Re: Oxford Journals now deposits NIH-funded articles into PubMed Central

[Jody.Falco@guilford.com]

Guilford Publications also deposits articles into PMC for its 
authors whose work is identified as being supported by NIH 
grants. While we believe it is the publisher's responsibility to 
the author to administer this transfer of data, we are not sure 
why, in this electronic age, the article DOIs cannot be used as 
locators of the work, or, as noted below, that the NIH would not 
accept links to the "authoritative site."

J. Falco
Managing Editor, Periodicals

_____

Ann Okerson wrote <aokerson@pantheon.yale.edu>

Re: Oxford Journals now deposits NIH-funded articles into PubMed Central

OUP's is a very important announcement, and it signals what 
publishers may need to do in order to maintain and improve their 
"author-share" of papers.

Although the deposit requirements for the various mandates, each 
individually, may not seem onerous (NIH says that it's possible 
to fulfill their submission requirement in as little as 10 
minutes per article -- presumably after one has read the various 
instructions and tried it at least once), the fact is that it's 
one more thing that an author has to do, either right after the 
publication of his/her paper or 12 months later.  In any case, by 
then the author has gone on to other research and the previously 
submitted paper is no longer on the "front burner."

Here at our university, principal authors are more likely to 
assign this effort to an administrative assistant, a post doc, or 
some other member of staff.  These individuals are charged with 
making the submissions work and they are likely to seek help on 
campus, from sources such as our libraries -- and maybe others 
who are on a referral list as providing help.  The staff turnover 
at these levels is far higher than at the PI level, and there is 
not only a lot of learning, but also a lot of re-learning.  All 
this becomes more complicated as the different procedures and 
mandates may grow.

Our authors are saying, "well, why can't the publisher provide 
one-stop shopping for this, i.e., take the monkey off my back -- 
make the fulfillment of the mandates their job, not ours, as part 
of the publications process?"  Another (better?) alternative is 
that NIH could accept links to the authoritative site:  the 
journal itself.  In the days of computer networks, with ever 
increasing interlinking, trying to centralize all information 
just makes for a costlier and more costly service.

One solution to this increasingly complex situation on campus may 
be the addition of staff to grants/contracts compliance units in 
universities (we certainly won't get new positions in the 
Libraries for such activity though we may have to re-direct from 
other things).  An even better solution from our point of view is 
OUP's:  to provide that support, as authors would like, at the 
publishing end.  Thanks to OUP for this leadership.

That said, the best solution would probably be a
linked/distributed one.

Ann Okerson/Yale Library