blog

In February, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) issued a request for information about ‘public access to peer-reviewed scholarly publications, data and code resulting from federally funded research’.

We welcome this consultation on public access policy. As part of our ongoing engagement with the OSTP, F1000 Research Ltd and Taylor & Francis have submitted responses to the RFI. F1000 Research and Taylor & Francis’ responses illustrate how we are working on complementary paths to transform scholarly communication in order to accelerate research impact across the whole ecosystem.

F1000 Research’s response, outlined below, supports a fully-funded policy which requires Open Access and immediate sharing of all research findings and associated resources.  

You can view Taylor & Francis’ response here.

---

---

FAO: Dr Lisa Nichols, Assistant Director for Academic Engagement, OSTP

Sent by email to: publicaccess@ostp.eop.gov

Re:  OSTP RFI on enhancing access to the outputs of federally funded research

Dear Dr Nichols

We are delighted to submit this response to the OSTP’s consultation on enhancing access to the outputs of research. F1000 Research provides online-only, Open Access (OA) publishing outlets (Platforms), born out of a demand to rethink how research is shared and published, and thus have considerable experience in developing our approaches designed precisely to enhance access to research findings.  In 2013 we launched what was the first open research publishing platform, F1000Research[1], combining the ability to publish rapidly with functionality to ensure transparency, robustness and reproducibility of research.

Our approach to publishing effectively combines the benefits of ‘pre-printing’ (providing rapid publication with no editorial bias) with mechanisms to assure quality and transparency (invited and open peer review, archiving and indexing). Since launch, F1000Research has seen significant growth in publication volume and we are now providing customised Platforms for an expanding number of research-based organisations including major global funding agencies such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation[2] and Wellcome[3]. In March 2020, the European Commission[4] (EC) announced that F1000 Research was awarded the contract to provide the EC with a publishing platform using this model of publication to support beneficiaries of the Horizon 2020 programme. 

Our approach to the publication of original research is designed to support a more collaborative and ‘open research’ future – going way beyond OA, which we believe is the building block – providing full and FAIR[5] access to any data and resources that underpin published research. Our approach has shown its value where rapid publication is a necessity, such as during public health emergencies (e.g. the Zika and Ebola virus outbreaks and during the current COVID-19 pandemic).

We are an organization unafraid to take risks and we strive to innovate to make research a public and global good, as discoverable and usable as possible.  We would be very happy to offer additional insights, informed through our experiences, throughout OSTP’s deliberations in rethinking and shaping its policies around providing access to research.

Yours sincerely,    

Rebecca Lawrence (PhD), Managing Director, F1000 Research Ltd                                                                

What current limitations exist to the effective communication of research outputs (publications, data, and code) and how might communications evolve to accelerate public access while advancing the quality of scientific research? What are the barriers to and opportunities for change?

The lack of Open Access (OA) to a substantial proportion of research findings is among the most significant barriers and decelerators of research progress.  While there are many initiatives underway to try to shift the operating business models of scholarly publishing to OA, there are still significant barriers in place which we believe the OSTP (among other national policy makers and research funders) could help to remedy by simply requiring OA sharing of research findings – and especially those funded by the public purse – as a matter of course. 

It is now technically feasible for research findings to be shared online in (almost) real time. Given the very significant benefits this brings to researchers and research progress, and hence the impact this can have on innovation and American competitiveness, we encourage the OSTP to increase support for systems and publishing models that seek to minimize delay and barriers to access. It is entirely possible to ensure that appropriate safeguards and validators are embedded in and around any processes that enable research findings to be shared rapidly. Enabling OA to research means that findings are available for others to use and build upon, thus helping to deliver return on investment in research (ROI) and efficiency in science more broadly.

Additionally, while OA is the foundation stone for accelerating the use, potential impact and ROI of research, there is now the opportunity to also bring greater efficiency into the research process by supporting reproducibility and minimizing research duplication and waste. Beyond simple OA, researchers should be encouraged – and supported in doing so through underpinning research infrastructures and persistent identifiers – to share all the outputs of their research from detailed methodologies and research protocols, to research data and datasets created during the research process, software and code, and a host of other research resources created.

To be useful to others, such research outputs need to be discoverable and, as far as feasibly possible, FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reproducible).  Much work is underway across Europe and the world to support FAIR sharing[6] of research – precisely to accelerate the potential for use and impact of research and thus ROI. Hence, researchers need to be adequately funded and supported to make their work FAIR and, perhaps most importantly, that such sharing behaviors are rewarded and therefore incentivized. It is essential that rapid and open sharing of research is considered core to researchers’ code of conduct and is essential to research integrity. It is also essential that researchers have the skills and knowledge to share their research in the most appropriate ways, and that training is provided to support them in this.

One of the major opportunities in effecting change in how research is shared is through enhanced dialogue between all stakeholders in the research system, from policy makers, to funders, to research institutions and researchers, and to publishing service providers. Research communication needs to be positioned as an essential part of the research process so that the associated governance and quality assurance processes are designed precisely to deliver rapid understanding of what is known, discovered and remains unknown – to inform future research, to maximize any potential ROI, and to reduce the potential for waste and duplication.  

What more can Federal agencies do to make tax-payer funded research results, including peer-reviewed author manuscripts, data, and code funded by the Federal Government, freely and publicly accessible in a way that minimizes delay, maximizes access, and enhances usability? How can the Federal Government engage with other sectors to achieve these goals?  

Requiring that Federally funded research is available rapidly – without embargo periods – is perhaps the simplest and most direct action that the OSTP could take to improve access and the potential usability of research right now.  This needs to be accompanied by discussion around how best this should be funded and there are a range of models, from the most incremental to something more radical. Essentially we believe that sharing research is an integral part of the research process and not an optional bolt-on – all findings arising from federally funded research, of all types, should be reported upon – but this need not be in formats and in containers that we currently conceive of as ‘journals’. 

Additionally, to lever the value of OA, there are several other actions that the Federal Government could take to support access and utility, including (but not limited to):

1. Mandating publication of underpinning research resources – ensuring the publication of all underpinning research data, software, code and other research resources created through federal funding in alignment with FAIR principles, based upon best practices established with the support of OSTP.
2. Persistence and formats – ensuring that these outputs are shared in ways, formats and in places that ensure long-term access and discoverability (e.g. by investing in cross-sector systems and infrastructures to ensure interoperability).
3. Funding the research infrastructure – to enable links and interoperability between research inputs, outputs and products, and the communities they serve, and to support the effort and associated infrastructure needed to enable research data, code and other materials to be truly FAIR.
4. Training and education – embedding training around optimum patterns and processes for sharing research (including data and code) – particularly for early career researchers (ECRs) to build capacity and a cadre of researchers for whom rapid research sharing becomes the norm.
5. Rewards and incentives – ensuring that researchers are incentivized to share a much broader range of their research findings – including negative, null, incremental and confirmatory results.
6. Code of conduct – ensuring that rapid research sharing of a much broader range of outputs becomes the norm and considered best practice for researchers (e.g. part of good scientific governance and supports research integrity).

In addition, we believe there is significant scope and momentum right now for alignment between research funders, institutions and publishers in areas such as ‘open data’ requirements, guidelines around peer review, and conflict of interest statements to bring harmonization to our collective expectations and requirements of the research system. As research becomes increasingly collaborative and cross-disciplinary, researchers may face complex and sometimes even contradictory requirements and policies.

How would American science leadership and American competitiveness benefit from immediate access to these resources? What are potential challenges and effective approaches for overcoming them? Analyses that weigh the trade-offs of different approaches and models, especially those that provide data, will be particularly helpful.  

Providing immediate OA to all research content would undoubtedly improve the ability for all scholars, researchers, healthcare practitioners, policymakers and all other audiences to engage more fully and rapidly with research content. There are many studies that demonstrate the academic, profile and citation impact for scholars in making their work openly accessible to others, not least via simply enhancing the discoverability and potential use of research[7]^,[8]^,[9]. More immediate access to the products of publicly funded research would therefore increase the national and international reach and potential influence of federally funded research. 

Additionally, through appropriate, cross-sector planning and policies to make published research available, and support to enable the development of publishing business models that can create an effective market for the provision of publishing services[10], there would undoubtedly be financial savings to research institutions and beyond. This is through both the rerouting of the costs for paying for subscriptions to access content, as well as the significant broader economic benefits of making research outputs openly accessible. There is robust international evidence that demonstrate the economic benefits of research. In the influential Lasker Foundation study of the late 1990s[11] economists monetized improvements in life expectancy and quality of life in the US between 1970 and 1990, ascribing to them a value of around $1.5 trillion/year, concluding that these economic returns far exceed the costs of the health research that contributed to them (> 20-fold). Adaptations of the Lasker study applied more recently in Australia[12]^,[13] and in the UK[14], found a similar magnitude of economic impact of research. Alongside this there is increasing evidence that making research findings and outputs (including data) openly accessible contributes directly to this economic impact[15]^{,[16],[17],[18]} while also enabling public access and contributing to societal impact more broadly.  

It will of course be paramount to accompany any shift in policy with a way to monitor and evaluate its impact – and to understand what works and what doesn’t. Many research organizations and research funders who have introduced formal OA publishing requirements for their researchers have established frameworks to support tracking and review of the impact of their OA policy; such frameworks could serve as useful templates for the OSTP to consider if introducing its own policies around OA – and also provide a source of comparative information. See for example: Wellcome[19], who after reviewing their OA policy in 2018, introduced more stringent guidelines for OA and were one of the founding partners of the cOAlition S[20] group of research funders committed to accelerating the transition to full OA to research findings; and the UKRI (the largest public research funder in the UK) who are currently consulting on proposed refinements to their current OA policy built upon the influential UK government commissioned Finch report of 2012[21]^,[22].

