CENDI PRINCIPALS AND ALTERNATES MEETING
National Archives and Records Administration
Washington, DC
November 21, 2006
Minutes
Open Access and CENDI Activities
SPARC Open Access and Related Activities and Plans
Open Access Bill: Background and Opportunities
NARA Showcase
Nationwide Records Management Program
ERA Program
Public Education Program
SPARC Open Access and Related Activities and Plans
Heather Joseph, Association of Research Libraries, SPARC
SPARC is an association of member libraries formed to be a catalyst for action in the area of open and public access. SPARC’s focus is very pragmatic. The agenda is to expand the dissemination of scholarly research, to look at new scholarly communication systems that reduce financial pressures for libraries and users, use the networked environment to achieve these ends and advocate and educate stakeholders about open access. There are 220 member libraries in the U.S., 125 libraries in SPARC Europe, and 800 libraries in SPARC Japan. SPARC is particularly interested in education, looking for opportunities to change, and incubating demonstrations of real world business and publishing models, advocating policy changes that support the use of technology that recognize that the dissemination of results is essential to the research process.
SPARC distinguishes between open access and public access. Open access is the immediate, free availability of research literature on the Internet that scholars produce without expectation of payment. This is a vision of the future of scholarly communication and not a business model. The aim is to maximize scholarly communication which has systemic benefits. The value of research grows with use, leveraging our collective assets. Public access assumes an embargo period, while open access is immediate with no exclusivity.
SPARC is about to celebrate its 10th anniversary. When advocacy for policy change is combined with real world demonstrations, changes can move forward in a significant way. Advocacy programs have moved from education to include the broader arena. The current focus is on greater public access to government information. This began with the NIH initiative, because federally funded research is not being fully used and applied.
The trends worldwide are to consider greater access to research not only for reviewed articles but for data. The possibilities have changed with the technology for the Internet. We have only begun to scratch the surface of what is possible to do with research in the networked environment. This is all about opportunity rather than one community winning against another. Developing countries are looking to use research to get into the community. Innovation will spur discovery and economics. These are central opportunities that open access policies can enable.
There have been calls for public access from different segments. These include an Open Letter from individual researchers to Congress in 2004 and from 25 Nobel Laureates. Calls have been coming from society newsletters, including columns in Cell Biology and Anthropology. Scientists themselves often bristle at restrictions on the distribution of their own work.
There is increased use of cyberspace to perform science, but we are still holding on to a paper based distribution method. The Wellcome Trust Policy Advisor has built research repositories. These serve as a testbed for text mining to show how new facts can be discovered that would not be possible otherwise. This becomes a computable new electronic resource.
Governments could boost innovation and get a better return on their research investments. A 2005 Report on Scientific Publishing by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) calls for maximizing social returns on public investments. Funding agencies are looking for societal benefits.
Public access is also a market issue. Industry analysts don’t see the current publishing model as a sustainable system for the long term. In a Harris Poll, over 80 percent of adults feel that they should have access to publicly funded information. Six of ten individuals believe that finding potential cures for diseases would be speeded up. A Pew Trust study found that 93 million people take information from publishing materials to their health providers. This study was recently updated and the percent had increased to 60 percent. People are hungry for this information and when they have access, they are able to use it. Increased access addresses peoples’ interest in self education, particularly in the areas of patient and health care.
The Higher Education Community has also become involved. While public access hasn’t been officially endorsed by either of the two largest education consortiums, 25 university provosts endorsed public access in an Open Letter to the Higher Education Community in July 2006. Another 26 provosts spoke to this issue in a recent issue of Nature magazine. Dissemination is mission critical to public institutions and land grants.
Faster access has competitive advantage for journals. There is a quiet but growing segment of the publishing community that sees public access as an advantage. A list of those publishers advertising a six-month or less embargo period was compiled from HighWire. There are large and small publishers in many disciplines. When the embargo period moves from 12 months to 6 months, more people accessed the journals and they accessed them earlier.
Relevant policies are being developed worldwide by organizations as diverse as the European Commission, the Research Councils of the United Kingdom, the Chinese Academy of Science, and the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). This broad policy initiative began five years ago with the Budapest Open Access Initiative. This was the first time that members of various communities met to discuss these issues. In the intervening time, there has been a movement in the community to build a system that works and policies that mandate such systems. In all the list of policies, there are similar characteristics – either immediate or fast (from no delay to 12 months) access to federally funded research with online repositories and a call for the repositories to be permanently accessible and interoperable.
The majority of the people access journal articles in the first 6-8 weeks. It flat lines very quickly after that. There is a perceived value to immediacy. The value of increased citations into the research can be seen by the importance of the citation counts in the PART process for at least one CENDI agency.
Some publishers have been looking at alternative revenue streams – how is the journal funded, how is it put together, and how is it distributed. What is the value added that the publisher brings into the new environment and how can costs be contained. The added value activities include tagging, marketing, and copy editing, among others. What are the revenue streams that are tied closely to the added value that is still done?
