NIH Invites Recommendations on How to Implement and Monitor Compliance with OA Mandate

[Stevan Harnad <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk>]

Reference linked archived version:
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/381-guid.html

NIH Invites Recommendations on How to Implement and Monitor Compliance
with Its OA Self-Archiving Mandate

SUMMARY: NIH is now calling for a round of public recommendations 
on the best way to implement and monitor compliance with its OA 
Self-Archiving mandate. My own recommendation below is designed 
to make the NIH mandate efficient and successful for NIH and its 
fundees and to ensure that it reinforces and converges with the 
growing number of complementary university self-archiving 
mandates (such as Harvard's). The gist is that (1) NIH's 
preferred locus of direct deposit for the postprint should be the 
fundee's Institutional Repository (IR) (from which it can then be 
downloaded to NIH) and that (2) the fulfillment conditions on the 
NIH grant should stipulate that the fundee institution monitors 
that the deposit has been made. Please make your own 
recommendations here.

In a very responsible and timely way, NIH has now called for a 
round of publicrecommendations on the best way to implement and 
monitor compliance withNIH's Green OA Self-Archiving mandate.

If you feel (as I do) that it is important to implement the NIH 
mandate in a way maximize its efficiency and likelihood of 
success, as well as making it an optimal model for all research 
funder mandates worldwide to follow, I urge you to make your 
recommendations here.

I append my own recommendation below. It is extremely simple, and 
designed not only to make the NIH mandate efficient and 
successful for both NIH and its fundees, but also to ensure that 
it reinforces and converges with the growing number of 
complementary university self-archiving mandates (such 
asHarvard's) rather than diverging, competing or complicating.

The gist is that (1) NIH's preferred locus of direct deposit for 
the postprint should be the fundee's Institutional Repository 
(IR) (from which it can then be downloaded to NIH) and that (2) 
the fulfillment conditions on the NIH grant should stipulate that 
the fundee institution monitors that the deposit has been made.

(There is also a Question 3 for you to recommend ways to improve 
NIH instructions to fundees, and a Question 4 where you can -- 
and I hope will -- reaffirm support for the NIH policy itself.)

Here are my own recommendations for 1 and 2, and my expression of 
support for 4:

Question 1:  Do you have recommendations for alternative 
implementation approaches to those already reflected in the NIH 
Public Access Policy?

Yes. Modify the procedure for fulfilling the deposit requirement 
of the NIH self-archiving mandate in order to make it compatible 
with, and to reinforce, university self-archiving mandates (such 
as Harvard's):

In the NIH interface, at the point of deposit, add a feature that 
allows the full-text deposit to be downloaded from the URL where 
the full-text has already been deposited in the fundee's 
institution's Institutional Repository (IR).

And stipulate in the overall instructions that the preferred way 
to fulfill NIH's self-archiving mandate is to deposit the 
full-text directly in the fundee's IR and then download it to the 
NIH deposit site.

Question 2:  In light of the change in law that mankes NIH's 
public access policy mandatory, do you have recommendations for 
monitoring and ensuring compliance with the NIH Public Access 
Policy?

Yes. The optimal way to monitor and ensure compliance is by 
making it part of the grant fulfillment conditions for the 
fundee's institution that it must monitor and ensure that the 
deposit is made.

The best and easiest way that an institution can monitor and 
ensure deposit -- and at the same time encourage or mandate the 
self-archiving of all the rest of its own institutional research 
output in all disciplines (not just NIH-funded research) -- is to 
require direct deposit in the institution's own IR.

See: "How To Integrate University and Funder Open Access 
Mandates."

Do not rely on direct deposit by publishers! It will only make 
the monitoring of compliance more divergent and difficult. Direct 
deposit should be convergent on the fundee's IR, to create a 
synergy with institutional mandates.

Question 3:  In addition to the information already posted at 
http://publicaccess.nih.gov/communications.htm, what additional 
information, training or communications related to the NIH Public 
Access Policy would be helpful to you?

[See Public Access Communications and Training and suggest what 
would make it clearer and easier for you. The principal thing is 
that the deposit itself should b in your own university's IR. The 
deposit can then be downloaded to NIH.]

Question 4:  Do you have other comments related to the NIH Public 
Access Policy?

The NIH Green OA Self-Archiving policy is splendid, timely, 
historic. But it can be made orders of magnitude more successful, 
effective, and worthy of emulation worldwide if the one small 
implementational detail recommended above is adopted. It will 
create a synergy between funder OA self-archiving mandates like 
NIH's and institutional OA self-archiving mandates like 
Harvard's, with one convergent point of direct deposit (the 
institution) and both the institution and NIH jointly monitoring 
and ensuring compliance. It will also maximize the contribution 
of the NIH OA mandate to the growth and success of OA mandates, 
and OA, in all fields, worldwide.

Stevan Harnad