Whitepaper on implementation of NEH access policy

[Jennifer McLennan <jennifer@arl.org>]

Subject: Whitepaper on implementation of NEH access policy

For immediate release
February 29, 2008

For more information, contact:
Jennifer McLennan, SPARC
(202) 631-8854
jennifer@arl.org

Kaitlin Thaney, Science Commons
kaitlin@creativecommons.org

Karla Hahn, ARL
(202) 296-2296
karla@arl.org

SPARC, SCIENCE COMMONS, AND ARL OFFER OPTIONS FOR UNIVERSITY
IMPLEMENTATION OF NEW NIH PUBLIC ACCESS POLICY

White paper by leading copyright scholar helps grantees
prepare for April start of NIH requirement

Washington, DC and Cambridge, MA - February 29, 2008 - SPARC (the
Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), Science
Commons, and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) have
jointly released a white paper to help university and medical
school administrators ensure their institutions comply with
public access requirements that are soon to be a condition of
National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding.

Effective April 7, 2008, investigators must deposit articles
stemming from NIH funding into the agency=B9s PubMed Central online
archive, to be made publicly available no later than 12 months
after publication in a journal. Complying with the National
Institutes of Health Public Access Policy: Copyright
Considerations and Options will help provosts, research
administrators, and campus counsel understand their institution's
copyright-related obligations and options under the new
Congressionally mandated policy, which was announced in January
and replaces an earlier voluntary approach.

The timely analysis was prepared by Michael W. Carroll, an
attorney, copyright expert, and faculty member at Villanova
University law school. Carroll reviews the policy and its
background, explains the legal context, and presents six
alternative copyright management strategies that will help
grantee institutions assure they reserve the necessary rights for
articles to be made available in PubMed Central.

Carroll has been involved for several years in copyright issues
as a member of the Creative Commons board and an advisor to
Science Commons. In 2004 he worked with SPARC to develop the
popular SPARC Author Addendum (http://www.arl.org/sparc/author/),
which enables authors to reserve rights to deposit their works in
open online archives.

"The benefits to biomedical research of the new NIH policy are
ultimately nothing short of tremendous," said Heather Joseph,
executive director of SPARC. "The sooner we can get effective=
implementing mechanisms in place, the sooner researchers,
institutions, and the public can put PubMed Central to work. With
April implementation drawing near, this paper will be a great=
process."

"Congress and the NIH recognize that the Internet makes a
difference," said John Wilbanks, Vice President of Science
Commons. "Faculty authors can no longer sign away their
copyrights in a business-as-usual manner when doing so means that
their work will never be openly accessible over the Internet.
This white paper is a step in making sure authors and
universities understand how to move forward with a solid legal
footing."

Karla Hahn, Director of the ARL Office of Scholarly
Communication, added, "The new NIH requirement should accelerate
ongoing efforts to establish norms for authors to routinely
retain rights to deposit works in local as well as national
digital repositories. Carroll's much-needed analysis clarifies
the new opportunities for institutions to develop strategic
approaches to rights management issues."

Complying with the National Institutes of Health Public Access
Policy: Copyright Considerations and Options is available free on
the SPARC Web site at
http://www.arl.org/sparc/advocacy/nih/copyright.html.

##

SPARC

SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition),
with SPARC Europe and SPARC Japan, is an international alliance
of more than 800 academic and research libraries working to
create a more open system of scholarly communication. SPARC's
advocacy, educational and publisher partnership programs
encourage expanded dissemination of research. SPARC is on the Web
at http://www.arl.org/sparc/.

Science Commons

Science Commons designs strategies and tools for faster, more
efficient web-enabled scientific research. Science Commons
identifies unnecessary barriers to research, crafts policy
guidelines and legal agreements to lower those barriers, and
develops technology to make research data and materials easier to
find and use. The goal of Science Commons is to speed the
translation of data into discovery and to unlock the value of
research so more people can benefit from the work scientists are=
doing.

Association of Research Libraries

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit
organization of 123 research libraries in North America. Its
mission is to influence the changing environment of scholarly
communication and the public policies that affect research
libraries and the diverse communities they serve. ARL pursues
this mission by advancing the goals of its member research
libraries, providing leadership in public and information policy
to the scholarly and higher education communities, fostering the
exchange of ideas and expertise, and shaping a future environment
that leverages its interests with those of allied organizations.
ARL is located on the Web at http://www.arl.org/.

--
Jennifer McLennan
Director of Communications
SPARC
(the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition)
http://www.arl.org/sparc
(202) 296-2296 ext 121
jennifer@arl.org