Pure open access journals may be produced via sponsorship by industry or by aggregates of institutions. Advertising may be an appropriate source of revenue in some cases. In some disciplines this doesn’t work. Other innovative approaches include a commercial reprint program and image and video galleries as a separate product. This approach added four revenue streams that helped to supplement the 80 percent from institutional subscriptions. The trend shows that these products will take on an increased share of the cost over time. Disciplines are not created equal and there are a variety of potential models that need to be considered.
Where does open archiving fit? Open archiving and open access are two complementary strategies. The author can choose to put a copy at any time into an openly accessible archive. The problem with this approach is being able to find things in a systematic way. Ms. Joseph prefers fewer and more interchangeable archives. The benefits of repository development begin to accrue more quickly with fewer archives. Permanence is also an issue at the individual author level.
Ms. Joseph emphasized that SPARC is focusing on the publication process because there are issues of patentability and public access jeopardizing rights. The focus is on peer-reviewed material accepted for publication. SPARC is actively working on an education initiative to authors. Science Commons and academic institutions are also doing this kind of author education and investigating legal models. They are not looking to run afoul of copyright.
Open Access Bill: Background and Opportunities
Katherine Coughlin, Counsel, U.S. Senator John Cornyn
Senator Cornyn has been interested in this policy area for some time, starting with the connection with healthcare. On May 2, 2006, the one-year anniversary of the NIH Public Access policy, Senator Cornyn, along with Senator Lieberman, introduced the Federal Research Public Access Act. The Act calls for the timely and cost effective distribution of federally funded research, requiring agencies awarding 100 million dollars or more in extramural research to have an open access policy. Final manuscripts accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal must be deposited in a stable, digital, free repository with long term preservation and interoperability. Access must be provided no later than six months after publication. It includes research funded in full or in part by one of the agencies that qualify. The Act does not apply to laboratory notes, phone logs, or any background material. Revenue or royalty for the author is excluded. The bill emphasizes that the peer review process must continue.
Over 30 billion dollars is paid by taxpayers per year to conduct and support medical research. Federally funded research isn’t being used as widely. The government and the taxpayers are not getting their return on the investment. Senator Cornyn has been challenged by this. He heard from small colleges in small towns and they have seen the benefit. The bill can help progress and will require minimal investment. Three and a half million dollars would be spent by NIH if 100 percent of the funded research results were deposited. This is approximately one percent of the NIH budget.
This Act would apply to 11 agencies. This bill does not require a “one size fits all” strategy. They can leverage existing platforms and infrastructure for the repositories or join with other agencies. One data point they are looking for is the number of articles that would be impacted for the agencies identified. CENDI has already supplied some information on this point. Any information that the CENDI agencies can provide in this regard would be very helpful.
The bill includes reasonable restrictions based on national security. However, it was noted that the bill doesn’t talk about “sensitive but unclassified” information. Within DoD this type of information is broken down into various levels of restriction. Ms. Coughlin noted that they are interested in further discussions about this type of information.
The bill is in front of the subcommittee for Homeland Security and Government Affairs. Senator Cornyn wants to move the bill forward despite competing activities in the Senate. He is looking for opportunities in the next Congress as well. Senator Cornyn is also excited by the debate that the bill has generated. The bill will expire at the end of this Congress. Coughlin does not expect any major changes at this time and that it will be reintroduced in the next Congress. The House has a 12-month embargo period in a complementary bill.
The support for this bill has come from a broad audience. Over 2000 institutions have gone on record within the last six months as supporting the bill. The Senator has received arguments from publishers. These include the fact that the information is already available so this bill isn’t necessary and concerns that this bill will undermine the peer review process.
It was noted that federal purpose licenses already impact the ability of agencies to store results of their research in repositories. Existing right might be used; the premise is to rely on existing rules and regulations. The FAR and DFARS clauses should be used. Federal grants under OMB A110 and A112 are murkier than the work of government employees or contractors.
It was also noted that there are non-peer reviewed journals, such as D-Lib Magazine, that are also widely used and recognized in their respective disciplines. It was suggested that when feedback is obtained from the agencies about how much of this budget results in peer reviewed journals, that non-peer reviewed output should be considered as well.
NARA Showcase (Lewis Bellardo)
Dr. Bellardo introduced the three program areas within NARA that he chose to highlight during this showcase – records management, digital preservation, and public programs. Additional areas of focus have been highlighted in presentations at other recent CENDI meetings.
Nationwide Records Management Program (Laurence Brewer)
NARA has been working on updated scheduling and appraisal policy. Focused records management assistance has been provided since 1999, but it has been reorganized and refined based on priorities. There are several Electronic Records Management (ERM) products on the NARA web site, and NARA is exploring more frequent, low-level products that give technology specific guidance on issues raised by records managers in the field. Frequently Asked Questions about Instant Messaging was released in FY06. Additional guidance on wikis, blogs, portals, and RSS feeds, titled Implications of Web Technologies for NARA Web Guidance, was also released in late FY06 as a follow-on to the Web Guidance. These documents provide a starting point for conversations with agencies about how records management is involved with these new technologies.
