Research Funder Policies

Publication Policies of Major Research Funders:

NIH Public Access Policy — Becomes Mandate in 2007

On December 26, 2007, President Bush signed a spending bill that requires the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) to mandate open online access to all research it funds.

This is the first mandate for a major public funding agency in the US that requires research to be openly available; it changes the 2005 NIH Public Access Policy, which requested, but did not require, open access to NIH-funded research.  

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The new language stipulates that investigators funded by the NIH submit their peer-reviewed manuscripts to the National Library of Medicine’s open access repository PubMed Central when the manuscript is accepted for publication.  The manuscript would then become openly available via PubMed Central within 12 months of publication in a journal.  The policy will be implemented “in a manner consistent with copyright law.”

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The mandate will apply to a vast amount of research. Aside from classified military research, the NIH is the world’s largest funder of scientific research, with a 2007 budget of $28 billion. According to open access commentator Peter Suber, NIH research funds ”65,000 peer-reviewed articles every year or 178 every day.”  At MIT, NIH funds account for about one-third of the research dollars awarded annually.

More Background:

Howard Hughes Medical Institute [HHMI] Public Access Publishing Policy

The HHMI announced on June 26, 2007 that it will “require its scientists to publish their original research articles in scientific journals that allow the articles and supplementary materials to be made freely accessible in a public repository within six months of publication.”

The policy applies to all manuscripts submitted by HHMI scientists on or after January 1, 2008.

More details.

National Center for Atmospheric Research Open Access Policy

The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), a national lab, passed an Open Access policy in October, 2009, that requires that all peer-reviewed research published by its scientists and staff in scientific journals be made publicly available online through its institutional repository.

NCAR is sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and is the first of the NSF’s Federally Funded Research and Development Centers to adopt an OA mandate.

More information:

Federal Research Public Access Act of 2009

FRPAA is a bipartisan effort to increase tax payers’ access to federally funded research. The Act would require that manuscripts of journal articles stemming from grants made by US government agencies funding more than $100 million in research annually be available openly on the internet — without payment or subscription barriers — within six months of publication elsewhere in a peer-reviewed journal. This legislation was first introduced to the Senate on May 2, 2006 by Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and Joe Lieberman (D-CT, now I-CT) and was re-introduced by the same sponsors in June 2009.

The Act would also require that the manuscripts be preserved in a digital archive maintained by the funding agency, or in another suitable repository that permits free public access, interoperability, and long-term preservation.

Eleven government agencies would be affected: The Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health & Human Services, Homeland Security, and Transportation, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the National Science Foundation. (Only nonclassified research is covered by the Act.)

FRPAA is consistent with existing copyright and patent laws; the funding agency would need to obtain a non-exclusive right to disseminate manuscripts resulting from their grant funds. Researchers accepting funding from these agencies would need to avoid transferring exclusive rights to publishers of their journal articles, to allow for public dissemination in accordance with this Act.

For more information on FRPAA:

IES Mandate

The Institute of Education Sciences (IES), part of the US Department of Education, has an open access mandate for IES-funded research. The mandate operates similarly to that of NIH, in that the author’s final version of the manuscript must be deposited, and there can be up to a 12-month delay before it is made available. The difference is that deposits go to the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) rather than PubMedCentral.

More information is available from Peter Suber’s summary.

Open Access Mandates in the UK, Europe, and Canada

Wellcome Trust (UK)

The Wellcome Trust, an independent charity that funds research to improve human and animal health, is the largest private funder of medical research in the UK. In October, 2005, it became first research funding agency in the world to require open access to all publications resulting from its grants.

The Wellcome Trust position statement in support of open and unrestricted access to published research requires that “any research papers that have been accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, and are supported in whole or in part by Wellcome Trust funding, to be deposited into PubMed Central (PMC) or UK PMC once established, to be made freely available as soon as possible and in any event within six months of the journal publisher’s official date of final publication.”

The policy is also significant in its clear statement that an author’s obligations to the Wellcome Trust pre-date and take precedence over “any agreement with a journal.” Papers submitted for publication on or after October 1, 2006 must be submitted to journals that have a Wellcome Trust compliant publishing policy.

The position statement also includes an expectation that “authors…where possible… retain their copyright” and guarantees funding to cover page processing charges authors may face when working with publishers who support the open access model.

Research Councils (UK)

As of September 2007, 6 of the 7 Research Councils in the UK had adopted open access mandates. These councils provide a significant portion of publicly funded research in the UK. Sample open access mandates include:

European Commission:

In the largest government allocation to OA infrastructure in history, the European Commission has budgeted roughly 50 million pounds for the period 2007-08.

In addition, the following European research funding organizations are among those which have established Open Access mandates or recommendations:

Canada:

  • The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) announced a new open access policy that takes effect January 1, 2008. It requires those receiving grant funds from CIHR to “make every effort to ensure” their research articles are made freely available within six months of publication.

Summaries of Research Funders’ Open Access Policies: