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

[Ann Okerson <aokerson@pantheon.yale.edu>]

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


On Mon, 4 Aug 2008, LUFF, Kirsty wrote:

> Oxford, UK, Monday 4 August, 2008
>
> Oxford Journals today announced that they will deposit into
> PubMed Central (PMC) any articles published in any of their
> biomedical journals which are identified by the authors as being
> funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This
> development helps authors to comply with the public access
> policies of the NIH.
>
> The NIH policy (http://publicaccess.nih.gov/) 'requires
> investigators funded by the NIH to submit to PMC an electronic
> version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscript upon acceptance
> for publication, to be made publicly available no later than 12
> months after the official date of publication.'
>
> Any NIH-funded manuscripts submitted to Oxford Journals from 31st
> July 2008 onwards will be identified and tagged, and the final
> published version will then be sent to PMC for them to include on
> their platform. NIH-funded articles which are open access will be
> available immediately, and those which are not open access will
> be available after 12 months. To clarify, in both cases, the
> final published version of the NIH funded article will be hosted
> at PMC, rather than the original manuscript. Data feeds between
> PMC and the journals concerned have already been set up, and now
> Oxford Journals will work with our authors to identify which
> articles are funded by the NIH.
>
> Martin Richardson, Managing Director of Oxford Journals,
> comments, 'already all of our open access articles are being
> deposited into PMC. Now any NIH-funded authors who publish their
> articles in one of our journals will not need to deposit them
> into PMC themselves - Oxford Journals will do so for no charge on
> their behalf.'
>
> Oxford Journals has also prepared some information and guidelines
> for authors of various funding agencies, which can be found here:
> http://www.oxfordjournals.org/for_authors/repositories.html
>
> For more information, please contact:
>
> Kirsty Luff
> Senior Communications and Marketing Manager, Oxford Journals
> kirsty.luff@oxfordjournals.org
> +44 (0)1865 354206