[A2k] SPARC: New whitepaper offers options for university implementation of new NIH public access policy

[Manon Ress]

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[ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]
New whitepaper offers options for university implementation of new NIH
public access policy

For immediate release
February 29, 2008

For more information, contact:
Jennifer McLennan, SPARC
(202) 631-8854
jennifer@arl.org

Kaitlin Thaney, Science Commons
kaitlin@creativecommons.org

Karla Hahn, ARL
(202) 296-2296
karla@arl.org

SPARC, SCIENCE COMMONS, AND ARL OFFER OPTIONS FOR
UNIVERSITY IMPLEMENTATION OF NEW NIH PUBLIC ACCESS POLICY

White paper by leading copyright scholar helps grantees
prepare for April start of NIH requirement

Washington, DC and Cambridge, MA  February 29, 2008  SPARC (the
Scholarly
Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), Science Commons, and the
Association of Research Libraries (ARL) have jointly released a white
paper
to help university and medical school administrators ensure their
institutions comply with public access requirements that are soon to
be a
condition of National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding.

Effective April 7, 2008, investigators must deposit articles stemming
from
NIH funding into the agency=B9s PubMed Central online archive, to be made
publicly available no later than 12 months after publication in a
journal.
Complying with the National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy:
Copyright Considerations and Options will help provosts, research
administrators, and campus counsel understand their institution=B9s
copyright-related obligations and options under the new Congressionally
mandated policy, which was announced in January and replaces an earlier
voluntary approach.

The timely analysis was prepared by Michael W. Carroll, an attorney,
copyright expert, and faculty member at Villanova University law school.
Carroll reviews the policy and its background, explains the legal
context,
and presents six alternative copyright management strategies that will
help
grantee institutions assure they reserve the necessary rights for
articles
to be made available in PubMed Central.

Carroll has been involved for several years in copyright issues as a
member
of the Creative Commons board and an advisor to Science Commons. In
2004 he
worked with SPARC to develop the popular SPARC Author Addendum
(http://www.arl.org/sparc/author/), which enables authors to reserve
rights
to deposit their works in open online archives.

"The benefits to biomedical research of the new NIH policy are
ultimately
nothing short of tremendous,=B2 said Heather Joseph, executive director of
SPARC. =B3The sooner we can get effective implementing mechanisms in
place,
the sooner researchers, institutions, and the public can put PubMed
Central
to work. With April implementation drawing near, this paper will be a
great
tool to help administrators jumpstart the local planning process.=B2

=B3Congress and the NIH recognize that the Internet makes a difference,=B2
said
John Wilbanks, Vice President of Science Commons. =B3Faculty authors can
no
longer sign away their copyrights in a business-as-usual manner when
doing
so means that their work will never be openly accessible over the
Internet.
This white paper is a step in making sure authors and universities
understand how to move forward with a solid legal footing.=B2

Karla Hahn, Director of the ARL Office of Scholarly Communication,
added,
=B3The new NIH requirement should accelerate ongoing efforts to establish
norms for authors to routinely retain rights to deposit works in local
as
well as national digital repositories. Carroll's much-needed analysis
clarifies the new opportunities for institutions to develop strategic
approaches to rights management issues.=B2

Complying with the National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy:
Copyright Considerations and Options is available free on the SPARC
Web site
at http://www.arl.org/sparc/advocacy/nih/copyright.html.

##

SPARC

SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), with
SPARC
Europe and SPARC Japan, is an international alliance of more than 800
academic and research libraries working to create a more open system of
scholarly communication. SPARC=B9s advocacy, educational and publisher
partnership programs encourage expanded dissemination of research.
SPARC is
on the Web at http://www.arl.org/sparc/.

Science Commons

Science Commons designs strategies and tools for faster, more efficient
web-enabled scientific research. Science Commons identifies unnecessary
barriers to research, crafts policy guidelines and legal agreements to
lower
those barriers, and develops technology to make research data and
materials
easier to find and use. The goal of Science Commons is to speed the
translation of data into discovery and to unlock the value of research
so
more people can benefit from the work scientists are doing.

Association of Research Libraries

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit
organization of
123 research libraries in North America. Its mission is to influence the
changing environment of scholarly communication and the public
policies that
affect research libraries and the diverse communities they serve. ARL
pursues this mission by advancing the goals of its member research
libraries, providing leadership in public and information policy to the
scholarly and higher education communities, fostering the exchange of
ideas
and expertise, and shaping a future environment that leverages its
interests
with those of allied organizations. ARL is located on the Web at
http://www.arl.org/.


--
Jennifer McLennan
Director of Communications
SPARC
(the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition)
http://www.arl.org/sparc
(202) 296-2296 ext 121
jennifer@arl.org