Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library Blog

Beginning in February 2009, California Digital Library Collections, eScholarship, and the University of California Scholarly Communications Officers are piloting a ground-breaking open access publishing arrangement with Springer.

During this pilot project, articles by UCLA affiliated authors accepted for publication in a Springer journal will be published using Springer Open Choice with full and immediate access. This means that UC authors will pay no additional publication fees in order for their articles to be immediately accessible full-text to the public. Under this agreement, articles will be published under a license in which authors retain the right to distribute and re-use their articles freely.

In addition to access via the Springer platform, final published articles will also be deposited in the California Digital Library’s eScholarship Repository.

Authors must take some action to ensure that their article is published as an Open Choice article. After a manuscript has been submitted, reviewed, and accepted for publication into a Springer journal, the corresponding author is notified and asked to complete a Web-based acceptance form. This form provides an option to identify author’s institutions. Select “University of California, Los Angeles” from the drop-down list of institutions (see first thumbnail image below).

At the end of the acceptance process, review the notification that your article will be published via Springer Open Choice (see second thumbnail image above).

Articles with multiple authors are eligible for this publishing arrangement as long as one author is a UCLA faculty member. If you publish with faculty from other institutions, and they serve as the corresponding author, let them know about this new Open Access pilot and the steps they must take to ensure that your article is published with full open access rights.

If you have questions about the UC/Springer Open Choice pilot program, or need help exercising this option while accepting your article, contact Janet Carter, Collection Coordinator, UCLA Biomedical Library.

Whether you’re brand-new to open access (OA) or have been publishing in OA journals for years, October 14th is a day of note. SPARC, Students for Free Culture, and the Public Library of Science have declared today the first-ever Open Access Day.

Open Access is a publishing model for academic journals.  In the currently dominant publishing model, readers pay a fee to access scholarly articles (either individually or by paying for a subscription to a journal) and these fees support the publishing businesses. In an OA model, the authors or their institutions pay fees to support the publishers and the peer review process: after an article is published, any reader anywhere in the world can access the article freely. These different models have different implications for who can access and use the world’s scholarly information. Learn more about Open Access models of publication at SPARC’s Open Access page.

What can you do to support OA? Before you publish your next article, review the Directory of Open Access Journals and consider submitting to a journal that supports OA policies. When writing grant proposals, consider requesting funds to cover the costs of publishing in an OA journal. If you publish in or serve as a peer reviewer for a non-OA journal, talk to the publisher about adopting one of the Open Access models. Support the reliable OA journals in your field by reading and citing them.

What does the new NIH Public Access Policy mean for NIH-funded researchers at UCLA? As of April 7, 2008, researchers receiving grant money from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) must submit copies of their resulting research papers to PubMed Central (PMC) when those papers are accepted for publication in a journal. PMC, the NIH’s free digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature, will then make the papers freely available to the public no later than twelve months after publication.

The UCLA Library is working with the UCLA Office of Research Administration to assist researchers in following this new mandate. Among the issues that will be discussed at these workshops are how to find out whether a publisher automatically submits papers to PMC, how and when to submit a paper to PMC if the publisher does not automatically do so, and how to locate PubMed Central reference numbers (PMCIDs).

• Monday, October 13, 2008
  10 a.m. - noon at the Biomedical Library

Or

• Tuesday, October 28, 2008
  1 - 3 p.m. at the Science and Engineering Library/Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Collection

Attendance is limited to UCLA faculty; advance registration is required. Admission is free, and refreshments will be provided. Space is limited, and reservations will be accepted in the order they are received. Register online.

For additional information about the workshop, contact Carol Nishijima at cnishiji@library.ucla.edu or 310.794.4019.  For questions specifically about the NIH policy, email nih@library.ucla.edu.

PubMed has created a new tool to convert PMCIDs to PMIDs and vice-versa. Every article citation in PubMed is tagged with a PubMed ID (PMID). Every article deposited into PubMedCentral  is tagged with a PubMedCentral ID (PMCID). Unfortunately, there is no linkage between these two different identification numbers: a PMCID has no correlation with a PMID.

The new PMID:PMCID Converter, created by the National Library of Medicine, makes it easy to look up a PMCID number by PMID, or look up a PMID number using the PMCID. Please note that not all articles indexed in PubMed are deposited into PubMedCentral, and not all articles in PubMedCentral are indexed in PubMed.

A recently-enacted National Institute of Health (NIH) policy requires all articles arising from NIH-funded grants be deposited in PubMedCentral. This policy also requires NIH grant applications to include PubMedCentral IDs for individual articles cited in the application (if the article is deposited in PubMedCentral).

