whose open access policy has driven much of the progress in genomics and
biotechnology of the last decade.”7 PLoS has announced that it will assist scientists
5 Janet Coleman, “Public Library of Science to Launch 3-4 New Open-Access Scientific
Journals in 2005,”Washington Fax, Oct. 29, 2004.
6 Information about PLoS and related archives is available at
[http://www.plos.org/about/openacess.html].
7 Amy Harmon, “New Premise in Science; Get the Word Out Quickly, Online,” Dec. 17,
2002, New York Times.

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in developing countries by providing Internet access for readers of limited bandwidth,
and will waive or defray author charges for those who cannot afford to pay.8
BioMedCentral. A British-founded, independent, commercial publishing
system, which provides free access to peer reviewed biomedical research published
online.9 It publishes its own approximately 120 biomedical journals and says articles
are rapidly peer reviewed; peer review policies are determined by each journal’s
board. Authors retain copyright of their work. BioMedCentral charges authors or
their institutions for the costs of peer review and publication. “Other sources of
revenue include subscription access to commissioned articles, sales of paper copies
of our journals to libraries, sales of reprints, advertising and sponsorship, and ... a
range of subscription-based value added services such as literature reviews and
evaluation, personalized information services delivered electronically, provision of
editorially enhanced databases, tools that help scientists collaborate, and other
software research aids.”10 It archives materials in PubMed Central, NIH’s open
access database.
Faculty of 1000. BioMedCentral has created a fee-based subscription service
called Faculty of 1000.11 It originated because the publication of so many articles in
online journals (sometimes free to readers) with varying degrees of peer review has
spawned a new industry: peer reviewers or experts who evaluate articles after
publication and provide a selected list of articles recommended for reading to their
paid subscribers.
Illustrations of Academic-Related Systems
Some universities ensure that their scholars’ publications are available online
in a free open access repository by creating their own archives or participating in
networked open access archives. Several examples are outlined next.
EScholarship Program. The EScholarship Program of the University of
California system was launched in the fall of 2003. It is an electronic, searchable
repository that makes freely available an archive of the publications (and other
media) and some research databases of University of California researchers. The
vehicle is also used to disseminate the university’s own open access, peer reviewed
published journals.12 Supporters of systems like this say that indexing materials
improves access to them and, if full text is available, widens reader access, and
improves utilization of federally financed research and development.13
8 “PLoS, Frequently Asked Questions,” available at [http://www.plos.org/faq.html].
9 Available at [http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/].
10 Available at [http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/about/whatis].
11 Available at [http://www.facultyof1000.com/about/key].
12 Available at [http://escholarship.edlib.org].
13 “UC to Launch Open-access Journals” The Scientist, June 16, 2003.

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DSpace. A number of research universities14 are participating in DSpace, a
networked multi-member electronic repository that indexes and shares some research
data, articles, and other media.15 It was developed by the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT) in collaboration with Hewlett-Packard. Some universities, such
as Cornell, reportedly, are using it to provide free access to peer reviewed
publications.
Highwire Press. This is an archive run by Stanford University that provides
full-text articles for biomedical and other scientific journals. It adheres to the post-
publication timing policies of each journal, with most articles archived and made
accessible between 6 and 24 months after publication in the original traditionally
published journal. Some of these articles, but not all, may be viewed for free.16
Illustrations of Dedicated Subject or Disciplinary Archives
Some repositories permit free searching for citations, abstracts, articles, or other
materials in specific disciplinary fields or areas of application, or by researchers
affiliated with specific academic systems, or by other researchers. A few illustrations
are given next.
arXIV.org.17 Initiated in 1991, this is an archive for free scientific publishing,
which allows physical science researchers to make preprints of their papers available
before formal publication. Maintained by the Cornell University Library18 (in
cooperation with the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy),
it includes articles in the following subjects: physics, mathematics, nonlinear
sciences, computer science, and quantitative biology. According to PLoS, “This
server expanded from its initial role as a vehicle for sharing preprints in theoretical
14 Including Brigham Young University; Case Western Reserve University; Chapel Hill
School of Information and Library Science Electronic Theses and Dissertations; Cornell
University; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; DLEARN at the University
of Arizona; Drexel University; DSpace@Cambridge; DSpace at MIT; DSpace at University
of Rochester; Edinburgh Research Archive; Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University; WETD
of Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore ( etd@IISc ); George Mason University; Hong
Kong University of Science and Technology; IDeA, Indiana University Purdue University
Indiana; Dspace at Indiana University Of Pennsylvania; Kansas State Publications Archival
Collection, Kansas State Historical Society and Kansas State Library; KU ScholarWorks;
Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico; Portfolio@Duke University; RIT Digital
Media Library; SMARTech Scholarly Materials and Research at Georgia Tech; Texas A&M
University Libraries Institutional Repository; T-Space at The University of Toronto
Libraries; University of New Mexico, DSpaceUNM; University of Oregon Scholars’ Bank;
University of Tennessee in Knoxville; University of Texas at Austin, School of Information;
University of Washington, Seattle; University of Wisconsin; Vanderbilt University
e-Archive; Washington University, St. Louis; Woods Hole Open Access Server.
15 Available at [http://www.dspace.org/].
16 Available at [http://highwire.stanford.edu/lists/freeart.dtl].
17 Available at [arXIV.org].
18 “Scientific Publishing: Who Will Pay for Open Access?,” Nature, Oct. 9, 2003. See also
[http://arxiv.org/].

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CRS-6
high-energy physics to its current role as the principal ‘library’ for a large fraction of
research literature in physics, computer sciences, astronomy, and many mathematical
specialities. Today, more than half of all research articles in physics are posted to
this server prior to their publication in conventional journals. In many fields, these
“eprints” are the de facto publications of record.”19
CogPrints. Some types of foreign open access publishing include access to
U.S.-generated research findings. CogPrints is a free, British-run, self-archive of
full-text, electronically available, published, peer reviewed journal articles as well as
preprints of unrefereed articles in the “cognitive sciences, including any area of
psychology, neuroscience, and linguistics; many areas of computer science (e.g.,
artificial intelligence, robotics, vison, learning, speech, neural networks); philosophy
(e.g., mind, language, knowledge, science, logic); biology (e.g., ethology, behavioral
ecology, sociobiology, behavior genetics, evolutionary theory); medicine (e.g.,
psychiatry, neurology, human genetics, imaging); anthropology (e.g., primatology,
cognitive ethnology, archeology, paleontology), as well as any other portions of the
physical, social and mathematical sciences that are pertinent to the study of
cognition.”20
patientINFORM. In spring 2005 patientINFORM21 was launched by the
American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, and the American
Diabetes Association, in partnership with more than 20 publishing firms, to provide
immediate access to free, selected full-text research articles and materials from the
three organizations’ websites, which provide links to different types of published
materials. “According to the group, the initiative ‘is being driven by recent trends
indicating that public awareness of clinical research, heightened by media coverage
and fueled by the spread of broadband Internet, has led more and more patients to go
online to find the latest information about treatment options.’ “22 NIH’s decision to
launch its system also, reportedly, accelerated the formation of the system. After a
period of evaluation, “ ... the group will determine whether to expand its focus past
the three initial diseases into rarer conditions.”23
19 “PLoS History,” available at [http://www.publiclibraryofscience.org/about/history.html].
20 See [http://cogprints.org/].
21 Information is available at [http://www.patientinform.org/]. Participating publishers and
associations include the International Association of Science, Technical and Medical
Publishers; the Association of American Publishers/Professional and Scholarly Publishers;
Johns Hopkins’ Welch Medical Library; and the National Library of Medicine’s
MedLinePlus; the American Association for the Advancement of Science; the American
Medical Association; the American Physiological Association; Oxford University Press;
Blackwell Publishing; Elsevier Publishing; BMJ Publishing Group; Nature Publishing
Group; and Springer and Wiley.
22 Andrew Hawkins, “Journal Publishers, Advocacy Groups Spearhead New Open Access
Initiative,” Washington Fax, Dec. 13, 2004.
23 Hawkins, op. cit., Dec. 13, 2004.

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Major Issues Relating to Open Access Publishing
Controversies arise because developments in open access systems and policies
seem to have outpaced society’s ability to design equitable and efficient mechanisms
and economic reward structures to manage transitions between traditional and open
access publishing and archiving.24
Major arguments made by supporters of open access publishing (largely
scientists, librarians, and some non-profit publishers) are that it rides the new wave
of inevitable changes in publishing and electronic dissemination of information due
to development of the Internet,25 hastens scientific progress, gives access to more
readers, promotes economic development, and, in the case of federally funded
research, provides citizens with ready access to the results of research and
development that their taxes funded.
Opponents of open access publishing (primarily traditional publishers and major
scientific associations) cite such issues as the doubtful permanence of electronic
archives, questions of copyright ownership and reductions to traditional publishers’
profits, costs to researchers who have to pay to have their manuscripts published in
open access journals, the possibly dubious quality of articles published, questions
about peer review processing and quality, perceptions of the academic community
and the academic reward system which appear to give more status to articles
published in traditional journals, and so forth.26 See Appendix 1 for a list of
additional issues raised about the impact of open access publishing on the academic
community, scholarship, and teaching.
The following sections elaborate on some of these issues.
Journal Publishing Costs and Sources of Revenue
The costs of publishing a journal article include preparing the manuscript for
publication (initial sorting and selection of manuscripts to be refereed, peer review,
24 See, for instance, Julie M. Esanau and Paul F. Uhlir, eds., Open Access and the Public
Domain in Digital Data an Information for Science, Proceedings of an International
Symposium, Published by U.S. National Committee for CODATA, National Academies
Press, Washington, D.C., 2004.
25 David Stern, “Archival Issues Regarding Electronic Scientific Literature,” Presentation
at session on “The Future of Scientific Communication (Formerly Known as Publishing),”
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Meeting, Apr. 21, 2005.
26 According to one author, barriers to open access publishing include legal framework
issues; differences in IT-infrastructure and technologies; business models and costs;
indexing services and standards of materials placed in open-access archives; the academic
reward system; and marketing and critical mass issues. The importance of each type of
barrier varies with the type of open access repositories, whether open-access journal,
subject-specific repositories maintained by disciplinary groups; or institutional repositories,
maintained by academic institutions. The author provides a matrix and specific details for
each of the 18 cells in his analysis in: Bo-Christer Bjork, “Open Access to Scientific
Publications - An Analysis of the Barriers to Change?”, Information Research, Jan. 2004.

