The Obama administration’s efforts to protect scientific integrity moved forward recently with the submission of five finalized agency policies and 14 draft policies, but progress has been slow and haphazard. The administration recognizes that sound, uncensored science is critically important to protecting public health and the environment. The administration also understands that agencies should foster a culture of scientific integrity that includes effective policies and oversight to protect science from political manipulation and research misconduct. However, it has yet to undo the damage wrought by the previous administration.

Background

The Bush administration was widely criticized for abuses of scientific integrity, including political manipulation of scientific findings and suppression of the free flow of scientific information. These policies undermined the effectiveness of the public structures that protect our health, economy, and environment by delaying decision making and weakening public trust that government policies were based on the best available scientific and technical information.

As a candidate and in his inaugural address, President Obama pledged to restore scientific integrity. Shortly after taking office, he issued a memo on scientific integrity, which stated that “political officials should not suppress or alter scientific or technological findings and conclusions.”

The memo directed the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, or OSTP, to develop guidelines to protect scientific integrity within 120 days. However, those guidelines were not released until December 2010, more than a year past the deadline. Despite the delay, OMB Watch, a non-profit focused on accountability and transparency in government,  praised the guidelines as a step forward and called for agencies to aggressively implement them.

In May, OSTP asked each agency to submit a draft scientific integrity policy within 90 days. In the interest of transparency and accountability, OMB Watch called for agencies to publish their proposed policies for public comment before finalizing them. However, OSTP did not formally instruct agencies to solicit public feedback.

Agency Policies

On August 11, OSTP posted information about the progress (or lack of progress) each agency had made in meeting the most recent deadline. Several agencies have adopted final scientific integrity policies, while others have released draft policies for public comment. Advocates have criticized both the content of some of the policies and the closed process that produced them.

Of the five agencies with final policies, only the Department of the Interior undertook visible public consultation. The Department of Commerce and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have published their final policies but do not appear to have solicited public comment at any point in the process. The Justice Department and the intelligence community do not appear to have publicly published their final policies nor solicited public comment on those policies.

Fourteen other agencies have submitted draft policies to OSTP, and several have published drafts for public comment, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the National Science Foundation. Of the remaining agencies, some are reportedly considering public consultation before finalizing their policies, while others do not plan to solicit public comment.

The Department of the Interior example demonstrates the value of consulting with the public before finalizing a scientific integrity policy. The department’s draft policy was criticized by OMB Watch and other groups for failing to address political interference with science and lacking protections for scientists who blow the whistle on misconduct. After receiving public comment, however, Interior made revisions, and the final policy was significantly improved.

What’s in the Policies?

The OSTP guidelines directed agency policies to address four areas: foundations of scientific integrity, including appropriate whistleblower protections; communications policies; federal advisory committees; and professional development of scientists, including opportunities to present research and serve in professional organizations.

While the available plans make some progress on those topics, the issue of scientists communicating with the media has been especially contentious. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) called EPA’s proposed policy “pathetically weak” for failing to ensure that public affairs staff don’t become gatekeepers restricting communication between scientists and the media.

The available policies are also thin on details of how political manipulation of science will be prevented. For instance, the Union of Concerned Scientists said NOAA’s policy “has raised the bar for scientific integrity policies,” but also said it was “critical for the agency to establish specific practices to protect the integrity of agency scientific findings to prevent manipulation.”

Next Steps

OSTP has not set a hard deadline for final policies, but the Aug. 11 blog post states that the office “will be working with [agencies] this fall as they finalize their policies.”

We at OMB Watch invite readers to submit their comments on the proposed plans to:

• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (by Aug. 20);
• Environmental Protection Agency (by Sept. 6); and
• National Science Foundation (by Sept. 6).

Recommendations

OMB Watch continues to call for stronger commitments to public participation and more public accountability by all federal agencies. OSTP should direct agencies to publish draft policies for public comment at least one month before finalizing them and to finalize their policies before the end of the year.

Agencies should ensure their policies establish clear expectations that science will be free from political manipulation, with procedures to insulate science from inappropriate influence and to redress the problem if it does occur. The first component should be a policy that makes clear that non-science officials do not have the authority to alter findings or explanations without approval of the scientific personnel that produced the information. The second component should be a mechanism through which scientific and research personnel can submit concerns about possible political manipulation and receive an independent review. Complaints could be reviewed by an agency’s inspector general’s office or a scientific review board.

Agency policies should also protect the free flow of information, in particular safeguarding scientists’ freedom to communicate with the media without public affairs staff acting as censors or gatekeepers. While public affairs officials often coordinate and disseminate information to the media and the public, factual scientific findings should not proceed through the same message machine that oversees speeches and press releases. Otherwise, the risk is too great that a public affairs review will mutate into a political review and that findings will be delayed or changed to suit the goals of an administration.

Protecting scientific integrity also requires a culture change within federal agencies. To achieve this, leadership from the top of the agency; adequate training and communication of new policies and practices to personnel; and effective enforcement and oversight mechanisms, including appropriate involvement of agency inspectors general, will be crucial.

Finally, OSTP should take needed actions to regain its leadership position on scientific integrity, including communicating more openly with stakeholders and the public.

Gavin Baker is a federal information policy analyst at OMB Watch, and occasional Science Progress contributor writing on issues of scientific integrity and public accountability.

To demonstrate the break from his predecessor, President Obama moved early to emphasize scientific integrity. In his inaugural address, the president pledged to “restore science to its rightful place.” The March 2009 memo quickly followed, in which he established that “science and the scientific process must inform and guide decisions of my administration on a wide range of issues,” and that “the public must be able to trust the science and scientific process informing public policy decisions.”