Have questions about complying with the NIH access policy? Visit the UCLA Library’s  NIH Access Policy web page to get answers and get connected to resources to assist you.

Pundits say that the future lies in the “information economy,” and university faculty, administrators, librarians, researchers, and publishers all engage in “information valuation.”  What is the value of information resources to a researcher, and how is this different from the way librarians and administrators determine the value of those resources?  How do publishers make decisions on what to publish and in what formats?  From the administrator’s perspective, what is the return on investment in information resources?

The UCLA Library invites faculty and administrators to attend a colloquium and discussion on this topic on May 5th, 2008, in the UCLA Faculty Center. Advance registration is required. View the Assessing Research Performance and Value web page to see a list of speakers and to register for the event.

April 7th marked the implementation date for the NIH Public Access Policy. The overall goal of the policy is to “ensure that public has access to the published results of NIH funded research. It requires scientists to submit journal articles that arise from NIH funds to the digital archive PubMed Central . The Policy requires that these articles be accessible to the public on PubMed Central to help advance science and improve human health.”

The UCLA Library, Office of Intellectual Property and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research are working together to address compliance with the NIH policy and to support our researchers and authors. An email giving preliminary guidance on these issues was sent Friday evening to Deans, Directors, Department Chairs and Administrative Officers. The email was jointly issued by the Vice Provost of Intellectual Research and Industrial Relations, the Vice Chancellor for Research and the University Library. From the email: (more…)

How the New NIH Public Access Law Affects UCLA Scientists

Scientists receiving grant money from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will now have to submit copies of their research papers to PubMed Central (PMC) when their papers are accepted for publication in a journal. PMC will then make these papers freely available to the public no later than 12 months after publication.

PubMed Central (PMC) is the NIH’s free digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature.

Important dates:

• As of April 7, 2008, all articles arising from NIH funds must be submitted to PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication.
• As of May 25, 2008, NIH applications, proposals, and progress reports must include the PubMed Central reference number when citing an article that falls under the policy and is authored or co-authored by the investigator, or arose from the investigator’s NIH award. This policy includes applications submitted to the NIH for the May 25, 2008 due date and subsequent due dates.

Further Information and Help

• The NIH maintains a Public Access website with an FAQ and detailed instructions.
• To help you become familiar with the step-by-step submission process, illustrated submission tutorials are available.
• For more information or questions about the NIH policy, during this transitional stage, please contact Janet Carter, jcarter@libraray.ucla.edu or 310-825-5802.

The UCLA Library, Academic Senate, Academic Senate Committee on Library and Scholarly Communication, and the Office of Intellectual Property Administration have created a series of lunchtime sessions to educate faculty about special topics in intellectual property. Admission is free, and lunch will be provided. Registration is limited to UCLA faculty; advance registration is required, and space is limited. Upcoming sessions include:

• “Don’t I Own My Own Work?”: Negotiating to Keep Your Copyright (February 7th, 2008; Noon-1:30 p.m.)
• “What Are My Rights?”: Software, Patents, and Open Source (April 10th, 2008; Noon-1:30 p.m.)

Read full descriptions of each workshop and register for each session on the Library’s web page, Intellectual Property in the Digital Age: The Rights Stuff for Teaching and Publishing.

Researchers who receive grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) should be aware that on November 16th, 2007, the NIH released a new Notice called “Guidance on New Law (Public Law 110-85) Enacted to Expand the Scope of ClinicalTrials.gov: Registration.” This Notice gives information about the new law requiring the registration of clinical trials, responsibility for registration and penalties for failing to register an applicable clinical trial. The release also includes dates for registration and further contact information for assistance with registering trials.

The UCLA Library, Academic Senate, Academic Senate Committee on Library and Scholarly Communication, and the Office of Intellectual Property Administration have created a series of lunchtime sessions to educate faculty about special topics in intellectual property. Upcoming sessions include:

• If You Don’t Ask, How Can You Tell?: Getting Permission to Use Material in Course Instruction and E-Publishing (December 6th, 2007)
• “Don’t I Own My Own Work?”: Negotiating to Keep Your Copyright (February 7th, 2008)
• “What Are My Rights?”: Software, Patents, and Open Source (spring quarter 2008; date TBA)

Read full descriptions of each workshop and register on the Library’s web page, Intellectual Property in the Digital Age: The Rights Stuff for Teaching and Publishing.