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selection, editing, layout, table of contents, overhead, letters to the editor, etc.) and
distribution. According to a Wall Street Journal story, costs for publishing an article
typically range from $3,000 to $4,000.27 However, these costs can average more than
$10,000 for some journals, such as Science magazine, which publishes only a small
fraction of the articles submitted (about 7%),28 but have high value-added costs,
which include reviewing all articles submitted and selecting those that will be
published, layout, graphics, distribution, and so forth. Another author has estimated
costs for publishing an article in other journals: BioScience, about $7,000 per article;
Nature and New England Journal of Medicine, in excess of $1,500.29
The comparative costs of publishing electronic journals versus traditional
journals are uncertain. Some observers say that article processing costs are similar
for print and electronic30 publications, yet at least one researcher’s data indicate that
electronic publishing and distribution are cheaper than hard copy publishing.31
Who Pays?: Traditional Journals. Traditional publishers usually incur
most of the costs of publishing an article. Revenue comes from subscriptions,
advertising, reprints, and, in some cases, from authors who are asked to subsidize the
costs of color printing or printing of complex graphics, and, in some cases, page
charges for publishing articles in traditional hardcopy journals. Preliminary data
from an ongoing study which is surveying sources of revenue for traditional and open
access publishers indicates that the three largest sources of revenue for traditional
journal publishers are subscriptions, which provided 67% of total revenue; industry
support (advertising and sponsorship) at 12%; and author fees and charges, at 9%.32
Who Pays?: Open Access Journals. Reportedly, most, but not all, open
access journals require authors to pay from $1,500 to $4,000 for publishing costs.
Open access journals also receive funds from advertising, corporate sponsorships,
government grants, the use of volunteers, and, foundation grants.33 The ongoing
27 Bernard Wysocki, Jr., “Peer Pressure: Scholarly Journals’ Premier Status is Diluted by
Web,” Wall Street Journal, May 23, 2005, p. A1.
28 Wysocki, May 23, 2005, op. cit.
29 David Malakoff, “Opening the Books on Open Access,” Science, Oct. 24, 2003, p. 551.
30 Donald W. King, “The Economics of Science Publishing,” Presentation at Session on
“The Future of Scientific Communication (Formerly Known as Publishing),” American
Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Meeting, Apr. 21, 2005.
31 King, op. cit., Apr. 21, 2005.
32 “Variations on Open Access: A Study of the Impact of Alternative Business Models on
Financial and Non-financial Aspects of Scholarly Journals,” Preliminary Results Presented
14 March 2005, London Book Fair by Kaufman-Wills Group, LLC. The study called
traditional publishers “Delayed OA” publishers.
33 PLoS’s webpage includes the following information: “PLoS is a tax-exempt, 501(c)3,
nonprofit corporation headquartered in San Francisco, California (Federal Tax ID
68-0492065). PLoS is governed by an eleven-member Board of Directors. PLoS co-founder
Harold Varmus is Chairman of the Board. PLoS has received financial support in the form
of grants from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Sandler Family Supporting
(continued...)

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study cited above identified the three largest sources of revenue for open access
journal publishers as industry support (advertising and sponsorship) at 37%; author
fees and charges at 30%; and grants, at 13%.34
This same study showed that “contrary to expectations, author fees were charged
by a larger fraction of traditional journals than open-access journals.”35 Author fees
include charges for color printing, page layout, page publication charges, and so
forth. This finding, in combination with the data on percentage sources of revenue,
appears to mean that in relation to the total number of publishers, more traditional
publishers than open access publishers charged fees to authors, but the payments (as
a percentage of publishers’ total revenue) were less to traditional publishers than to
open access publishers. The fees traditional publishers charged to authors were
primarily for small changes, color views, and related items, rather than the larger fees
open access journals charge authors to publish in the open access journal.36
Federal Policies For Paying Publication Costs in Relation to the
Future of Open Access Publishing. Among the issues related to “author pays,”
and possibly to the future of open access journals, is whether the federal government
will allow part of research grant funding to be used to pay charges levied on authors
or institutions for the costs of publishing articles resulting from federally funded
research. This may become a more prominent issue if open access publishing
becomes a larger part of the market.
Now, pursuant to OMB’s guidelines, federal agencies that award funds for
scientific research permit investigators at universities, colleges, and nonprofit
institutions to charge the costs of publishing a scientific article as an allowable direct
cost (usually paid in full) if the funding agency agrees that they are an appropriate
part of the project. If the costs of publishing are disallowed as direct costs, the
federal governments likely will pay for these costs as part of “facilities and
33 (...continued)
Foundation, the Irving A. Hansen Memorial Foundation, the Open Society Institute (OSI),
and the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC). PLoS also receives support through
donations, sponsorships, and memberships from private citizens, universities, and other
organizations” [http://www.plos.org/about/index.html]. It reported that it received a $9
million grant from the Moore Foundation to start operations for four years
[http://www.plos.org/about/index.html].
34 “Variations on Open Access,” op. cit. and interviews with an author of the study, July
2005, who agreed with this interpretation of the data.
35 Lila Guterman, “New Study Compares Open-Access and Traditional Publishing,”
Chronicle of Higher Education, Mar. 25, 2005. “The survey was conducted by the
Kaufman-Wills Group, publishing consultants based in Baltimore. It was financed by groups
that are affiliated largely with traditional journals: the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, the Association of American Medical Colleges, the Association
of Learned and Professional Publishers, and HighWire Press, which produces online
versions of journals and is operated by Stanford University.” An author of the study,
“Variations on Open Access,” op. cit., agreed with this interpretation of the data. (Interview
held July 2005.)
36 See also “Variations on Open Access,” op. cit.

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administrative” (F&A) indirect costs, if the research was federally sponsored and if
the journal levies similar charges on all research papers published by the journal.37
If the cost is covered as an F&A indirect cost, full reimbursement may not occur due
to limitations on recoveries of some indirect costs.
Some federal agencies have issued policy guidance about allowing as a direct
cost of project support, fees for publication and page charges in order to disseminate
reports of the agency’s federally funded research results. The National Science
Foundation (NSF), for instance, says,
The proposal budget may request funds for the costs of documenting, preparing,
publishing or otherwise making available to others the findings and products of
the work conducted under the grant. This generally includes the following types
of activities: reports, reprints, page charges or other journal costs (except costs
for prior or early publication); necessary illustrations; clean up, documentation,
storage and indexing of data and databases; development, documentation and
debugging of software; and storage, preservation, documentation, indexing, etc.,
of physical specimens, collections or fabricated items.38
According to NIH, the following publication costs are allowed:
Page charges for publication in professional journals are allowable if the
published paper reports work supported by the grant and the charges are levied
impartially on all papers published by the journal, whether or not by government-
sponsored authors. The cost of reprints and publishing in another media, such as
books, monographs and pamphlets, also are allowable. Publications and journal
articles produced under an NIH grant-supported project must bear an
acknowledgment and disclaimer as appropriate, as provided in Administrative
Requirements — Availability of Research Results: Publications, Intellectual
Property Rights, and Sharing Research Resources.”39
While publication costs, library fees, and journal subscription costs related to
a research project may be allowable costs of federally supported research, it is not
known if these allowances will extend to charges for institutional subscriptions for
publication costs that open access journals sometimes charge to cover all author
payment charges for scientists affiliated with a specific institution. At least one
37 Rules for educational institutions are found in Circular A-21, “Cost Principles for
Educational Institutions,” Revised May 1, 2004. See section D, for information about direct
costs. See section J39, for treatment of publication and printing as F&A “facilities and
administrative” indirect costs. Circular A-21 also allows costs of subscriptions as “facilities
and administrative” indirect costs. Rules governing nonprofit institutions are discussed in
OMB Circular A-110, “Cost Principles for Non-profit Organizations.” See the section,
Attachment B, items 33 and 41.
38 National Science Foundation, Grant Proposal Guide, September 2004, NSF 04-23,
Section II. 2.g.vi(b).
39 “Selected Items of Cost,” in Part II, Terms and Conditions of NIH grant Awards, Subpart
a: General — File 3 of 5,” in NIH Grants Policy Statement (12/03).

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report cautions that some federal agencies may not allow this.40 Harold Varmus, a
co-founder of PLoS, considers “publishing fees as the final, relatively cheap step of
a research project” and contends that the federal government should pay for these
costs.41
In 2003, the UK Wellcome Trust, a large research charity that supports
biomedical research in the United Kingdom, announced its support of online open
access journals and said it would allow scientists it funds to use a portion of their
grant to pay author charges required by the journals.42 The U.S.-based Howard
Hughes Medical Institute allows grantees to use up to $3,000 to spend for publishing
in open access journals.
Supporters of open access sometimes contend that now most publishing costs
are borne by research sponsors, such as the federal government, and that allowing
these sponsors to shift support to pay for open access publishing will not cost more
and will provide more benefits to society. For instance,
Asking research sponsors to pay for publication of the research they support may
seem to impose new financial burdens on the government agencies, foundations,
universities and companies that sponsor research. But these organizations already
pay most of the costs of scientific publishing — a huge fraction of the US $9
billion annual revenue of scientific, medical, and technology journals comes
from subscriptions, site licenses, and publication fees ultimately billed to grants
or employers. Much of the rest is borne by society in the form of increments to
university tuitions; healthcare costs, including drug prices; and state and federal
taxes that subsidize healthcare, libraries, and education. Surely the cost of open-
access digital publishing cannot, in total, be more than we are already paying
under the subscription and licensing model. By simply changing the way we
support the scientific publishing enterprise, the scientific community and public
would preserve everything we value in scientific publishing and gain all of the
benefits of open access.43
In opposition, some say if the government paid such costs, money would be
diverted inappropriately from research to publishing. Some universities say their
costs will increase if they need to reimburse researchers to pay author fees for open
access journals and if they still have to pay high costs for subscriptions to traditional
journals.44 In addition, some young scientists/investigators say that business models
that force authors to pay for publication in open access journals could hurt them since
40 Catherine Zandonella, “Economics of Open Access,” The Scientist, Aug. 22, 2003.
41 Malakoff, op. cit., Oct. 24, 2003, p. 553.
42 Declan Butler, “Wellcome to Fund Publication in Open-access Journals,” Nature, Oct.
2003.
43 Patrick O. Brown, Michael B. Eisen, and Harold E. Varmus, “Why PLoS became a
Publisher,” PLoS Biology, vol. 1, no. 1, p. 1.
44 Lila Guterman, “The Promise and Peril of ‘Open’ Access,” The Chronicle of Higher
Education, Jan. 30, 2004, op. cit.

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they often have smaller grants and “... an author-pays model could amount to a ‘tax
for productivity.’”45
Rising Subscription Costs
It has been reported that traditional academic publishing has a $5 billion global
market,46 and that one of the leading publishers, Reed Elsevier journals, “bring[s] in
about $1.6 billion in annual revenue with an operating-profit margin of about 30%.”
This profit, according to the same source, could be cut to between 10% to 15% if
open access publishing were expanded.47 (The total scientific and technical journal
market has been estimated at $9 billion.)48
Subscription costs vary depending upon the journal and how many journals an
institution subscribes to. Prices also vary for individual versus institutional
subscriptions. According to one article, in October 2003 two scientists at the
University of California at San Francisco were charged $91,000 “from Elsevier’s Cell
Press unit for one-year’s access to six biology journals.”49 The University of
California in 2003 was reportedly charged $7.7 million a year for subscriptions to
1,200 Elsevier periodicals, which was a 25% price reduction from the original bill,
negotiated after faculty moves to boycott Elsevier journals if the original bill price
were not reduced.50 Reportedly, sometimes sales are increased by publishers forcing
libraries to subscribe to more than they want because publishers often “... bundl[e]
... journal subscriptions into large contracts often not well matched with institutional
research interests.”51 This includes bundling together journals that are made
available electronically in database systems that access current and archived journals.
Bundling of this sort can force libraries to pay for access to the same journal several
times if it is included in more than one database to which the library subscribes.52
Rising journal subscription costs, it is argued, are too expensive, making it
difficult for libraries, especially university libraries and the public to afford many
45 Andrew J. Hawkins, “Scientists at NIH Open access Meeting Fear Author-pays Publishing
Would Hurt Young Investigators,” Washington Fax, Aug. 21, 2004.
46 This is the figure for academic market sales and is less than the $9 billion figure cited by
Brown, Eisen and Varmus, op. cit., possibly because it excludes some sales and consumers.
47 Wysocki, May 23, 2005, op. cit. The profit margin reduction figures, according to
Wysocki are from an estimate by “Sami Kassab, analyst at investment house Exane BNP
Paribas in London....”
48 Brown, Eisen and Varmus, op. cit.
49 Wysocki, May 23, 2005, op. cit.
50 Wysocki, May 23, 2005, op. cit.
51 Jocelyn A. Rankin and Sandra G. Franklin,”Open Access Publishing,” Emerging
Infectious Diseases, July 2004, pp. 1352-1353.
52 Interview with CRS librarian, July 2005.

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CRS-13
journals,53 and forcing them to sacrifice spending on other media. Reportedly, Rick
Johnson, Director of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition
(SPARC), said that because of rising costs, library spending on print media is shifting
from monograph and other materials to support largely journal subscriptions, with
price per journal reportedly having doubled within 15 years. He illustrated this by
saying that while the Consumer Price Index increased 64 percent, libraries are paying
227 percent more for journal subscriptions.54 According to a National Library of
Medicine report, Access to Biomedical Research Information, prepared for Congress
in June 2004, “prices of commercial biomedical titles increased 224% from 1988 to
1998, while the prices of nonprofit titles increased 129%.”55 The report was quoted
as saying that “ ‘These trends have adversely affected the ability (from a cost
standpoint) of academic and health science libraries to continue to support the needs
of the research and health care provider communities for access to biomedical
literature ....’”56
The current open access movement has been fueled by actions of academics and
librarians located at the University of California campuses, as well as at other
academic sites, who, in late 2003 and 2004, mounted strenuous objections to
increases in costs for subscriptions to scientific journals. Some demanded a 25%
reduction in subscription fees from major scientific publishers, with Reed Elsevier
often cited as a major target, and said if fees were not reduced, they would relinquish
journal editorial board memberships or stop providing free peer reviews for major
scientific publishers.57
However, according to a May 23, 2005 Wall Street Journal article,”[c]urrently,
the open-access movement makes up between 1% and 2% of the market, experts say.
While that number seems small, the concept is assuming an important role
channeling academic discontent” about the rising costs of journals.58
The Role of Foundation Support for Open Access Journals. The
question as to whether open access journals can exist without subsidies may still be
unanswered. Some major open access journals (such as PLoS journals) receive large
contributions from foundations and also impose publishing costs on researchers,
which some universities may pay for via an institutional subscription. Some critics
complain that this money might otherwise have been used better to support the cost
of research. Others wonder whether open access journals and archives can be
sustained without philanthropic contributions and what will happen if foundation
contributions are ever reduced. It has been reported that several journals which
53 Rankin and Franklin, op. cit.
54 Damon Brown, “Open Access Journals Offer a New Way of Publishing,” Journal of the
American Dietetic Association, 2004, p. 1060.
55 As cited in Bradie Metheny, “Open Access Publishing Language in House Labor/HHS
Bill Stirs Controversy,” Washington Fax, July 20, 2004.
56 Cited in Metheny, July 20, 2004, op. cit.
57 This last point has been made by Wysocki, op. cit., and others.
58 Wysocki, op. cit.

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attempted to provide free access to readers reversed policies due to falling
subscription rates and revenues for print journals. These journals reportedly included
the Journal of High Energy Physics, which published online for free for six years;
it originally did not charge authors a fee, but ultimately decided “to impose a
subscription fee of about $1000 a year” for readers.59 Likewise, the British Medical
Journal, which had once allowed free online access, reportedly also said it would
start to charge for online access.60 There is also a question of whether, if publishing
patterns and revenue sources change, publishers will obtain enough revenue to be
able to risk starting up niche journals in narrow fields of science and which have a
small readership, which many traditional publishers have been able to do given their
revenue margins.61
Publishing Revenues Support Scientific Societies
The point is often made that scientific societies, which may publish on their own
or may use commercial publishers to publish their journals, reap considerable profits
from their share of journal revenues. They then use these profits to support societies’
activities, which can include advocacy and assistance to new researchers in the field.
Critics of this practice say that these professional associations need to find different
business models, or alternative ways to raise money, to support their activities instead
of using publishing profits, which are based on payments from subscribers, university
libraries, and, in many cases, indirect costs of federally funded R&D.
On the other hand, revenues to scientific societies may not decrease since, at
least according to one professional association, the rise of online publishing does not
reduce subscriptions to print journals. For instance, according to the American
Physical Society (APS), which receives journal publishing profits, preprints of
articles in physics, computer science, and mathematics are published on arXIV.org,
an open and publicly accessible archive. The editor-in chief of the American
Physical Society, reportedly said that
there has been no decline in the subscriber base of journals in those disciplines. In
fact the ‘contrary is true,’ he said. He explained APS journals have a very liberal
copyright policy that gives back to the author the right to post articles on e-print
servers even before journal publication. They also allow authors to update articles
on the servers, using the corrected journal form, after publication ....62
59 David Malakoff, “Money Woes Force Some to Change Course,” Science, Oct. 24, 2003,
p. 553.
60 Malakoff, Oct. 24, 2003, p. 553. For additional information about financial issues, see
Catherine Zandonella, “Economics of Open Access,” The Scientist, Aug. 22, 2003 and
Martin Frank, Margaret Reich, and Alice Ra’anan, “A Not-For-Profit Publisher’s
Perspective on Open Access,” preprint as forthcoming in Serials Review, vol. 30, no. 4,
2004, p. 6.
61 Wysocki, May 23, 2005, op. cit.
62 Bradie Metheny, “Public Representatives Call for Egalitarian Access to Published
Research,” Washington Fax, Aug. 10, 2004.

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Commercial and Open Access Publisher Practices
Proponents of open access have alleged that some publishers’ practices limit
equitable access to scientific information. These practices have been cited as
“restrictive licensing terms overriding copyright and fair use practices, [controls on]
long-term archival access to electronic content, and ... selective deletions of
published articles from database and e-publications.”63 Traditional publishers often
disagree and say that they are beginning to adopt some features of open access
publishing. Some of these features include, but are not limited to, developing
multimedia enhancements, allowing authors to self-archive their articles, and
improved content search capabilities.
Journal Enhancements. Some traditional publishers (like many open
access publishers) have taken steps to enhance the content of journal articles they
post online by permitting digital access, permitting access to ancillary databases and
related materials, or allowing posting of preprints in author’s websites or institutional
repositories.64 However, often traditional publishers charge a fee to view the journal
article or enhancements, “... with fees ranging from a few dollars to a few tens of
dollars.”65 Open access proponents say that fees should not be charged for access to
these kinds of information.
Timing of Free Access to Journal Articles. Some publishers already
allow free access to journal articles a year or more after publication But proponents
of open access have argued that the public or other users should not have to wait a
year or more to have access to research findings, especially for biomedical research
findings, that could be used to improve a patient’s health outcome. Another view is
that “... limited access to the full text of research articles is bad for science. Such
restrictions make it difficult for researchers to build on the entirety of what has gone
before and for readers to check whether they have done so. The practice might
contribute to citation bias since authors will only reference journals they can
access.”66 Still others may find that traditional publishers do not allow electronic
access to data in a form that other researchers can easily use to verify findings or to
compare in other research projects.
Self-Archiving. Open access publishers require or allow authors to self-
archive their articles immediately and to make them accessible for free. Some
traditional publishers now allow authors to self-archive on the author’s own website
the preprint of their article, or, after a delay, the published journal article. There are
a variety of models for this, sometimes with fees charged. Some traditional
publishers allow authors to self-archive the preprint and then link to the printed
version after publication (American Meteorological Association); some do not allow
63 Rankin and Franklin, op. cit.
64 Guterman, Jan. 30, 2004, op. cit..
65 Guterman, Jan. 30, 2004, op. cit.
66 Citing others, this quote is from Pritpal S. Tamber, Fiona Godlee, and Peter Newmark,
“Open Access to Peer-reviewed Research: Making It Happen,” The Lancet, Nov. 8, 2003,
pp. 1575-5777.

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posting of the article until a year or more after publication in the journal (American
Association for the Advancement of Science); some allow posting of an author’s
article only on an institutional or educational server, not the author’s personal self-
archive, (American Anthropological Association); and so forth. The policies of
hundreds of U.S. and foreign journals, associations, and publishers are summarized
in an inventory, published by SHERPA, a British open access project.67
Critics say that archiving only on the author’s website makes it hard to find sets
of related articles in particular subjects because articles are more accessible when
placed in freely searchable repositories that archive articles in many fields by many
authors and which can be searched by index or keyword terms.
Commercial and Open Access Search Engines. Some commercial
publishers already make available free search engines that allow readers to search for
citations or abstracts in specific fields or types of information. These include Scirus,
a search engine limited to science literature managed by Elsevier, which provides
access to a short abstract or excerpt. However, most full text articles found through
these searches are not accessible for free; costs to read or download an article
average $30 per article, which users or libraries are required to pay.68 Open access
bibliographic archives generally provide free access not only to abstracts or citations
in multiple fields, but also often to full-text articles. Open access proponents say that
there are multiple benefits to providing access in online repositories of collections of
articles since a reader’s search of such archives could identify many related papers
on one topic and would bypass the need for a reader to search individual authors’
websites or to use commercial indexing databases that typically charge a fee to read
an article.
Copyright Issues. Supporters of traditional publishing argue that publishers,
as copyright holders, need copyright protection in order to market journals and sell
reprints which support the costs of publishing and archiving both hardcopy and
electronic materials. Some also say that copyright ownership is required to guarantee
a researcher’s accuracy and the authenticity of authorship of an article. In open
access publishing, the author of the article retains copyright ownership, but access to
the article normally remains free to readers. As will be discussed below, a mixed
model is used in the case of NIH’s Public Access Policy, which asks authors to
voluntarily make published articles accessible on PubMed Central within a year of
journal publication or sooner. Publishers retain the exclusive right to disseminate the
work for the time before free access is permitted on PubMed Central, but authors are
encouraged to conclude agreements with publishers that allow them to place the
article in the database. According to NIH, regardless of the publisher’s decision, the
agency has the right to utilize the journal article under the government purpose
license doctrine. This view may be challenged. (See the section on NIH, below, for
more details.)
6 7 “Publisher Copyright Polici es and Sel f -Ar chi vi ng,” SHERPA,
[http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php?all=yes].
68 From [http://www.scirus.com].