Any additional information that might be considered for Federal policies related to public access to peer-reviewed author manuscripts, data, and code resulting from federally supported research. 

Research is an international, collaborative activity across many domains and disciplines and, as evidenced through bibliometric publication data, is becoming increasingly so: according to a recent study, the number of international collaborations has tripled in the past fifteen years[23]^,[24]. According to the 2020 Nature Index tables, the largest number of papers with international co-authors was produced by researchers in the US, followed by Germany and the United Kingdom[25].  Thus, to enable accessibility to the research generated through such international collaborations, there is strength in considering where research policies – for example around requirements around OA and open data – can be aligned across countries, both to keep things simple for the researcher, and to ensure that all partners can benefit equally from any discoveries.

Finally, we believe at a time when the Coronavirus pandemic threatens the health and livelihoods of us all, there can be no greater demonstration of the rationale and importance of making research findings and associated resources available at speed and in full. Delays in sharing research in such public health emergency situations can have no social, moral or economic value.

In March 2020, the OSTP working alongside other national and international scientific advisors, called for publishers to make their COVID-19 and coronavirus-related publications, and any underpinning data, immediately accessible in PubMed Central (PMC) and other appropriate public repositories[26].  We believe this leadership from the OSTP and its international collaborators will be pivotal in helping the world to develop medical responses and strategies to mitigate and rapidly reduce the impact of the virus across the globe. After the pandemic ends, we imagine that the benefits of rapid and Open Access to research (in all disciplines, not just in public emergency situations) will have become so stark and obvious that the OSTP will have answered its own questions.

---

[1] https://f1000research.com/

[2] https://gatesopenresearch.org/

[3] https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/

[4] https://ec.europa.eu/info/news/european-commission-awards-contract-setting-open-access-publishing-platform-2020-mar-20_en

[5] https://www.go-fair.org/fair-principles/

[6] See for example: https://fairsharing.org/

[7] Wagner B: Open access citation advantage: An annotated bibliography. Issues Sci Technol Librarianship. 2010; (60):2 10.5062/F4Q81B0W 

[8] Adie E: Attention! a study of open access vs non-open access articles. Figshare. 2014. 10.6084/m9.figshare.1213690 

[9] Wang X, Liu C, Mao W, et al.: The open access advantage considering citation, article usage and social media attention. Scientometrics. 2015;103(2):555–564

[10] https://wellcome.ac.uk/sites/default/files/developing-effective-market-for-open-access-article-processing-charges-mar14.pdf

[11] Funding First. Exceptional returns: the economic value of America’s investment in medical research. New York (NY): The Lasker Foundation; 2000

[12]Access Economics. Exceptional returns: the value of investing in health R&D in Australia. Canberra (Australia): Australian Society for Medical Research; 2003

[13] Access Economics. Exceptional returns: The value of investing in health R&D in Australia II. Canberra (Australia): Australian Society for Medical Research; 2008

[14] Sussex, J., Feng, Y., Mestre-Ferrandiz, J. et al. Quantifying the economic impact of government and charity funding of medical research on private research and development funding in the United Kingdom. BMC Med 14, 32 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-016-0564-z

[15] Arzberger P, Schroeder P, Beaulieu A, et al. : Promoting access to public research data for scientific, economic, and social development. Data Sci J. 2004;3:135–152. 10.2481/dsj.3.135

[16] Beagrie N, Houghton JW: The value and impact of data sharing and curation: A synthesis of three recent studies of UK research data centres.2014

[17] Vickery, G. (2011). Review of recent studies on PSI re-use and related market developments. Information Economics, Paris, 1-44

[18] Tennant JP, Waldner F, Jacques DC, Masuzzo P, Collister LB, Hartgerink CH. The academic, economic and societal impacts of Open Access: an evidence-based review. F1000Res. 2016;5:632. doi:10.12688/f1000research.8460.3

[19]https://wellcome.ac.uk/news/wellcome-going-review-its-open-access-policy

[20] https://www.coalition-s.org/

[21]Finch Group (2012). Accessibility, sustainability, excellence: how to expand access to research publications, https://www.acu.ac.uk/research-information-network/finch-report-final

[22]https://www.ukri.org/files/funding/oa/open-access-review-consultation/

[23] Ribeiro, L.C., Rapini, M.S., Silva, L.A. et al. Growth patterns of the network of international collaboration in science. Scientometrics 114, 159–179 (2018).

[24]https://www.natureindex.com/news-blog/international-collaborations-growing-exponentially

[25]https://www.nature.com/collections/chdeajdica/tables

[26]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/about/covid-19/