Twelve reminders about FRPAATwo important OA bills will be re-introduced in the new session of Congress. One would convert the NIH policy from a request to a requirement and one will be the 2007 version of the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA). Both were introduced last year, attracted wide support and fierce opposition, and ended the session without a vote.
SPARC Open Access Newsletter, issue #106
February 2, 2007
by Peter Suber
I was going to wait until the bills were re-introduced before refreshing everyone's memories on the fine points of some of the issues they raise. But the controversy over the new anti-OA campaign from the Association of American Publishers (AAP) has put a media spotlight on some objections and misunderstandings that need correction sooner rather than later.
Here are 12 reminders of what FRPAA actually says. There are more than 12 salient provisions in the bill, but to judge from last year's lobbying and this year's pre-season warm-up, these are the ones most likely to be overlooked or distorted by opponents. Think of this as an inoculation of truth against truthiness, protection for a season of heated rhetoric. (In general, the same 12 points apply to the NIH policy, but I'll cover FRPAA first and explain the differences from the NIH policy later.)
(1) FRPAA mandates deposit in an OA repository, not submission to an OA journal. It focuses on green OA and ignores gold OA.
(2) It does not mandate that subscription-based journals convert to OA. It does not tell any kind of journals what their access policies or business models ought to be. It regulates grantees, not publishers.
(3) It only applies to articles that have already been published in peer-reviewed journals.
This provision has three important consequences. First, it means that FRPAA doesn't apply to unpublished articles or research notes. Therefore, it doesn't force premature disclosure from researchers who make patentable discoveries. The policy kicks in only after researchers voluntarily decide to publish.
Second, the policy does not bypass or alter peer review; it merely widens access to peer-reviewed research.
Third, it's about archiving copies, not manipulating originals. Hence, the possibility of censorship doesn't come up. The originals will be in libraries and independent web sites around the world, wherever the publisher's market reach, distribution system, and preservation back-ups have managed to place them. If some of the published originals are not in fact copied for OA archiving, or if some copies are removed after deposit, that would be regrettable (and violate the policy). But it would not affect the originals at all. It would not delete them from libraries and independent web sites around the world, shrink the range of their distribution, change their access policies, or reduce their visibility. To use the word "censorship" to describe the incomplete copying of literature already published, distributed, stored, curated, and preserved in independent locations is incoherent newspeak. Or (to play along), if occasional non-archiving really is a kind of censorship, then publishers who want to defeat an OA archiving mandate like FRPAA want systematic non-archiving and mass censorship.
(4) Under FRPAA, the government will not decide what gets published or tell journals what to publish. The government will not conduct peer review or tell journals how to conduct peer review. It will not become a publisher (where it wasn't already a publisher). It will not "nationalize science" (whatever that means).
Government funding agencies will continue to decide what research projects they will fund. That's a significant power, but FRPAA didn't create it and defeating FRPAA won't repeal it.
(5) FRPAA mandates deposit in an OA repository, but it does not limit deposits to a single repository.
This is true in two senses. First, FRPAA lets federal funding agencies host their own repositories or point grantees to suitable external repositories. Second, even after agencies make their choice, and authors deposit their work in the designated repository, authors are not limited to that repository and may deposit their work in any other repositories as well. The first point means that the designated repositories won't always be controlled by the government. The second point means that, even when they are, authors may deposit in independent repositories without restraint. The policy opens new access doors without closing any old ones.
(6) FRPAA does not apply to the published edition of an article. It applies only to the final version of the author's peer-reviewed manuscript --basically, the version approved by peer review but not yet copy-edited. This is a concession to publishers to preserve library incentives to subscribe.
(7) FRPAA gives publishers the option to replace the author's manuscript in the designated repository with the final published version. This is a solution for publishers who worry about the circulation of multiple versions.
(8) FRPAA does not mandate OA immediately upon publication, but permits embargoes up to six months.
Hence, for the majority of non-OA publishers who demand transfer of copyright, FRPAA allows time to enjoy the exclusive rights granted by copyright. For the first six months after publication, publishers will have exclusive distribution rights to both the published edition and the final version of the author's peer-reviewed manuscript. After six months, publishers will still have exclusive distribution rights to the published edition, and the only time limit on this exclusivity is the term of copyright itself (the life of the author plus5070 years). Of course, publishers may voluntarily waive some of these exclusive rights by permitting authors to self-archive their postprints, and today about 70% of surveyed publishers do just that.
(9) FRPAA does not provide funds for publication fees at fee-based OA journals.
There's a healthy ongoing debate about whether funding agencies should offer to pay these fees. Are they an unaffordable diversion of funds from research or a needed investment in peer-reviewed journals and unembargoed OA? (There are publishers and OA proponents on each side of this question.) The debate should continue, but don't let it confuse the issues. Objections to the practice are not objections to FRPAA --or to the analogous OA policy from the Australian Research Council, where this confusion has already arisen.
(10) FRPAA does not depend on publisher consent or cooperation. It relies instead on a special license already passed by Congress authorizing federal funding agencies to disseminate the results of the research they fund.