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Economic Development
Open access publishing, according to many proponents, helps promote
economic, social, and technical development and equitable access to scientific
knowledge by researchers in countries unable to afford the costs of scientific journals
by hard copy or subscription web access. Many open access systems also say that
they will waive publication charges for authors from developing counties who cannot
afford to pay to have their articles published.
But some traditional publishers say that scientists in developing countries
already have free and ready access to many traditional scientific journals. For
example, many traditional publishers “... participate in projects sponsored by the
World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United
Nations to provide medical and agricultural journals to readers in developing
countries at low or no cost.”69 In addition, more than 2,000 biomedical journals are
accessible online to researchers and health workers in developing countries via a
philanthropic project called Health InterNework Access to Research Initiative
(HINASRI) supported in collaboration with the World Health Organization.70
Peer Review and Quality of Articles In Open Access Journals
There is a diversity of views about whether the articles that appear in open
access journals have been subject to the same kind of rigorous peer review as those
published in traditional journals and about whether they are of comparable quality.
The peer review process traditionally involves review of quality of the article and
selection of articles to be published in a journal. Usually journal editors or editorial
boards make an initial selection of articles to be peer reviewed from among those
submitted; use a panel of expert scientists who may volunteer their time to review
submissions; select articles to be published from among the articles peer reviewers
ranked as high quality; and sometimes do some editing.
A long-held principle is that the accumulation of high-quality scientific
knowledge rests on a foundation of publication, typically in commercially distributed
scientific journals, with the findings and results vetted and validated through a
process involving peer review and fee-based journal subscriptions. Critics allege that
the open access “author pays” model of paying for publishing costs, including peer
review, prevents quality control filtering mechanisms from working correctly and
that, in the long run, scientific articles published in open access sources may be less
credible than those published in journals which charge subscription fees.71 A survey
published in 2005, funded by traditional journal publishers, is reported to have found
that the quality of peer review was lower in open access than in traditionally
published journals:
69 Lila Guterman, Jan. 30, 2004, op. cit.
70 Brian D. Crawford, “Open-access Publishing: Where is the Value?” The Lancet, Nov. 8,
2003, pp. 1578-1580.
71 Crawford, op. cit.

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Open-access journals ... received fewer submissions and were less selective in
choosing among submissions. [It continued] essentially all of the journals
reported using editorial review to select and edit submissions. But nearly all of
the traditional journals used external peer review, while only editorial staff
members reviewed submissions of about 30 percent of the open-access journals.72
On the other hand, a study published in 2005 by a publishing analysis firm
showed that the quality of nearly 200 open access journals was almost as high in
specific medical disciplines as the quality of articles in traditionally published
journals.73
Some analysts say that peer review of open access journals suffers from the
difficulty of finding enough scientist peer reviewers for both the growing number of
open access journals and traditional journals. There is also the view that editorial
boards of open access journals, which appear to use primarily electronic review of
manuscripts, may not filter out unacceptable manuscripts as much as traditional
boards do. Thus peer reviewers for open access journals, which also report and
interact primarily electronically, may be swamped and, ultimately, there may be delay
in the system. Publication in peer reviewed journals figures prominently in
promotion and tenure processes in academia. Some observers contend that members
of the academic and scientific communities may not view publication on the Internet
or in an open access journal to be as prestigious as publication in traditional peer
reviewed journal.74
Others use citation data as a surrogate measure for quality. Some analysts cite
data showing that articles posted in open access journals or freely available on the
Internet are used and cited more frequently than those published in traditional
journals and are, therefore, a better model to ensure the speedy utilization of
scientific research. For instance,
! Experience in physics where researchers publish in traditional
journals and then self-archive their papers in a free database is
conducive to scientific communication and favorable to authors
since “ ... papers listed in free archives often get more citations ....”75
! A recent study showed that in four disciplines, philosophy, political
science, electrical and electronic engineering, and mathematics,
articles that are freely available via open access publishing have a
greater research impact than those not available via open access.
72 Lila Guterman, “New Study Compares Open-Access and Traditional Publishing,”
Chronicle of Higher Education, Mar. 25, 2005.
73 Alison McCook, “Open-access Journals Rank Well,”The Scientist, Apr, 27, 2005.
74 Points raised in the discussion session of a meeting on “The Future of Scientific
Communication (Formerly Known as Publishing),” American Association for the
Advancement of Science (AAAS) Meeting, Apr. 21, 2005.
75 Alison McCook, “Open Access to U.S. Govt. Work Urged,” The Scientist, July 21, 2004.

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Impact is measured by citations made by other researchers to the
literature in the ISI Web of Science database.76
! In computer sciences, “ ... a 2001 study in Nature, showed that, at
least in one set of disciplines, papers that appear free online are more
likely to be cited by other researchers than those that do not. A
scientist at NEC Research Institute analyzed nearly 120,000 papers
in computer science and related titles. Those that were freely
available online had been cited more often in other papers than were
those not online, he found. The average number of citations of
offline papers was 2.74, compared with 7.03 for those freely
available online.”77
One implication of these data should be noted. Ease of access to articles readily
available online, as opposed to those that may be accessible only in hard-copy
journals, may increase the propensity to cite them. Thus citation data may not so
much measure quality as accessibility.
National Institutes of Health “Enhanced Public
Access Policy”
Legislative Origins
On June 26, 2003, Representative Martin O. Sabo introduced the “Public Access
to Science Act” (H.R. 2613, 108th Congress), which would have denied copyright
protection to publications resulting from federally funded basic scientific research in
order to encourage free dissemination of research results to the public.78 No action
was taken on this bill.
Subsequently, the House Appropriations Committee’s report on the FY2005
Labor/HHS bill, H.R. 5006, July 14, 2004, contained language that led to the NIH’s
76 Kristin Antelman, “Do Open-Access Articles Have a Greater Research Impact?,” College
and Research Libraries, vol. 65, no. 5, pp. 372-282 (Available via E-LIS).
77 Lila Guterman, Jan. 30, 2004, op. cit.
78 It proposed to “Amend ... Federal copyright law to declare copyright protection
unavailable to any work produced pursuant to scientific research substantially funded by the
Federal Government to the extent provided in the funding agreement entered into by the
relevant Federal agency pursuant to this Act; Require ... any Federal department or agency
that enters into a funding agreement with any person for the performance of scientific
research substantially funded by the Federal Government to include in the agreement a
statement that copyright protection is not available for any work produced pursuant to such
research under the agreement; and express the sense of Congress that any Federal
department or agency that enters into such funding agreements should make every effort to
develop and support mechanisms for making the published results of the research conducted
pursuant to the agreements freely and easily available to the scientific community, the
private sector, physicians, and the public.” (CRS Summary).

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“Enhanced Public Access Policy” (House Report 108-636, p. 104). This report
contained language, reported to have been authored by Representative Ernest J.
Istook, Jr.,79 which said that it “recommends” that NIH permit open access to NIH-
funded research by “requiring” researchers to deposit peer reviewed articles accepted
for publication and associated supplemental materials in NIH’s PubMed Central
(PMC), an open access information system, within six months after publication of the
article in a scientific journal. If NIH awarded funds for publishing, the research
would be made available immediately upon publication. It also instructed NIH to
draft a report by December 1, 2004 on how it would implement this policy.
Reportedly “librarians and the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources
Coalition, or SPARC,” lobbied “the Appropriations Committee behind the scenes to
include the open-access language in the committee’s report ....”80
The conference report on the FY2005 Consolidated Appropriations Act, P.L.
108-447 (House Report 108-792, p. 1177), which included funds for Labor/HHS,
directed NIH to consider input from publishers as it developed its public access
policy, directed NIH to continue to work with publishers to insure the integrity of the
peer review system, and requested that NIH “... provide the estimated costs of
implementing this policy each year in its annual’ budget justification ...” in response
to concerns from publishers that NIH’s database cannot easily handle the new articles
it will be required to archive.81
NIH’s Policy
NIH’s draft policy about archiving published articles that resulted from NIH
funding was released for public review and comment in September 2004.82 After
holding several meetings with stakeholders and considering numerous comments
from traditional publishers and others submitted during the public comment period,83
79 See:”Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related
Agencies Appropriations Act, 2005,” Remarks of Rep. Ernest Istook on the Floor of the
House, Congressional Record, Sept. 8, 2004, p. H6833; Andrew J. Hawkins, “Istook Will
Clarify NIH Open Access Publishing Language Intent on House Floor,” Washington Fax,
Aug. 31, 2004; and Jocelyn Kaiser, “... Congress Puts Similar Heat on NIH,” Science, July
23, 2004.
80 Andrea L. Foster, “House Committee Tells NIH to Post Research Results Online and
Make Them Free,” Chronicle of Higher Education, July 19, 2004.
81 Shirley Haley, “Omnibus Report Language on Open Access Called a Win By Scientific
Societies,” Washington Fax, Dec. 7, 2004.
82 The proposed “NIH Public Access Policy,” which solicited comments, appeared in the
N I H G u i d e f o r G r a n t s a n d C o n t r a c t s o n S e p t e mb e r 3 , 2 0 0 4
[http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-04-064.html] and in the Federal
Register on September 17, 2004, [http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/06jun20041800/
edocket.access.gpo.gov/2004/04-21097.htm].
83 These are described on the NIH website at [http://www.nih.gov/about/publicaccess/] and
are summarized in many articles, such as: Jocelyn Kaiser, “Seeking Advice on ‘Open
Access,’ NIH Get an Earful,” Science, August 6. 2004; Bradie Metheny, “Public
Representatives Call for Egalitarian Access to Published Research,” Washington Fax, Aug.
(continued...)

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NIH issued the final policy, which was published in the Federal Register on February
3, 2005.84 Implementation of the policy started on May 2, 2005. It asks authors
funded by NIH to voluntarily submit to NIH for inclusion in the NIH PubMed
Central system, articles accepted for journal publication, with the final version to be
submitted within 12 months after publication in a scientific journal (instead of six
months as originally proposed), or sooner if the publisher agrees. According to NIH,
the requirement is not mandatory and no penalties would be imposed if an author did
not submit an article to the free archive.85 Thus, NIH-funded scientists are asked to
...submit an electronic version of the author’s final manuscript, upon acceptance
for publication, resulting from research supported in whole or in part by NIH.
The author’s final manuscript is defined as the final version accepted for journal
publication, and includes all modifications from the publishing peer review
process. The policy gives authors the flexibility to designate a specific time
frame for public release — ranging from immediate public access after final
publication to a 12 month delay — when they submit their manuscripts to NIH.
Authors are strongly encouraged to exercise their right to specify that their
articles will be publicly available through PubMed Central (PMC) as soon as
possible.86
NIH allows researcher/authors to use the submission of the manuscript to meet
certain NIH grant reporting requirements.87 According to NIH, its policy is
compatible with existing publishing models. The agency said it,
83 (...continued)
10, 2004; Andrew Hawkins, “Open Access Should Be A ‘Cooperative Venture’ Between
NIH and Journals, NAS Urges,” Washington Fax, Nov. 15, 2004; Meredith Wadman,
“Director Hits back at Critics of Free Archive Plan,” Nature, Nov. 25, 2004; M.T.
Cavanaugh, “Open Doors: All NIH-funded Work Could Be Freely Available,” Nature, Nov.
25, 2004; Shirley Haley, “Publishing Delegation Offers Advice, Alternatives to NIH
Director on Open Access Plan,” Washington Fax, Nov. 5, 2004; Lila Guterman, “NIH
Proceeds With Plan to Provide Open Access to Scientific Papers,” Chronicle of Higher
Education, Sept. 1, 2004; Andrew Hawkins, “Publishers Argue for Public Access
Flexibility, Links to Journals,” Washington Fax, Nov. 19, 2004; Andrew Hawkins, “Public
Access Will Harm Journal/NIH Relationship, AAI Charges; Advocates Dispute Legal
Analysis,” Washington Fax, Nov. 22, 2004; Jocelyn Kaiser, “ NIH Unveils Public Access
Policy,” Science, Feb. 3, 2005; Andrew J. Hawkins, “NIH Says Public Access Policy will
Change How Science Is Understood,” Washington Fax, May 2, 2005.
84 “Policy on Enhancing Public Access to Archives Publications Resulting from NIH-Funded
Research,” Federal Register, Feb. 9, 2005, v. 70, no. 26, pp. 6891-6900.
85 NIH said in section P of the Federal Register rule, that while the House Appropriations
report proposed requiring submission, the NIH policy requesting rather than requiring
submission “is consistent with the final report language found on page 1177 of the Joint
Explanatory Statement in H.Rept. 108-792.” See also: NIH. “Questions and Answers: NIH
Public Access Policy,” Feb. 2005.
86 “NIH Calls on Scientists to Speed Public Release of Research Publications,” NIH News,
Feb. 3, 2005.
87 NIH, “Final NIH Public Access Policy Implementation,”March 15, 2005. The database
is available at [http://www.pubmedcentral.gov/].

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CRS-22
examined the access policies of the top 20 journals based on citation impact for
medicine and medical research and of the 50 journals published by members of
FASEB [Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology]. As of
October 2004, 80% of the 20 high impact journals allow public access of some
sort through HighWire press within 12 months of publication; of the 50 FASEB
journals, 78% offer public access within 12 months.”88
NIH has also created a Public Access Advisory Working Group of the National
Library of Medicine (NLM) Board of Regents composed of stakeholders to advise
NIH and NLM on policy implementation and evaluation. Modifications are to be
made to the system as it becomes operational and is studied by the group.
NIH Director Zerhouni justified the new policy by explaining that it provides
electronic access to NIH-funded research, permits formation of a central archive of
NIH-funded research publications, advances science by creating an information
resource that scientists can mine, and helps NIH “better manage its entire research
investment.”89
NIH’s PubMed Central (PMC)
PubMed Central is managed by the National Center for Biotechnology
Information of the National Library of Medicine (NLM). It is “the NIH digital
repository of full-text, peer-reviewed biomedical, behavioral, and clinical research
journals. It is a publicly accessible, stable, permanent, and searchable electronic
archive.”90 It does not publish articles; it provides a free repository for journals and
published articles that are posted to the site immediately or several months after
articles have been published. Free access is allowed to readers, but in some cases
only bibliographic information and abstracts are posted. NIH is statutorily mandated
to preserve biomedical literature91 and make it available, and does so via activities
of NLM.92
The NIH Director estimated that the added costs for posting all NIH-funded
research studies on PubMed Central’s digital library at around $2 to $4 million
annually.93 According to NIH, agency-supported research resulted in 60,000 to
65,000 published papers in 2003.94
88 NIH Director Zerhouni, “NIH: Advancing Science in the 21st Century,” March 24, 2005,
at FLICC Forum on Federal Information Policy, Library of Congress.
89 Zerhouni, op. cit., Mar. 24, 2005.
90 NIH. “Questions and Answers: NIH Public Access Policy,” Feb. 2005.
91 See 42 U.S.C. 286(b)(1).
92 See 42 U.S.C. 286.
93 Elias Zerhouni, “NIH Public Access Policy,” Science, Dec. 10, 2004. See also: Janet
Coleman, “Open Access Would Cost NIH Roughly $2.5 Million, Agency’s Lipman
Estimates,” WashingtonFax, Sept. 24, 2004.
94 Questions and Answers, op. cit.

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Government Purpose License and Copyright Issues
NIH documents indicate that its Public Access policy upholds the principles of
copyright since submission of manuscripts is voluntary and the statutory fair use
privilege still applies to public use of the archived articles. The agency issued
guidelines for authors on how to include, in a copyright agreement with a publisher,
language that acknowledges the author’s obligation to provide a copy of the article
to PubMed Central.95
NIH relies on obtaining permission from authors as the basis for its policy even
though “NIH does not need to seek permission from journals who may acquire
copyrights from authors or institutions because any copyright transfer or assignment
is currently subject to the government purpose license pursuant to 45 C.F.R. 74.36.”96
The term “government purpose license” is not used per se in the cited regulation, but
is implied. The regulation says,
The recipient may copyright any work that is subject to copyright and was
developed, or for which ownership was purchased, under an award. The HHS
awarding agency reserves a royalty-free, nonexclusive and irrevocable right to
reproduce, publish, or otherwise use the work for Federal purposes, and to
authorize others to do so (45 CFR 74.36(a)).
The concept of nonexclusive right to use the work is similar to the concept of
“government purpose license” that is used in the Federal Acquisition Regulation,
which governs federally funded contracts. Government purpose licensing permits
agencies to disseminate to the public scientific and technical articles based on, or
containing data produced from, research funded by the agency. The government may
subsequently use and distribute the scientific and technical articles as submitted to
a publisher or as published in a journal if the publisher has not added any original
materials, such as publisher-prepared abstracts or peer review comments. However,
generally an agency should obtain a publisher’s written permission to reuse or
republish the article as published in the journal.97 Use of “government purpose
authority”per se to disseminate published journal articles to the public may be limited
to contracts funded by those agencies whose originating or authorizing legislation
95 Questions and Answers, op. cit.
96 Federal Register, Section P. Legal Issues.
97 According to the source: “FAR Subpart 27.4 — Rights in Data and Copyrights provides
copyright guidance for the civilian agencies and NASA. In addition, agencies may have
their own FAR Supplements that should be followed.” The authority granted to the
government to use the published version of an article resulting from federally funded
research support is implied to be applicable to grants also. See section 4, “Works Created
Under a Federal Contact or Grant,” of Frequently Asked Questions About Copyright A
Template for the Promotion of Awareness Among CENDI Agency Staff,
CENDI/2004-8.Updated August 2004, HTML last modified May 04, 2005, Edited and
updated by Bonnie Klein, Defense Technical and Information Service and Gail Hodge,
Information International Associates, Inc., Published by CENDI Secretariat, Information
International Associates, Inc., Oak Ridge, TN, August 2004. CENDI is a federal
interagency committee, the Commerce, Energy, NASA, Defense Information Managers
Group. Available at [http://cendi.dtic.mil/publications/04-8copyright.html].

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mandates them to preserve and/or disseminate information to the general public
about the agencies’ activities and research results.98
Other agencies that support scientific grants are governed by OMB Circular
A110-section 36, which allows copyrighting by the owner of the work produced from
the award of federal funds, but gives the government a nonexclusive right to use it.
Specifically,
The recipient may copyright any work that is subject to copyright and was
developed, or for which ownership was purchased, under an award. The Federal
awarding agency(ies) reserve a royalty-free, nonexclusive and irrevocable right
to reproduce, publish, or otherwise use the work for Federal purposes, and to
authorize others to do so.99
The Circular A-110 language does not appear to require agencies’ enabling
legislation to mandate dissemination of research findings, although agency
regulations generally require grantees to publish or disseminate the findings of their
research and to share data generated by such research. See, for instance, the NSF
Grant Policy Manual which specifies that “Investigators are expected to promptly
prepare and submit for publication with authorship that accurately reflects the
contributions of all those involved, all significant findings from work conducted
under NSF grants.” 100
Other federal research funding agencies likely to invoke government purpose
license or nonexclusive right to use policies if they were to participate in open access
systems like NIH’s that archive published articles include the National Science
Foundation, the Department of Energy, and the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration.
Legislative Action 109th Congress
On June 21, 2005, the House Appropriations Committee approved House
Report 109-143 on the FY2006 appropriations bill that includes appropriations for
NIH (H.R. 3010). The House bill was passed on June 24, 2005. The report endorsed
NIH’s objectives in establishing the “Public Access Policy” and included language
requiring NIH to develop an outreach program to ensure full participation by grantees
in volunteering to submit their journal articles to the NIH archive. It also requested
the NIH Director to report to Congress by March 1, 2006 on the number of articles
deposited and the length of the embargo by publishers — that is, the delay between
publication and submission of each peer reviewed article to PubMed Central — and
98 Gary G. Borda, NSA Headquarters, “Government Data Rights Under the FAR,” March
4, 2003, Slides.
99 “Uniform Administrative Requirements for Grants and Agreements With Institutions of
Higher Education, Hospitals, and Other Non-Profit Organizations,” OMB Circular A-110
(Revised 11/19/93, As Further Amended 9/30/99), Section 36(a)).
100 Section 734, Dissemination and Sharing of Research Results.

