RE: Deposit Mandates as part of Publisher Services

[Peter Hirtle <pbh6@cornell.edu>]

At 08:36 PM 3/19/2008, Ann Okerson wrote:

> Right now we have a kind of mess that needs time to sort out: 
> trying to achieve compliance for literally thousands of authors 
> and articles in a couple of months (since the mandate was 
> announced in January) is a herculean task, when the 
> institutional underpinnings (the list of these is substantial) 
> are mostly not yet present.
and:

>  btw, the NIH instructions for authors are not as helpful as 
> they could be
So NIH asked for public comments on its implementation.  I went 
to the NIH site to see the concrete criticisms and suggestions 
submitted by Yale that articulate what is wrong with NIH's 
implementation - and found nothing.

Is the NIH implementation perfect?  No.  Is it "a mess" and 
submitting documents "a herculean task"?  No.  In fact, it is 
remarkably complete - especially considering how quickly NIH had 
to respond.  Furthermore, in my experience the NIH Public Access 
Office has been incredibly responsive to questions.

Remember: for those journals that have partnered with PubMed 
Central and which submit the full published version (and thus 
create a version that is likely to be preserved over time), 
authors have to do nothing.  If all biomedical journals were PMC 
partners - thus ensuring that their electronic would be preserved 
over time, and removing one of the biggest headaches librarians 
face - all implementation issues would be solved.

Peter B. Hirtle
CUL Intellectual Property Officer and
    Technology Strategist
Cornell University Library
215 Olin Library
Ithaca, NY  14853-5301
peter.hirtle@cornell.edu
http://www.copyright.cornell.edu