NARA’s Appraisal Policy Directive 14411 discusses how NARA determines archival value and provides specific guidelines for certain types of records including R&D and Environmental Health and Safety records. In FY07, NARA will concentrate on the guidance for observational scientific data. A list of records management resources and an overview of future areas of work for NARA are included in NARA Bulletin 2006-02, Attachment 2.
Records management resources include widely available, free training for IT professionals, program managers and legal staff. NARA tries to relay to these audiences their responsibilities and the resources that are available to them. There is a new course on “vital” records, disaster planning and recovery, and basic electronic records management. An advanced electronic records management class is coming in 2007. Records management resources include self-paced courses that can be deployed on the agency’s e-learning system.
A Toolkit for Managing Electronic Records2 provides a central Internet portal for proven electronic records management guidance. Tools range from broad policy to implementation-specific resources and guidance. The goal is to organize tools for a wide audience, summarize tools to save time, reduce the reinvention of tools, and provide contact information and feedback. The Toolkit went online in March 2006 with 39 tools and currently has 54 items. The development of this site involves a rigorous process for reviewing the tools. The portal is currently getting about 20 visits per day. NARA continues to look for additional tools and feedback on this site.
Targeted Assistance involves partnerships between NARA’s records management staff and an agency. NARA works as a consultant in these situations, helping the agency to identify priorities from which it will select projects. NARA no longer requires an MOU, but the responsibilities of the two parties and priorities such as electronic records, records at risk or permanent records, are identified at the outset.
The Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA) Records Management Profile was released in December 2005. NARA worked with OMB and the Architecture and Infrastructure Committee of the CIO Council to develop this broad product for where records management fits within the five reference models of the FEA. The document provides information for records managers and for the IT community, bringing the two communities together. It provides a baseline and an ongoing connection with business processes, the System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) and CPIC. NARA wants to make sure that records management is considered from the beginning of systems development.
In FY07, NARA will pilot the profile with four agencies to fine-tune the profile and document lessons learned. The plan is to share a model that other agencies and or FEA lines of business can use. More information should be available by the end of 2007.
ERA Program (Fynnette Eaton)
The timeline for the ERA Program began in 1998-2000 when the initial research into electronic records was conducted. The RFP for the development of the ERA was released in 2003. Two companies then competed on the final design and the Lockheed Martin team won the contract. The ERA Program is now well underway with Increment 1 due to be in place in September 2007.
While there is less funding for the ERA than originally anticipated, NARA believes that they will be able to move forward though at a slower pace. The ERA development is scheduled in five increments.
Increment 1 will develop the end-to-end framework for certain types of formats. The current formats in transfer guidance will be first. Increment 1 will have two releases. The first release will include the ability to create and propose record schedules, the entering of legacy schedules, and the generation of a Life Cycle Management Plan shell by the ERA system. Release 2 will address transfer and validation processes. Increment 2 will add preservation. Increment 3 will address transfer and accession. Increment 4 will deal with preservation, capacity, and fault recovery, while the last increment will finish the work on preservation and capacity.
Over the last year, NARA has identified and mapped its business processes. This involves making the forms electronic. The processes and objects resulting from the analysis were explained to the system engineers. A business product integrated team was used that represented the various stakeholders, including a wide range of NARA subject matter experts. Human factor focus groups will be involved on an ongoing basis showing the subject matter experts screen shots of what the system will look like.
Public Education Program (Marvin Pinkert)
NARA has been in the education business since it opened its doors at the National Archives Building (Archives I) over 50 years ago. However, the most recent round of strategic planning has reemphasized the commitment to education. There are three key elements in their agenda – maximizing the benefit of NARA’s physical sites, building a cadre of primary source users, and enhancing the tools available on the web.
The renovated rotunda of Archives I is where the education agenda beings. It emphasizes that history and civics learning matters. The “Public Vault” links education and access. NARA not only has records that are important but records that are important to the visitor. It mirrors a VIP visit to the institution and puts the visitor in the shoes of a researcher. Repeater screens keep the notion that this isn’t simply a repetition of a computer in your home, but a social experience in a site environment. The commitment is to lifelong learning and connecting visitors to the historians who use the public records.
The Department of Education studies have shown that access to the primary sources change the way history is learned analogous to the use of labs in teaching science.
A Learning Center is under development that will bridge to the classroom. “Challenger centers” are being developed that will allow students to simulate a preservation lab and research experience.
NARA is developing a cadre of teachers that connect records to the national teaching standards and curriculum development/plans. This requires that you look deeper into records than you can in the visit to the archives. Agency staff members are writing articles for publications that are widely distributed to teachers showing how to make use of primary resources in their teaching. Hands-on training is provided to teachers on how primary sources can be used through a series of twenty-two video-conferenced workshops to more than a dozen states. “Primarily Teaching” is a 10-day course that has expanded to eight sites across the country. Teachers use the primary sources to develop their own lesson plans and learn how to teach others to use primary sources.
On the Web, NARA has developed the Digital Vault. This complements the other educational environments.
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