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CRS-25
to estimate the total number of articles available for deposit.101 Senate Report 109-
103 on this bill endorsed the objectives of the policy but also emphasized the need
for interaction between NIH and stakeholders. It urged NIH to work with
stakeholders as it implements the new policy; and asked NIH to report by February
1, 2006 on the number of peer reviewed articles deposited in the database, on “the
extent to which the implemented policy has led to improved public access,” on the
impact on the peer review system, and on the cost of operating the database.102
Criticisms of “NIH’s Enhanced Public Access Policy”
Criticisms of the NIH policy have come from traditional publishers as well as
proponents of open access.
For instance, a report prepared for the American Physiological Society criticized
the NIH policy as limiting technology development and commercial competition,
specifically that “the open access plan ‘undermines the principle of [Bayh-Dole] that
the private sector is the preferable vehicle to move federally-funded research results
to the public and the marketplace.’ “103 It should be noted that the Bayh-Dole law
applies to technology transfer, not to publishing of research results.
Others focus on the notion that NIH policy may promote the forfeiture of patent
rights. For instance, a legal analysis contends that pre-publication “manuscripts
placed on the PMC database ‘likely’ can be considered ‘printed publications’ for
patent purposes, thus ‘triggering the one-year time period for filing a U.S. patent
application covering research disclosed in the manuscript ....’ “104 “Current practice,”
it is charged, “relies on the date of journal publication to start the clock.”105
101 House Report 109-143, op. cit., p. 104. See also Jocelyn Kaiser, “House Approves 0.5%
Raise for NIH, Comments on Database,” Science, June 17, 2005.
102 Senate Report 109-103, op. cit., p. 159.
103 Based on a legal analysis of the technology transfer implications of the NIH proposal by
a Foley and Larnder law firm analysis for the American Physiological Society, as reported
in Haley, Nov. 18, 2004. The Bayh-Dole act, (35 USC 200-212) allows the government to
transfer control of a federally funded invention to a university or business to promote
commercialization; the government can license the invention to a third party if it believes
it is not being made publicly available on a reasonable basis. See also CRS Report RL32076,
The Bayh-Dole Act: Selected Issues in Patent Policy and the Commercialization of
Technology.
104 Shirley Haley, “ Open Access Plan Faces Copyright, Regulatory Compliance Questions,
Legal Analysis Finds,” Washington Fax, Nov. 18, 2004.
105 Haley, op. cit. For other criticisms, see Jocelyn Kaiser, “Seeking Advice on ‘Open
Access,’ NIH Gets an Earful,” Science, Aug. 6, 2004; John T. Softcheck, “PubMed Central’s
Capacity to Host Open Access Articles Concerns ASM [American Society for
Microbiology], Washington Fax, Sept. 1, 2004; Danielle Belopotosky, “Online Federal
Library on Health Research Sparks Outcry,” Government Exec. Com, Sept. 3, 2004; Jeffrey
Young, “Journal Publishers Ask Senate to Intervene Against NIH Open Access Policy,”
Washington Fax, Sept. 10, 2004; Jeffrey Young, “ ‘Unnecessary’ NIH Open Access
Proposal Should Be Discarded, FASEB [Federation of American Societies for Experimental
(continued...)

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CRS-26
PLoS’s supporters have criticized the NIH policy for its voluntary compliance
requirement and said “... the agency’s language should have been to ‘require’ or
‘expect’ rather than ‘request’ the deposition of NIH-funded articles in the National
Library of Medicine’s free-to-use Internet repository, PubMed Central.”106 In
addition, according to PLoS “... the maximum allowable delay before articles’ public
release should have been at most 6, rather than 12 months — particularly since no
publisher has presented evidence that the free availability of a fraction of its journals’
articles half a year after publication would adversely affect subscription revenues.”107
Others say that the 12-month delay for public access falls short of achieving goals of
congressional intent and is too lengthy “in a field as dynamic as biomedicine,” where
patients need immediate access.108
NIH policy has also been criticized by some advocates of open access policy
who say that NIH should utilize free access policies that exist in the not-for-profit
publishing community, which are more cost-effective. They suggest that instead of
putting articles in PubMed Central, NIH should create a search engine that has the
capability to crawl the full texts of existing journals, including nonprofit journals, to
allow access to articles on the original journal’s website and to provide access to
other articles on the topic. Among the groups who have commented on this position
is the Washington DC Principles for Free Access to Science109 and the American
Physiological Society.110
By way of example, Google Scholar,111 which was launched in 2004, is a free
Internet search engine that allows readers to search for peer reviewed articles,
preprints, abstracts, grey unpublished literature and other scholarly analyses. If it
links to a full-text article, the article is likely to have been published at least a year
before the date of the search. There is no assurance that the search engine captures
all current or archived materials available in a field. Full text of publisher-controlled,
copyrighted materials may be indexed with a citation, but a reader may be linked to
the publisher’s website to obtain full text of the published version for a fee. In
105 (...continued)
Biology] Says,” Washington Fax, Nov. 5, 2004; Andrew Hawkins, “Public Access Will
Harm Journal/NIH Relationship, AAI [American Association of Immunologists] Charges;
Advocates Dispute Legal Analysis,” Washington Fax, Nov. 22, 2004.
106 Andy Gass and Helen Doyle, “PLoS Position on NIH Public Access Policy,” Letter to
the Editor, Science, Apr. 15, 2005, p. 352.
107 Gass and Doyle, Apr. 15, 2005, op.cit.
108 Comments made by the Alliance for Taxpayer Access as cited in Andrew J. Hawkins,
“NIH Public Access Policy Unenforceable, Violates Copyrights, Opponents Charge,”
Washington Fax, Feb. 7, 2005.
109 Washington DC Principles for Free Access to Science, “Nor-for-Profit Publishers Call
N e w N I H R u l e a M i s s e d O p p o r t u n i t y , ” a v a i l a b l e a t
[http://www.dcprinciples.org/nih_rule.htm].
110 Haley, op. cit., Nov. 18, 2004, citing a legal analysis by Foley and Lardner, law firm.
111 Available at [http://scholar.google.com/].

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CRS-27
addition, there may be a direct link to the full text of a preprint or a version posted
by an author or university archive website.
Issues Relating to Federal Open Access Database
Archives and Publishing
In addition to NIH’s Public Access policy and PubMed Central, other federal
agencies have engaged in open access activities. Several federal agencies publish
free, open access, peer reviewed, Internet accessible journals. These journals include
Emerging Infectious Diseases, by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention;
and Agricultural Research and the Journal of Agricultural Research, maintained by
the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Agricultural Library. Others
have free, searchable, electronically available repositories that include abstracts, links
to full-text articles, and other research reports, some of which may be read online.
However, some agencies have confronted serious obstacles to maintaining such
systems and have been forced to terminate them. Below is an overview of agency
activities and a review of some of the general issues raised about federal involvement
in open access publishing and databases.
Federal Open Access Scientific and Technical Archival
Databases
Some agencies maintain databases or repositories containing citations, articles
or reports that resulted from government-funded research or research funded by other
sources, and some include preprints of scientific and technical materials. For
instance, the DOE Information Bridge allows readers to access for free all available
Department of Energy (DOE) preprint report literature (preprint reports prepared for
the government via grant or contract that are usually longer than articles published
in journals). DOE also has a tool called E-print that allows the user to search major
preprint systems and university sites where articles are posted. E-print is a gateway
to over 17,208 websites and databases worldwide that hold “... e-prints in basic and
applied sciences, primarily in physics but also including subject areas such as
chemistry, biology and life sciences, materials science, nuclear sciences and
engineering, energy research, computer and information technologies, and other
disciplines of interest to DOE.”112 The system permits documents to be “... circulated
electronically to facilitate peer exchange and scientific advancement. Included are
pre-publication drafts of journal articles (preprints), scholarly papers, technical
communications, or similar documents relaying research results among peer
groups.”113
Other federal agency open access systems include:
112 Available at [http://www.osti.gov/eprint].
113 Available at [http://www.osti.gov/eprint].

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! The GrayLIT Network,114 which includes the searchable full text of
gray literature from the Defense Technical Information Center, the
DOE, the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab, NASA Langley, and the
Environmental Protection Agency.
! The Federal Research and Development Project Summaries115
system contains information about research projects from the DOE,
the National Institutes of Health and the National Science
Foundation.”116
! The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) AGRICOLA
(AGRICultural OnLine Access) system, an online bibliographic
data base which provides citations, abstracts, and links, when they
are available, to published and non-published agricultural literature
in the National Agricultural Library.117
! The Astrophysics Data System (ADS) is a National Aeronautics and
Space Administration (NASA)-funded project which maintains four
bibliographic databases containing more than 4.2 million records,
including links to external resources dealing with: Astronomy and
Astrophysics, Instrumentation, Physics and Geophysics, and
preprints in Astronomy. The system also contains full-text scans of
much of the astronomical literature (almost 50 astrophysics
journals).118
Objections to Government-Controlled Databases: Censorship
and Competition in the Free Market
Allegations of censorship and governmental competition with free market
mechanisms are often cited in opposition to government-maintained databases of
scientific and technical information.
Allegations of Governmental Censorship. Some critics contend that
governmental control of databases of abstracts and journal articles resulting from
federally funded research or funded by other sources implies government “censorship
and encroachment upon scholarly discourse”119 and that federal officials, rather than
private publishers, could end up determining what research gets published and what
does not.
114 Available at [http://graylit.osti.gov].
115 Available at [http://www.osti.gov/fedrnd].
116 Marydee Ojala, “PubSCIENCE Joins the Endangered Special List,” Information Today,
Oct. 1, 2002.
117 Available at [http://agricola.nal.usda.gov/].
118 Available at [http://adswww.harvard.edu/].
119 See, for instance, statement of the Association of American Publishers’ Patricia
Schroeder in Danielle Belopotosky, “Online Federal Library on Health Research Sparks
Outcry,” GovExec.com, Sept. 3, 2004.

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Curbs on Department of Energy Information Systems. Some
publishers have objected to government-run scientific and technical databases
containing abstracts or articles, saying these threaten their publishing activities and
employees’ jobs. This controversy is illustrated by the experiences of at least two
DOE systems.
The DOE E-print system, described above, has been controversial, and,
according to a DOE official, a few years ago several publishers threatened to prohibit
publication of articles that authors posted on it. But eventually the publishers
relented and now each publisher has different rules regarding the posting of
preprints.120
PubScience, was a U.S. Department of Energy effort to provide a free
multidisciplinary database for physical sciences literature. It contained indexed
abstracts or citations for federally funded and other literature published in
commercial journals. Readers could access indexed abstracts for free, but were
directed to the commercial website link to obtain the full text article, usually for a
fee.121 The system was initiated on October 1, 1999 and closed on November 4, 2002.
According to one article:
... the effort quickly became the target of intense lobbying, spearheaded by the
Washington-based Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), a
coalition of for-profit and nonprofit members including Reed Elsevier, ISI,
Chemical Abstracts Services, and Cambridge Scientific Abstracts. The SIIA
claimed that such a service competed with its members’ services and argued that
government initiative should confine themselves to government information
only.122
DOE’s Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) operated
PubScience. According to one DOE official, intense lobbying by publishers and their
120 Interview, DOE official April 2005.
121 According to an article written shortly before the termination of PubScience:
“PubSCIENCE launched in October 1999 with the mission of providing free Web search
capabilities for journal article abstracts and citations in the physical sciences. Reading the
abstract is free, but hyperlinking to the full text generally involves paying for the article. The
collection contains over 1,200 journal titles from 35 publishers, including both professional
associations (American Association for the Advancement of Science, American
Meteorological Society, American Physical Society, American Society for Microbiology,
Royal Society of Chemistry, and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics) and
private publishers (Blackwell Science, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Nature Publishing
Group, Springer-Verlag, and Taylor & Francis Publishers, Ltd.). A few university presses
also contribute to the database. Clearly modeled after PubMed, PubSCIENCE wanted to
attract scientists and the general public to its information. Noting that the U.S. federal
government funds 80 to 90 percent of scientific research and development, DOE touts
PubSCIENCE as a significant taxpayer benefit.” (Source: Ojala, op.cit.).
122 Andrew Albanese, “PubScience Dies Despite Comments,” Library Journal, Dec. 15,
2002. See also: Ojala, op. cit., and “SIIA Releases Comments on DOE’s PubScience
Decision,” Nov. 15, 2002.

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associations threatened OSTI’s budget.123 The House Appropriations committee
report on the DOE FY2002 appropriation bill, H.R. 2311 (House Report 107-112, pp.
108-109), cautioned DOE about duplication with commercial information services
and asked DOE to keep its efforts focused appropriately. The existence of the
commercial database Scirus124 and another called Infotrieve125 were cited as
competing commercial vendors.126
Attempts to Curtail the Federal Database: PubChem. Efforts were
made in 2005 to close or curtail an NIH database initiated to advance science by
assisting basic researchers to identify chemicals related to genetics and cellular
research. According several articles, the American Chemical Society (ACS) initially
sought closure,127 and then modified its position to seek limitations,128 on
PubChem,129 which, it says, duplicates ACS’s commercial, fee-based Chemical
Abstract Service (CAS).
Reportedly, NIH launched PubChem in fall 2004 to provide data and to index
hyperlinks to articles on the chemical structures of small organic molecules and
information on their biological activities to support the “molecular libraries and
imaging component of the NIH Roadmap Initiative,”130which is a strategic planning
process initiated by the NIH Director.131 PubChem contains data organized into three
databases: PubChem Substance, PubChem Compound, and PubChem BioAssay.
According to NIH,
Links from PubChem’s chemical structure records to other Entrez databases
provide information on biological properties. These include links to PubMed
scientific literature and NCBI’s protein 3D structure resource. Links to
PubChem’s bioassay database present the results of biological screening. Links
to depositor web sites provide further information.132
The system, reportedly, will expand as it includes more data from the Molecular
Libraries centers and data from other online open access chemical database
repositories.
123 Interview with OSTI official, April 2005.
124 Available at [http://www.scirus.com].
125 Available at [http://www4.infotrieve.com/default.asp].
126 Andrea L. Foster, “Energy Department Seeks to Close Web Site That Searches Scientific
Journals,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, Sept. 6, 2002.
127 Jocelyn Kaiser, “Science Resources: Chemists Want NIH to Curtail Database,” Science,
May 6, 2005.
128 Andrew J. Hawkins, “Chemical Society Entreats Congress to Pull Funding For NIH’s
PubChem,” Washington Fax, May 26, 2005.
129 Available at [http://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/].
130 Source: [http://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/].
131 Available at [http://nihroadmap.nih.gov/overview.asp].
132 From [http://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/].

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PubChem, operated by the National Center for Biotechnology Information
(NCBI), also provides readers with free access to links to other NCBI databases. It
is operated by 13 staff members with a budget of about $3 million.
According to the ACS, PubChem jeopardizes its own CAS service, which is
reported to “... employ ... more than 1,200 people in Columbus, Ohio, and makes a
significant contribution to the society’s $317 million in annual revenue from
publications.”133 CAS subscribers receive summary data on chemicals and links to
about 24 million abstracts from about 9,000 journals, as well as patent abstracts on
more than 25 million chemical substances.134 NIH is reported to have said that its
database provides indexes and links only to biological journals that overlap only
slightly with the journals linked by CAS and focuses on “biological information such
as protein structures and toxicology,” which CAS does not deal with, not broader
chemical reactions which CAS covers.135 An NIH official, Christopher Austin, senior
advisor at the NIH Chemical Genomics Center at the National Human Genome
Research Institute, was reported to have said that limitation of PubChem would have
profoundly negative effects on medical discoveries.136 One report said “The overlap
between the two databases occurs in the indexes of chemical names. NIH maintains
the overlap is ‘quite modest’ and for the most part is ‘complementary’ to CAS. ACS
disagrees, saying PubChem duplicates CAS’ platform and replicates its search
features and information.”137 Several articles noted that the ACS lobbied Members
of Congress, especially Appropriations Committee members, to have PubChem
terminated138 or limited to include only compounds derived from federally funded
R&D and to avoid overlap with a commercial enterprise.
Both the House Appropriations Committee and the Senate Appropriations
Committee addressed this issue in their reports on the FY2006 appropriations bill
that includes appropriations for NIH (H.R. 3010). They did not reduce funding for
the database. Both reports said essentially the same thing — that they understood
that the database will include chemical compound information from the NIH-funded
molecular libraries screening center network and from other sources. But they both
expressed concern about duplication of effort with the private sector and urged NIH
133 Kaiser, May 6, 2005, op. cit.
134 Hawkins, May 26, 2005, op.cit..
135 Kaiser, May 6, 2005, op. cit.
136 Aliya Sternstein, “Chemical Publisher Goes After NIH,” FCWCom, May 27, 2005.
137 Hawkins, May 26, 2005, op. cit.
138 “AmChem Soc Calling for Shutting Down Govt. Chem. Database,” email from Patrice
McDermott, American Library Association, May 17, 2005; Hawkins, May 26, 2005, op. cit.

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to work with private sector publishers to avoid unnecessary duplication.139 The
House passed H.R. 3010 on June 24, 2005. Senate action is proceeding.140
Reportedly, “Supporters of PubChem see the House language as a victory for
NIH.”141 An ACS official is reported to have said that the language is a “
‘tremendous step in the right direction.’ “142
Speculation About Differences in Federal Agency Policies. There are
no unequivocal answers as to why some agencies can maintain open access systems
more easily than others. It may be that publishers, despite their misgivings,
moderated their opposition to congressional action to put articles on NIH’s PubMed
Central since the posted articles are limited to those that resulted from NIH funding.
However, NIH may be in a different position from other federal agencies since it has
a mandate to preserve and provide health information to the public; other agencies
may not have such clear mandates to distribute information and the results of their
research funding to the public. Furthermore, support for NIH’s open access activities
seems based not only on the need to allow taxpayers access to results of research
their taxes funded,143 but also on the emotional argument about need for rapid access
to information to improve health and save lives, a compelling rationale to many
Members of Congress.
Reportedly, DOE’s Scientific and Technical Information Advisory Board is
discussing, at the highest levels, the question of whether it should establish an open
access policy like NIH’s to make DOE-funded articles available in its own database
and is preparing a report on this subject. According to several federal agency staff,
it seems that in the absence of guidance from the congressional appropriations
committees, agencies, other than NIH, would likely find it difficult to mount a system
like NIH’s because of publisher opposition.144
Interagency Activities
Scientific publishing and communications methods are slowly changing as
Internet publishing becomes more prevalent. Some observers say that government-
supported researchers and sponsoring agency staff should participate in shaping these
139 U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Appropriations, Departments of Labor, Health and
Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriation Bill, 2006, House
Report 109-143, 109th Congress 1st session, p. 112 ,and U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee
on Appropriations, Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and
Related Agencies Appropriation Bill, 2006, Senate Report 109-103, 109th Congress, 1st
session, pp. 159-160.
140 See also Jocelyn Kaiser, “House Approves 0.5% Raise for NIH, Comments on Database,”
Science, June 17, 2005.
141 Kaiser, op. cit., June 17, 2005.
142 Quoted in Andrew J. Hawkins, “NIH Should Reign In PubChem’s Duplicative Services,
House Appropriators Warn,” Research Policy Alert, June 21, 2005.
143 Istook, op. cit.
144 Interview with CENDI official, May 2005.

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new methods of delivering scientific information. CENDI (the Commerce, Energy,
NASA, Defense Information Managers Group), an interagency committee composed
of senior Scientific and Technical Information (STI) managers from 12 U.S. federal
agencies, has working groups that are studying open access publishing, indexing, and
archiving and has issued reports on it to help develop uniform standards and methods
of international cooperation.145
International Activities
At least two international organizations and other countries are examining wider
implementation of open access publishing. Following the release in 2003 of the
“Berlin Declaration” which called for open access to knowledge and its signing by
representatives of selected European universities, research groups, and government
sectors,146 the European Union began a study on changes in markets for scientific and
technical publishing in Europe. Among its topics of inquiry is the subject of “open
access to research findings for all and the need to reconcile authors’ rights and the
economic interests of publishers.”147 The study is expected to be released in late
2005.
In 2004, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s
(OECD) science ministers endorsed a policy “based on the principle that research
data from public funding should be openly available”148 on the rationale that
145 CENDI’s members are: Defense Technical Information Center (Department of Defense);
Office of Research and Development & Office of Environmental Information
(Environmental Protection Agency); Government Printing Office; NASA Scientific and
Technical Information Program; National Agricultural Library (Department of Agriculture);
National Archives and Records Administration; National Library of Education (Department
of Education); National Library of Medicine (Department of Health and Human Services);
National Science Foundation; National Technical Information Service (Department of
Commerce); Office of Scientific and Technical Information (Department of Energy);
USGS/Biological Resources Discipline (Department of the Interior). These programs
represent over 96% of the FY2004 federal research and development budget. Among
CENDI’s open access-related working groups are those that deal with “Archiving,
Preservation, and Permanent Access” and “Content Management and Access.”According
to CENDI, “In 1999, CENDI and the International Council for Scientific and Technical
Information (ICSTI) jointly sponsored a review of the state of the practice of digital
archiving. Over 30 organizations were surveyed and 18 were interviewed to collect
information Regarding technology, policy, procedures, and metadata in operational or
prototype projects. The results of this project were reported in Digital Electronic Archiving:
The State of the Art and the State of the Practice, a report to ICSTI and CENDI. An update
of the report was completed in 2004. The updated version, CENDI 2004-3, is available in
PDF.” (Source: [http://www.cendi.gov]).
146 Available at [http://www.zim.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/signatories.html].
147 “EU Investigates Open Access Scientific Publication,”News - Medical. Net ..., June 15,
2004.
148 Peter Arzberger, et al., “An International Framework to Promote Access to Data,”
(continued...)

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providing such access promotes long-term economic benefits, more informed
governmental decisionmaking, and hastens the advancement of scientific research.
The ministers asked OECD to develop guidelines to “facilitate optimal cost-effective
access to digital research data from public funding ...”149 that would be balanced in
terms of opening access while recognizing “the need for restriction of access in some
instances to protect social, scientific, and economic interests.”150 These decisions
were based, in part, on a report that was funded by the U.S. National Science
Foundation.151 According to the report’s authors, “The ultimate goal ... is to make
data sharing and the principle of open access the rule rather than the exception.”152
Open access activities in other countries and in international organizations are
summarized in Julie M. Esanau and Paul F. Uhlir, eds., Open Access and the Public
Domain in Digital Data an Information for Science, Proceedings of an International
Symposium, Published by U.S. National Committee for CODATA, National
Academies Press, Washington, D.C., 2004.
As noted above, there has been considerable governmental and
nongovernmental activity to promote open access publishing in the United Kingdom.
Some scientific and medical researchers in Britain took steps to make research results
freely available via the British open access publisher, BioMedCentral.153
Subsequently, the Science and Technology Committee of Britain’s House of
Commons issued a report endorsing open access to research results by proposing to
require authors to deposit their published papers in online archives and journals
using an author pays model and eliminating subscription fees. It also recommended
that government agencies mandate that government-funded researchers put their
articles into the archives154 and that the government pay some publishing fees.155 In
November 2004 the U.K. government (the Department of Trade and Industry)
rejected the proposal, maintaining there is no indication that access to scientific
journals is impeded under current publishing methods, and that according to the
148 (...continued)
Science, Mar. 19, 2004.
149 “Science, Technology, and Innovation for the 21st Century. Meeting of the OECD
Committee for Scientific and Technological Policy at Ministerial Level, 29-30 January 2004
- Final Communique.” Annex I., Available at [http://www.oecd.org].
150 Annex 1, Available at [http://www.oecd.org/document/15/0,2340,en_2649_201185_
25998799_1_1_1_1,00.html].
151 “International Access to Research Data Critical to Advancing Science for the Public
Good, Report Says,” NSF Press Release, NSF PR 04-031, Mar. 18, 2004. The report was
not named in the press release. The author was reported to be Peter Arzberger, director of
life sciences initiatives at the University of California, San Diego.
152 NSF PR 04-301, op. cit.
153 John T. Softcheck, “U.K. Publishing Deal Makes Public Research Results Available to
All,” Washington Fax, June 30, 2003.
154 Lila Guterman, “British Parliamentary Panel Endorses Open Access to Scientific
Literature,” Chronicle of Higher Education, July 20, 2004.
155 Daniel Clery, “Scientific Publishing: Mixed Week for Open Access in the U.K.,” Science,
Nov. 12, 2004.

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government, “the true costs of open-access publishing are still not clear ...”156 and “it
is ‘not obvious ... that the ‘author pays’ business model would give better value for
money than the current one’ ....”157 Subsequently, in June 2005, the United Kingdom
Research Councils (RCUK), the main British supporter of publicly funded research,
“which distribute[s] most government science funding,”158 promulgated for comment
a draft policy which mandates researchers it funds to archive their journal articles and
conference papers “in a free public archive ‘at the earliest opportunity, wherever
possible at or around the time of publication.’ “159 But the rules may allow publishers
to continue to embargo archiving articles until many months after publication, since
the council says “its mandate is ‘subject to copyright and licensing arrangements’ that
can restrict what authors do.”160 Costs of publishing in “author pays” journals would
be covered by the Research Councils’ funding grant “subject to justification of cost-
effectiveness.”161 Apparently some learned societies object to this policy since they
fear libraries will cancel subscriptions to their professional societies’ publications.162
Comments are being received on the RCUK policy until August 30, 2005. The
British government said it will review its policy options on this issue taking into
consideration the draft RCUK policy and any changes to it, as well as other
information.163 The Wellcome Trust, a large British medical foundation, recently
announced that it requires all papers produced with its support “... to be submitted to
the NIH archive or to the British equivalent that is being developed.”164
Summary of Policy Issues and Questions
Policies for open access journals and citation repositories are evolving and
contentious issues may be raised during the 109th Congress. Those that have
implications for academic institutions are discussed in Appendix l. Other policy
issues and questions are emerging, including the following.
156 Clery, op.cit.
157 Clery, op. cit.
158 Jim Giles, “UK Research Councils Claim Success for Open-access Publishing Plan,”
Nature, June 2, 2005.
159 Eliot Marshall, “Scientific Publishing: Britain’s Research Agencies Endorse Public
Access,” Science, July 8, 2005. For earlier history see Giles, op. cit.
160 Marshall, July 8, 2005, op. cit.
161 “RCUK Announces Proposed Position on Access to Research Outputs,” News release
28 June 2005, at [http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/press/20050628openaccess.asp].
162 Marshall, July 8, 2005 and Giles, June 2, 2005, op. cit.
163 Email communication from a staff member of the Office of Science and Technology, a
British Government official, July 21, 2005, who said “The government position will be
reviewed in the light of advice from RCUK, results of studies by JISC and the report from
the EU study.”
164 Giles, June 2, 2005, op. cit.

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Copyright
! Assessment of which federal agencies, in addition to NIH, would
seek to archive and provide free public access to published journal
articles reporting the results of research that they supported, using
their government purpose license or nonexclusive right to use
published articles, regardless of copyright ownership.
! Assessment of rates of voluntary participation by NIH-funded
authors in the Public Access Policy and determination of whether
there are any negative impacts — from research sponsors or the
scientific community — on NIH-funded authors who may not
submit articles for dissemination in PubMed Central. Similarly,
determining if publishers penalize authors who seek copyright
agreement terms allowing them to post published journal articles in
PubMed Central.
Quality Control
! Comparison of the quality of peer review processes and of peer
reviewed articles that are published in traditional and open access
journals.
! Monitoring of whether academic reward systems react differently to
articles published by traditional publishers or open access publishers
and assessing the implications for professional advancement of
researchers and teachers in academic promotion and tenure systems.
! Assessing the positive and negative impacts on the speed and quality
of scientific research, knowledge synthesis, and knowledge
accumulation flowing from open access publishing and open access
citation/abstract archives in comparison with traditional publishing
and archival methods.
Monitoring of NIH Public Access Activities and Other Federal
Initiatives, Including PubChem
! Determination if federal open access databases and archival
repositories should be limited to providing access only to
publications that result from federally funded R&D.
! Assessment of proposals for governmental citation archives to link
to publisher’s websites to read published articles, as opposed to
posting articles on a free access government system.
! Follow-up to congressional mandates that NIH monitor the
implementation of its Public Access policy, that it work with
traditional publishers to monitor the impacts and costs of open
access publishing on BioMedCentral as it posts what is estimated to

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be thousands (possibly 60,000) of additional articles on the system,
and that it work with publishers to monitor impacts on the integrity
of peer review processes.
! With respect to PubChem, assessing cooperation between NIH and
ACS in clarifying the possible overlap between NIH’s archive and
that of the American Chemical Society’s Chemical Abstracts
Service. Analysis of the impacts on biomedical research in general
and on NIH’s research and its strategically planned genomic research
initiatives if the scope of PubChem were to be limited.
Who Pays?
! Determining whether federal regulations for support of contracts and
grants will continue to allow agencies to pay individual authors or
academic institutions for the costs of publishing articles in open
access journals as part of the research process, especially if open
access publishing becomes more widespread and a substantial
portion of the scientific and technical publishing market. A related
issue is determining the possible effects on research support funding.
! Given that federal research sponsors allow some journal publishing
and subscription costs to be counted as part of the costs to conduct
federally sponsored research, comparing the actual total costs to the
government for publishing and reading of scientific articles
published traditionally as opposed to those published using open
access models.
Economic Implications
! Economic analysis of the impacts on the commercial publication
industry (revenues, employment, sustainability, etc.) if open access
publishing and archiving activities continue to expand.
! Examination of the extent to which professional scientific societies
utilize the profits from publishing to support their activities and of
alternative sources of funding for these activities.

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Appendix 1. Open Access Publishing: Selected
Questions in Academia
Continuing questions relating to controversial issues about open access
publishing were raised by Andy Gass and Helen Doyle, “The Reality of Open-Access
Journal Articles,” Chronicle of Higher Education, February 18, 2005. They conclude
that although there are problems, support is growing in academia for open access
journals. Remaining questions include:
What will become of the market for secondary filters of primary research
articles, services like BioMed Central’s Faculty of 1000, which highlight
important papers published in a wide swath of journals? Will fee-for-access
ventures that collect open-access articles become a new cash cow for publishers?
At present, faculty members offer their recommendations to the filtering services
free, and publishers sell their aggregated opinions to institutions — will
established professors go on contributing their free labor to such entrepreneurial
enterprises?
How will the role of the research library change, as open-access scholarly
communication becomes more widely practiced? To what extent will librarians
be freed from the burdens of subscription management?
Many university libraries now encourage open access by subsidizing a
portion of the publication charges in open-access venues for authors affiliated
with the university, through channels like our employer’s institutional
membership program. Will those subsidies continue? If so, will they continue to
be paid from libraries’ budgets, or will they come from research budgets — a
source that would be more consistent with the view of open-access proponents
that costs of publication should be part of the costs of conducting research? Or
will external granting agencies, many of which already pay scientists’ page
charges and color-illustration fees, assume the full costs of their investigators’
open-access publications?
Will libraries continue to serve as intermediaries through which researchers
find open-access information, as well as that available only through subscription,
and how?
Those questions relate not just to academic libraries, but to the mission of
colleges and universities. The time has come for a comprehensive review of how
best to pay for the dissemination of professors’ work.
How will reduced legal barriers to reusing articles — a stipulation of most
formal definitions of open access — affect teaching, research, and other
scholarly activities? There are, of course, good precedents for having few or no
legal restrictions on the reuse of scholarly work: Every article published by an
employee of the NIH is in the public domain. Some more-restrictive open-access
licenses now available, like the Creative Commons attribution license in use for
articles from our employer and from BioMed Central, permit users to reproduce
scholarly work in any medium, for any purpose, as long as the author receives
proper credit.

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What kinds of educational tools will such licenses make possible? For
example, will we see a proliferation of online articles enhanced with explanatory
links and informational sidebars, which make scientific discoveries more
comprehensible to a wide audience? Will such resources be produced by
commercial enterprises? By nonprofit organizations? Or by networks of
volunteers, as is the case with open-source computer software?
Will open-access articles enable more researchers from less-developed
countries to work on the frontiers of science? Given that all credible open-access
journals waive publication fees for authors who can’t afford to pay them,
increased availability — and therefore knowledge — of the literature might well
allow scientists in the developing world to increase their output of cutting-edge
work. Would that change, in turn, help resolve the “10/90 gap” — the
unfortunate reality that less than 10 percent of the global expenditure on medical
research goes to study the predominant health needs of 90 percent of the world’s
population?
Most important, what kinds of discoveries might result from searchable,
open archives of peer-reviewed, full-text scientific literature? The aggregation
of gene sequences in a single, freely accessible information space (GenBank) has
spawned entire fields of research; will open access to journal articles have a
similar effect on areas of work that could benefit from “mining” full texts and
figures? Clearly, comprehensive collections of open-access literature would
make it much easier to systematically review published medical studies.
Will open-access literature lead to frequent discoveries of correlations
between phenomena previously thought to be unrelated? Will it spark more open
access to data sets and databases of laboriously compiled and annotated
information? The potential for open access to lead to new discoveries is its single
most compelling asset, though one that is frequently overlooked.165
165 Andy Gass and Helen Doyle, “The Reality of Open-Access Journal Articles,” Chronicle
of Higher Education, Feb. 18, 2005, pp. B13.

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