New Elsevier policy on NIH-funded authors
Elsevier seems to have a new policy for NIH-funded authors. Here’s a paragraph from the authors’ guide for Elsevier’s Reproductive Toxicology:
US National Institutes of Health (NIH) voluntary posting (”Public Access”) policy: Elsevier facilitates author posting in connection with the voluntary posting request of the NIH (referred to as the NIH “Public Access Policy“) by submitting the peer-reviewed author’s manuscript directly to PubMed Central on request from the author, immediately after final publication. Please e-mail us at NIHauthorrequest@elsevier.com that your work has received NIH funding (with the NIH grant/project number(s), as well as name and e-mail address of the Principal Investigator(s) and that you intend to respond to the NIH request. Upon such confirmation, Elsevier will submit to PubMed Central on your behalf a version of your manuscript that will include peer-review comments, for public access posting 12 months after the final publication date. This will ensure that you will have responded fully to the NIH request policy. There will be no need for you to post your manuscript directly to PubMed Central, and any such posting is prohibited [PS: my emphasis] (although Elsevier will not request that manuscripts authored and posted by US government employees should be taken down from PubMed Central). Individual modifications to this general policy may apply to some Elsevier journals and its society publishing partners.
Comment. The NIH request is directed to authors (grantees), not publishers. Compliance is the author’s decision. Like any other publisher, Elsevier has the right to put conditions on what it will accept and to refuse to publish anything that doesn’t meet its conditions. But it’s the only publisher I know who explicitly prohibits its NIH-funded authors from submitting their manuscripts directly to PubMed Central, even when authors are willing to respect Elsevier’s embargo. I have two objections. (1) Elsevier is making authors into the rope in its tug-of-war with NIH. Authors shouldn’t have to choose between their funder and their publisher. Instead of prohibiting authors from depositing directly in PubMed Central, Elsevier could give authors good reasons to ask Elsevier to deposit their work for them and let authors decide whether take advantage of the offer. The NIH could also save authors from these dilemmas by mandating deposit and cutting publishers out of the loop, and I expect that publisher policies like this one will help NIH come to that decision. (2) Some Elsevier journals (like Reproductive Toxicology) in effect warn authors about this policy up front on their web sites, but other Elsevier journals apparently follow the same policy without warning authors. Instead, they surprise authors by showing them this paragraph only in the copyright transfer agreement after they’ve submitted their work and gone through peer review.
See my review of other publisher policies on NIH-funded authors (first group, second group).
