BioMed Central to launch Open Repository service

The Open Access publisher BioMed Central has announced that it will create a service to assist universities and research centers in the development of institutional repositories.

The London-based publisher has previously focused on publishing peer-reviewed biological and medical research journals. BioMed Central currently published over 100 journals, all of which are Open Access, as well as information services such as the Faculty of 1000 literature evaluation service - and Open Access Now.

"Institutional repositories have great
potential for opening up
the scientific literature" - Jan Velterop

The creation of Open Repository comes in response to calls from policy-makers on both sides of the Atlantic for greater access to scientific and medical research information. The recent report from the UK House of Commons Science & Technology Committee inquiry (Scientific Publications: Free for all? - see Open Access Now August 2004) emphasized that universities are responsible for disseminating their research as widely as possible and called for funds to be made available to all research institutions for the establishment and maintenance of Open Access repositories. The U.S. House Appropriations Committee draft report, concerning research funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), made a similar recommendation for Open Access to the published results of publicly funded research.

"Institutional repositories have great potential for opening up the scientific literature," explains Jan Velterop, Publisher and Director of BioMed Central. "Their potential, however, will only be fully realized if those repositories are set up well and in such a way that their content is truly freely accessible, which involves adherence to established formatting and metadata standards as well as linking to, and embedding in, the worldwide network of science literature. We already do this for our own journals."

The planned service will offer professional help to institutions in the creation and maintenance of their institutional repositories. Open Repository should allow the efficient creation of repositories in institutions that could not otherwise afford to do so, or that lack the infrastructure or the in-house technical capacity.

Open Repository will charge a set-up fee to build a repository customized to the institution's requirements, and will offer an option to operate and maintain the archive if the institution chooses. The Open Repository service will include converting articles to PDF and XML. Advanced search functionality will be a part of the service, as will links to central databases, such as PubMed and CrossRef, and thus to the body of scientific literature.

"BioMed Central is uniquely placed to offer this service, given the company's extensive experience and expertise in successfully building and running its Open Access publishing platform," says Velterop. "We see Open Repository as complementary to our fast-growing stable of Open Access journals in accelerating the widespread availability of Open Access to research results."

www.biomedcentral.com

NIH Open Access plans stir debate

A lobbying war is developing in Washington about proposals to introduce Open Access measures at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to increase public access to NIH-funded research.

"The status quo is not an option"
- Elias Zerhouni (NIH Director)

In mid-July, the Appropriations Committee of the US House of Representatives approved legislation funding the Department of Health and Human Services for the fiscal year 2005. Accompanying the bill was a report, with language by Congressman Ernest Istook Jr., expressing concern about access and ordering NIH to develop a plan for electronic archiving. "The Committee is very concerned that there is insufficient public access to reports and data resulting from NIH-funded research. This situation, which has been exacerbated by the dramatic rise in scientific journal subscription prices, is contrary to the best interests of the US taxpayers who paid for this research." The report proposes that articles based on NIH-funded research must be deposited in PubMed Central, the free digital archive maintained by the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, MD (see Open Access Now 28 July 2003) at the time they are accepted by a journal for publication. In a statement released September 3, NIH expressed that it "intends to request that its grantees and supported Principal Investigators provide the NIH with electronic copies of all final version manuscripts upon acceptance for publication if the research was supported in whole or in part by NIH funding." NIH will deposit all final manuscripts (i.e. the author's version resulting after all modifications due to the peer review process) in PubMed Central and make it freely available to the public six months after publication "or sooner if the publisher agrees." NIH is to draft a plan for implementation of the proposal that it must submit to Congress by December 1.

Supporters and critics of Open Access have been actively lobbying Elias Zerhouni, the Director of NIH. At the end of August, Zerhouni met with different groups of invited stakeholders, including publishers, research scientists and patient- and disease-advocacy groups. Zerhouni's office sent a Fact Sheet on Public Access Publishing to the participants of the stakeholder meetings. "As the agency works towards the development of a policy statement on public access publishing, two important goals must be considered: first, the need to give the public taxpayers who support NIH research better access to the results of its investment; and second, the need for NIH to have a full compendium of research results including clinical trials outcomes that it can use to manage its research portfolio and monitor scientific productivity." Many feel that changes in the publishing policies of NIH are now inevitable. "The status quo is not an option," said Zerhouni after one of these meetings. "We are not standing pat. We are going to move."

A new organization, the Alliance for Taxpayer Access (ATA), formed in August to support the NIH Open Access plan (see 'Who, What & Why?', in this issue of Open Access Now). The ATA publicly released its August 26 letter to Zerhouni. "The widespread dissemination of medical advances and scientific findings is critical to obtaining the best return possible on our nation's investment in research. Unfortunately, most Americans effectively do not have access to the results of research paid for with their tax dollars... In the age of the Internet, it is no longer acceptable that millions of Americans lack access to this credible, peer-reviewed research to inform their work, their studies and their personal healthcare decisions."

The proposal has been welcomed by librarians. The President of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), which has 11,000 personal members, wrote to Zerhouni to express enthusiastic support. "We endorse this proposal wholeheartedly and commend both NIH and the National Library of Medicine for working to advance access to taxpayer-funded research."

But traditional publishers have launched a counter-attack. In a letter to Zerhouni the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and the DC Principles Coalition expressed their concern about not being informed or consulted about the proposal. "We urge you to act now to engage leaders within the STM publishing community in an ongoing dialog, in the hope that we might find common ground," write the publishers. "We respectfully request that you take this approach now, as we think our guidance would be helpful in advance of your announcing any draft policy for open comment." The letter then lists nine points outlining concerns about the proposal, beginning with "We object to the notion that government intervention in scientific publishing is warranted... Social arguments about hypothetical denial of access are rampant, but a dispassionate analysis of access denial and the consequences thereof have not been conducted, no doubt because there are no or very few real examples." They expressed concerns about the PubMed Central archive, the costs involved in maintaining it, and risks to the integrity of the scholarly record.

A letter from Paul Kincade, President of the Federation of the American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) which represents 60,000 research scientists, offered some support for traditional publishers and expressed concern about the PubMed Central archive as the sole repository for scientific information. "I am concerned that the Report language is creating a distraction from another vital issue, sufficient funding for biomedical research," wrote Kincade.

A group of 25 Nobel laureates also wrote an open letter to members of Congress. "As scientists and taxpayers too, we object to barriers that hinder, delay, or block the spread of scientific knowledge supported by federal tax dollars - including our own works," they wrote. "There is widespread acknowledgement that the current model for scientific publishing is failing us. Free access to taxpayer-funded research globally may soon be within grasp, and make possible the freer flow of medical knowledge that strengthens our capacity to find cures and to improve lives. We ask Congress and NIH to ensure that all taxpayers get their money's worth. Our investment in scientific research is not well served by a process that limits taxpayer access instead of expanding it." The laureates urge Zerhouni to support the NIH leadership in adopting "this long overdue reform." They also counter criticism from worried publishers by assuring them that "Journals will continue to be the hallmark of achievement in scientific research, and we will depend on them."

Zerhouni and his colleagues in the NIH directorate will have to work hard to accommodate the concerns of all the different stakeholders and come up with a coherent implementation plan by the December 1 deadline. There is also likely to be a debate session in Congress to clarify what it is expecting from NIH. We can expect fierce lobbying in the months ahead.