[Open-access] Fwd: [GOAL] New new doctoral dissertation on OA now available

Mon Feb 6 12:04:21 UTC 2012

FYI.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Nancy Pontika <pontika.nancy at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 9:28 AM
Subject: [GOAL] New new doctoral dissertation on OA now available
To: goal at eprints.org

** Apologies for cross-posting**

*
*

*======*

*The Influence of the National Institutes of Health Public-Access Policy on
the Publishing Habits of Principal Investigators*

Athanasia (Nancy) Pontika

Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Simmons College,
Boston, MA, USA

*(Full text available
here<https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B3M8WbWcGihpODQ5OThjM2QtNDdkZi00MjEyLWFjYmEtZWRiMWY5ZWRkOThm&hl=en_US&pli=1>;
poster presented at the Berlin9 conference available
here<https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B3M8WbWcGihpNGRmYTU0ZDUtZTI1OC00MDFkLTlmZmMtNjRhYWVmY2YwOTcz&hl=en_US>
)*

* *

*Introduction*

The mandatory National Institutes of Health (NIH) public-access policy
requires that the NIH-funded principal investigators (PIs) submit to PubMed
Central (PMC) immediately upon publication the peer-reviewed copy of their
article, which will then become available for public access through PMC no
later than after a twelve-month embargo period. The policy has been
effective since April 7th, 2008 (Division G, Title II, Section 218 of PL
110-161 Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008).

* *

*Purpose*

This dissertation investigated the effect of the NIH public-access policy
on the NIH-funded principal investigators’ publishing decisions. Four
questions were examined:

1.      Which factors motivate the NIH-funded PIs to publish in the PLoS
open-access journals?

2.      How do NIH-funded PIs perceive the NIH public-access policy?

3.      How does the NIH public-access policy influence the PIs’ publishing
behavior?

4.      How does the NIH public-access policy influence the PIs’ decision
to publish in open-access journals?

* *

*Methodology*

During the period March-May 2011, forty-two PIs were interviewed using Skype
TM software, and a semi-structured open-ended interview protocol was
followed. The participants were divided into two groups: the pre-mandate
PIs, who had published in one of the seven PLoS journals during the period
2005-2007 and the post-mandate PIs, who had published in the PLoS journals
during the period 2008-2009.

* *

*Results*

*PLoS Publication Drive: *There are four quality criteria that motivate the
participants to publish in the PLoS journals: (a) impact factor, (b)
publication speed, (c) peer-review and (d) articles’ citation advantage.

* *

*Copyrights: *The participants do not actively manage their copyrights for
four reasons. They (a) have limited knowledge on the topic, (b) publish in
toll-access journals that comply with the policy, (c) publish in
open-access journals with limited copyright restrictions (libre open
access), or (d) ignore the journal publishers’ copyright restrictions and
proceed with the manuscripts’ submission to PubMed Central.

* *

*Publication fees: *The PIs pay the publication fees using the NIH-funding.
Providing that every year all articles will be published in open-access
journals, the NIH-funding does not cover adequately the whole amount of the
publication fees.**

*Comprehending the policy: *Three groups were formulated:* *(a) NIH
public-access policy is easy to understand and comply with (*n*=13, 31%)*, *(b)
PIs have assistants who are responsible for the submission and could not
express an opinion (*n*=14, 33%), and (c) NIH public-access policy is
difficult to understand and comply with (*n*=15, 36%). The complicated
parts of the policy are (a) the policy’s wording, (b) journals’ licensing
agreements, and (c) manuscript submission.**

*Seeking help: *The participants do not ask for help mainly due to lack of
time. They give their own interpretation of the policy’s wording and
perform all the steps hoping that they managed the submission process
correctly. At an institutional level help was provided through workshops,
organized mainly by the grants department and occasionally in cooperation
with the library.**

* *

*Policy & open-access awareness: *

   - Non-increased OA awareness for OA Advocates (N=42, *n*=15, 36%)**
   - Non-increased OA awareness for Non-OA Advocates (N=42, *n*=20, 48%)**
   - Increased OA awareness for Non-OA Advocates (N=42, *n*=7, 16%)

*Policy & publishing habits:*

   - The policy did not cause a change in publishing habits (N=42, *n*=31,
   74%)
   - The policy caused a change in publishing habits (N=42, *n*=11, 26%)**

* *

*Conclusions*

The NIH public-access policy caused only a limited change in the PIs’
open-access awareness and their publishing habits. The OA Advocates support
immediate access to information and have been providing their manuscripts
in open-access formats before the implementation of the policy.  The non-OA
Advocates publish their articles based on quality and prestige criteria and
the journals they use to publish comply with the policy, so there is no
need for change.

The PIs have chosen to publish with one of the PLoS journals because of
their high-impact factor, publication speed, fair peer-review system and
the articles’ open accessibility.* *

Although the participants validate the proposition that publicly funded
research should be distributed free of cost, some dislike the extra effort
of submitting the manuscripts to PubMed Central. The submission process may
be considered to be an administrative burden. The PIs who have
administrators assisting them with the policy’s steps have a more positive
attitude towards the policy.

*Dissertation Committee Members:*

* *

*Chair: *Robin Peek, Professor (Graduate School of Library and Information
Science, Simmons College)

Peter Suber, Faculty Fellow (Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard
University)

Lisa Hussey, Professor (Graduate School of Library and Information Science,
Simmons College)

======

Athanasia (Nancy) Pontika, PhD

Twitter: nancypontika

web: https://plus.google.com/103916734759737834769/about?hl=en

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-- 
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
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