(11) FRPAA does not amend copyright law. It does not seize or invalidate copyrights held by others, prevent government-funded researchers from holding copyrights on their work, prevent them from transferring their copyrights to publishers, or prevent publishers from holding or using those copyrights.
(12) Finally, FRPAA makes no assumptions about how many members of the lay public are interested in reading peer-reviewed scientific research articles. The purpose of the policy is to widen access for everyone who can make use of the research --researchers and non-researchers alike.
* Each of these FRPAA reminders also applies to the NIH policy except that (a) the NIH policy requests and encourages OA without requiring it, (b) it requires deposit in PubMed Central, and (c) the NIH, in a separate policy, does provide funds to pay publication fees at fee-based OA journals.
* For details on both policies, including the official wording to back up my paraphrases above, see the links below:
Official text of FRPAA 2006
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:S.2695:
(the final colon is part of the URL)
Alliance for Taxpayer Access page on FRPAA
http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/frpaa/
My SOAN article on FRPAA, May 2, 2006
http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3942938/suber_news97.html#frpaa
NIH page on the NIH public access policy
http://publicaccess.nih.gov/
Official text of the NIH policy
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-05-022.html
My FAQ on the NIH policy
http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4552059/suber_nihfaq.htm
* For a sense of the kind of lobbying rhetoric we may encounter in opposition to FRPAA and a strengthened NIH policy, see the major stories on the AAP from January:
Jim Giles, PR's 'pit bull' takes on open access, Nature, January 24, 2007.
http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070122/full/445347a.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_01_21_fosblogarchive.html#116966479599813483
Mark Chillingworth, Nature uncovers PR attack on open access, Information World Review, January 25, 2007.
http://blog.iwr.co.uk/2007/01/nature_uncovers.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_01_21_fosblogarchive.html#116976042190104315
Susan Brown, Publishers' Group Reportedly Hires P.R. Firm to Counter Push for Free Access to Research Results, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 26, 2007
http://chronicle.com/daily/2007/01/2007012601n.htm
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_01_21_fosblogarchive.html#116981736077002038
Andrew Leonard, Science publishers get stupid, Salon, January 25, 2007.
http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2007/01/25/free_information/index.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_01_21_fosblogarchive.html#116981820782123154
Rick Weiss, Publishing Group Hires 'Pit Bull of PR', Washington Post, January 26, 2007.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/25/AR2007012501705.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_01_21_fosblogarchive.html#116981898463749763
David Biello, Open Access to Science Under Attack, Scientific American, January 26, 2007.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa001&articleID=60AADF2C-E7F2-99DF-383C632C90DD1AA5
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_01_21_fosblogarchive.html#116990790418591273
Response from Brian Crawford, Chairman of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) Professional/Scholarly Publishing division (PSP), January 26, 2007.
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/3572.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_01_28_fosblogarchive.html#117004495228392070
Response from Barbara Meredith, Vice President of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) Professional/Scholarly Publishing division (PSP), January 26, 2007.
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/3570.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_01_28_fosblogarchive.html#117000117056524947
A Slashdot thread on the AAP launched on January 25, 2007.
http://science.slashdot.org/science/07/01/25/2155223.shtml
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_01_21_fosblogarchive.html#116978180306622859
Prue Adler and Karla Hahn of the ARL sent an open letter about the AAP campaign to the Directors of all ARL libraries, January 31, 2007.
http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/mmaapprfinal.pdf
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_01_28_fosblogarchive.html#117033777972938183
* Postscript. I'm conscious that one strategy suggested to the AAP by its new PR advisor is to keep OA proponents on the defensive with baseless objections. (From the Jim Giles article in Nature: "Dezenhall noted that if the other side is on the defensive, it doesn't matter if they can discredit your statements....[He] advised [Elsevier, Wiley, and the ACS] to focus on simple messages, such as 'Public access equals government censorship'.") The AAP's Barbara Meredith says that "reporters picked up on some early proposals that were not adopted" and I do hope the AAP will keep the debate on the merits. But if you encounter baseless objections, don't be thrown on the defensive. One counter-strategy is to respond online --as I'm doing here-- and link to the responses as needed. Don't let absurd claims go unanswered, but don't take the bait and spend a lot of time answering them. If you don't like my answers, use others or write your own. Either way, use links to recycle the answers as often as critics recycle the objections. Be sure to include a link to the strategy to keep OA proponents on the defensive with baseless objections.
* PPS. As long as I'm on the subject, here's some other FRPAA news from January:
The National Society of Consulting Soil Scientists (NSCSS) endorsed FRPAA.
http://consultingsoilscientists.blogspot.com/2007/01/nscss-supports-federal-research-public.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_01_28_fosblogarchive.html#117018848246974673
FreeCulture declared February 15 a "National Day of Action" for students to support OA and FRPAA.
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/3586.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_01_28_fosblogarchive.html#117042463056690445
David S. Stern, Vice President for Academic and Student Affairs of Hamline University, publicly endorsed FRPAA.
http://www.arl.org/sparc/advocacy/frpaa/institutions.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_01_07_fosblogarchive.html#116837222909187139
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