Author: Roger Wood

The issue of Open Access has been much in the news in recent months. Faculty are clearly interested in this issue as are librarians, whose budgets currently pay for subscriptions to the many professional journals that exist. Research administrators need to be monitoring this topic as well, because there will likely be changes in budgeting needed to support these moves to open access as things solidify.

Open Access policies – such as those at the US National Institutes of Health and those being developed in the UK and anticipated in the EU and elsewhere – call for scholarly articles on research funded by the government (or in some cases by foundations), to be posted in a publicly accessible repository within some reasonable period of time after publication. Commercial publishers and professional associations that publish their own journals derive significant revenue from journal subscriptions, which support their costs – including peer review and printing costs – as well as provide additional “profit” (technically, of course, these are not “profits” for non-profit associations, who use excess revenues from journal subscriptions to fund other operations of the association).

In the US, competing legislation to either codify open access or curtail it come up year after year. The Wellcome Trust has taken the approach of creating a new open access journal, eLife, following on the success of online journals such as PLoS One. The European Union, in its upcoming Horizon 2020 program is expected to fully endorse an open access requirement as well.

The British government has formed a working group led by Dame Janet Finch to decide how to implement open access in the UK. Among other concerns, is how to ensure that publishers don’t simply go out of business as laws are enacted requiring public posting of  journal articles thus curtailing their source of revenue through subscriptions. The group will endorse the concept of an article fee, however it will not publish a benchmark or target fee. Some are concerned that this will simply pass on what are perceived to be exorbitant costs from some publishes in a different way. If not through journal subscriptions, then through individual article publication fees, which presumably would be costs eligible to be borne by funders as part of research awards.

The Modern Language Association (MLA), which publishes influential journals including PMLA, Profession and the ADE and ADFL bulletins, has adopted new policies regarding copyright. Copyright of articles will rest with authors, not the journals, and the MLA agreement will explicitly permit authors to deposit articles in open-access repositories or post on personal or departmental websites.

The MLA journal policies are influential across humanities related associations, thus this change is seen as possibly portending shifts in policy for other professional association journals.

The national Institutes of Heath has established a Working Group to review the current biosketch requirements. The Working Group has posted a Request for Informationseeking input from the biomedical research community to determine if the Biosketch should be modified to allow investigators to include a short explanation of their most important scientific contributions. From the RFI website:

The NIH Working Group welcomes comments on the proposed changes to the NIH Biographical Sketch (Biosketch) from all members of the extramural research community. We particularly want opinions on the proposed change to the Biosketch described in the NIH Guide Notice at NOT-OD-12-115. The proposed change would allow scientists to include a narrative description of their most important scientific contributions in the Biosketch. The Working Group is interested in whether this modification will offer peer reviewers and NIH staff a better indication of an individual’s capabilities and accomplishments than the NIH Biosketch as currently formatted. Information also is sought on the content and format of the proposed narrative description and any other issues relevant to the Biosketch that you want the NIH Working Group to consider.

Responses will be accepted through June 29, 2012.

Beginning today, May 25th, the NIH Division of Receipt and Referral – the folks who actually receive and administratively review most applications at NIH – correspondence will be handled via a new “Correspondence” section of the detailed status screen for each application in the eRA Commons.

DRR is responsible for confirming that applications are properly prepared and conform to NIH’s submission policies. DDR staff notify applicants when:

1. additional information is required before her/his application can be assigned to a scientific review group (SRG) and NIH Institute or Center (IC) for funding consideration;
2. an applicant’s request for an IC assignment cannot be honored; or
3. it has been determined that the application does not comply with NIH policy.

This change was announced in NOT-OD-12-108 viagra verpackung.

This note from Grants.gov’s blog…

The General Services Administration (GSA) is moving the implementation date of the System for Award Management (SAM) from May 29, 2012 to the end of July 2012. The additional sixty days will allow federal agencies to continue preparing their staff, give agencies and commercial system providers even more time to test their data transfer connections, and will ensure SAM contains the critical, documented capabilities users need from the system. 

Today, the National Institutes of Health published NOT-OD-12-110, which describes a pilot to evaluate special council reviews investigator-initiated grants and cooperative agreement applications from PD/PIs with more than $1.5 million in annual NIH support. The goal is not to impose a cap on funding for any single investigator, but is to ensure adequate consideration is given to “[effective management] of resources during austere times”.

