Funder group suggests use of permissive licences and asks for help comparing publisher value
Coalition S, the international group of funders requiring open access to papers reporting research they have supported, has provided input to a consultation by the US National Institutes of Health on its open-access plan.
Last year, the White House ordered federal US research funders including the NIH to change their publications policies, including to make their papers available with open access immediately on publication.
Individual funders have some leeway over exactly how to implement the new rules, and the NIH is seeking input on its Public Access Plan.
Coalition S, whose members including the US-based Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have already implemented similar policies, provided input to the NIH consultation in feedback published on 13 April.
The group of mainly European funders has had a powerfully disruptive impact on global academic publishing since it launched in 2018 with the aim of making research results open for reuse with transparent publication costs.
Coalition S input
Coalition S said it was “delighted” by the removal of a 12-month embargo period during which NIH-supported publications have so far been allowed to remain behind a paywall.
But it said it will be “imperative” for the NIH to ensure that publications are licensed in ways that permit their broad reuse.
CC BY licences or similar, which allow anyone to distribute and adapt the work if the creator is credited, are needed so that papers can, for example, be translated into other languages and their figures can be used in textbooks, it said.
Coalition S also said the NIH should avoid paying for publication in journals that already charge a subscription fee for paywalled content, and that NIH grants should be assigned a digital identifier to help people find resultant papers.
In addition, the group asked the NIH to encourage publishers to provide data on their pricing and services to the Journal Comparison Service, which Coalition S developed to help research organisations compare the value of publishing providers.
Responses to the NIH plans are due by 24 April.