New new doctoral dissertation on OA now available

[Peter Suber]

[Forwarding from Nancy Pontika. --Peter Suber.  Disclosure:  I'm a proud member of Nancy's dissertation committee.]

* 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; poster presented at the Berlin9 conference available here)

 

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