“During the current round of May IC Council meetings, NIH will be piloting the procedures whereby Council members will be asked to provide additional consideration of new and renewal applications from well-supported investigators who currently receive more than $1.5 million in Research Project Grants (RPGs). These RPGs are generally investigator-initiated research projects rather than NIH’s other grant programs which include support for investigator training and career development and center grants.  In addition to the common R01 grant program, the RPG level includes cooperative agreements (example: U01) and subproject costs where an investigator is a sub-project leader on a Program Project Grant (P01) or other multi-project RPG award.  Multiple PD/PI projects are also proportionally included in determining the $1.5 million level for a specific PD/PI.”

Applications for RFAs, most P01 and other multi=project RPGs and most multiple PI applications will not receive special council review. If NIH decides to implement this special council review procedure fully after this pilot, additional details and an FAQ will be posted.

SAM – the System for Award Management – is a new US Governments new website scheduled to go live on May 29th at Sam.gov. If you are a research administrator, you should care.

Going online in phases, SAM will consolidate a number of existing systems including CCR (Central Contractor Registration), EPLS (Excluded Parties Listing System), CFDA (Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance) and several others into a single coordinated operation. The first phase begins May 23rd and includes CCR, ORCA (Online Representations and Certifications Application), and EPLS.

To effect the transition, the CCR will not be available for new registrations as of May 23rd. SAM is where you will go to register an institution or update a registration after May 29th. grants.gov has posted specific guidance related to the CCR transition and registration for proposal submission on their blog.

Further information on SAM and the remaining transitions is available on the SAM website.

The public comment period closed at 5:00pm Monday, April 30, on OMB’s Advance Notice of Proposed Guidance on Reform of Federal Policies Relating to Grants and Cooperative Agreements; cost principles and administrative requirements (including Single Audit Act). 331 comments were submitted in response to the posting through the deadline – April 30 (several comments have been submitted today, May 1st, also…). Comments can be viewed at Regulations.gov. Another new bit of web magic is worth noting – recent changes to the Federal Register online now also has added visibility into information from Regulations.gov. So, on the Federal Register page for this OMB Notice, look at the sidebar on the right side of the page for a “Regulations.gov Docket Info” section. A link to the Regulations.gov page and a current count of comments posted is provided.

How many cupcakes do you have to sell to fund a scientific mission to Mars? Organizer Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute doesn’t expect to fund space exploration via cookies and car washes. He does hope to build interest in planetary science and awareness of NASA budget cuts and the need to repair them across the country on Jun 9th, as PhDs at 20-30 institutions offer up their best baked goods and wash your car. Watch this site and if you are at or near one of the participating institutions – you might want to drop by on June 9th to support the cause – or just get your car washed by a rocket scientist.

Many will remember Sen. William Proxmire’s (D-WI) Golden Fleece Awards, established in 1975 and designed to call attention to perceived wasteful government spending, frequently focusing on federally funded research projects.

Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN), with the support of a bipartisan group of Representatives and several business, university, scientific, and public policy organizations, announced the creation of the Golden Goose Award. The new award is designed to recognize important discoveries that flowed from federally-funded basic research projects that may have seemed “unusual, odd or obscure” at the time they were funded, reflecting the serendipitous nature of basic research. Golden Goose Awards will be for work that occurred in the past rather than current work that may lead to future breakthroughs.

In the Academic Minute, a program of WAMC Northeast Public Radio and Mount Holyoke College, I noted an example of unexpected outcomes from seemingly obscure research at work just this week. The research of Dr. William Wood, a professor of organic chemistry at Humboldt State University, focuses on chemical ecology – how plants and animals use chemicals to communicate. In a study looking for marking pheromones in California black-tailed deer hoof gland secretions, Dr. Wood came up empty handed. However, he wondered why deer rub these glands over their bodies if not for pheromone-based communication. It turns out that chemicals in the secretions inhibit the growth of athlete’s foot fungus and acne bacteria, and may lead to the development of new classes of antibiotic and anti-fungal agents of use in human medicine.

Who knew? And that’s the point of basic research – and why its so important that we fund it adequately and manage it effectively.