Report Finds Common Ground in Efforts to Balance Public Access, Scholarly Publishing

A group of representatives from university administration, libraries, information science departments, and the publishing industry collectively released a report with recommendations on open access, specifically the public availability of peer-reviewed journal articles containing data and findings from federal research grants.

The report's recommendations, endorsed by a majority of the 14 members of the group, called the Scholarly Publishing Roundtable, sought to "balance the need for increased access to scholarly articles with the need to preserve the essential functions of the scholarly publishing enterprise." One key recommendation is the establishment of specific embargo periods between publication and public access, allowing for some variation across fields of science. The report states: "an embargo period of between zero (for open access journals) and twelve months currently reflects such a balance for many science disciplines," but notes for "other fields a longer embargo period may be necessary."

The group also emphasized the need for the adoption of common standards to ensure searchability and collaboration across fields and databases and suggested that international cooperation on standards would also be critical. While there was not unanimity on the need for or type of legislation or other government action, members of the roundtable agreed that federal agencies should work together with the publishing community to ensure common core properties and a coherent framework for access and preservation across the government.