The 2009 memo laid out six principles for scientific integrity, including merit-based hiring for scientific positions; quality control and transparency for science used in policy decisions; and adequate procedures to address lapses in integrity, such as protections for employees who blow the whistle on scientific misconduct.  The new guidance expands upon the president’s memo in several important ways. It adds that agencies should develop policies governing conflicts of interest, make more scientific information available online, and ensure scientific information is accurately presented to the public.

The guidance also lays out standards for the integrity and transparency of federal advisory committees that provide scientific advice. In addition, it affirms federal scientists’ rights to participate in professional and scholarly activities.  These reforms are valuable steps to improve the trustworthiness and openness of the government’s scientific activities. At the same time, they fall short of the specificity some had expected, leaving many decisions to be made by the agencies.

Case in point: One issue of major concern has been agency policies that limit scientists’ ability to speak freely with journalists and the public, which the new guidance deals with by establishing that public communications policies should maximize openness and setting out some ground rules.  The guidance provides that federal scientists may communicate with the media and the public as long as there is “appropriate coordination” with supervisors and the agency’s public affairs office.  Each agency is to establish a mechanism to resolve disputes that limit public communications. But the guidance doesn’t define “appropriate coordination” or suggest how disputes should be resolved.

Agencies are directed to report to OSTP by April 16, 2011, on their steps taken to implement the guidance. Unfortunately, the guidance is not clear on how the reports will be made available to the public or how the public can participate in the development of policies to implement the guidance. Agencies should take a cue from the Open Government Directive, which required agencies to post their open government plans online and solicit public feedback.

Others also find fault with some aspects of the new guidance while also praising its direction and scope. The Union of Concerned Scientists praised the guidance but noted that “a lot of work remains to be done.” Francesca Grifo from the UCS added, “If the details are fully articulated by federal agencies and departments, the directive will help keep politics in its place and allow government scientists to do their jobs.” And OMB Watch’s Gary Bass echoed those sentiments, saying, “Articulating a vision for scientific integrity is essential, but the devil will be in the details, some of which are lacking in this memo.”  The harshest criticism came from Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which called the guidance “vague” and criticized the unclear process for implementation.

It has been a long, winding road to get this guidance published.  In April 2009, OSTP asked for public comments on developing recommendations for implementing the principles in the president’s March memo. Such comments were supposed to help OSTP develop its recommendations within 120 days, as required by the president’s March memo. Then the 120-day deadline arrived without the release of any recommendations or guidance.

The administration was silent until, nearly a year later, a post on the OSTP blog acknowledged the delay but promised that guidance was forthcoming “in the next few weeks.” By October, though, the guidance was still missing—and frustration among advocates had grown so high that PEER even sued the administration for information about the delay.

Even without the guidance, at least one agency reformed its scientific integrity policies in the wake of the 2009 memo. The Interior Department, after a public comment period, issued a new policy in September 2010, which was praised by a number of organizations. Most agencies, however, have not made significant policy changes in the absence of guidance. For example, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said it was waiting for the guidance.

With guidance now issued, the White House will need to stay engaged in overseeing agencies’ progress in implementation. That oversight is likely to be a key factor in determining whether the new scientific integrity policies are a success. The need for strong scientific integrity protections is clear.

While the Obama administration has struck a different tone from the previous administration, it has made its own blunders. The administration has faced particular criticism of its handling of science in the BP oil spill, including allegations of White House interference with NOAA estimates, the botched communication of its study on where the spilled oil went, and the misrepresentation of its offshore drilling moratorium as peer-reviewed. This new guidance is another step toward ensuring more resilient policies are in place before the next crisis occurs.

Gavin Baker is a federal information policy analyst at OMB Watch. Thanks to Gary Bass, Sean Moulton, Brian Gumm, and Matthew Madia of OMB Watch.

Today marks one year since the National Institutes of Health’s Public Access Policy went into effect. (I covered the issue here in January 2008.) The policy requires that researchers funded by NIH post a copy of their journal manuscripts resulting from NIH-funded work into the freely-available PubMed Central database. This was the first such policy by a U.S. Federal agency. A year later, what impact has the policy had on science, and how has the policy community reacted?

The rule is achieving its goal of making the results of taxpayer-funded research available to other scientists, medical practitioners, patients, students, and the public. Before the policy was signed into law in December 2007, PubMed submissions never topped 1,500 per month, according to NIH statistics. Deposits have climbed since then. After implementation officially began in April 2008, monthly submissions have never dipped below 2,500. In January 2009, the most recent month for which statistics are available, submissions soared above 4,500. Those numbers represent a significant increase in taxpayer-funded information being made freely available to the public.

The policy has also continued to garner support from the library and scientific community, as well as some scholarly publishers. The biggest names in science publishing, though, have lined up against public access. The policy requires that NIH-funded manuscripts be made freely available no later than 12 months after acceptance for publication, which closed-access publishers have asserted will damage their ability to sell subscriptions to the journals in which NIH-funded authors publish their articles. But no journal has announced it will stop accepting the work of NIH-funded scientists as a consequence. Meanwhile, publishing giant Elsevier, one of the staunchest opponents of the policy, announced an 11 percent increase in profits in 2008.

One high-profile response to the policy was Rep. John Conyer’s (D-MI) Fair Copyright in Research Works Act, which would amend copyright law to overturn the policy and prevent other agencies from adopting similar public access policies. Conyers first introduced the bill in September 2008 and held a hearing at the time, and has since reintroduced the bill in the 111^th Congress. The proposed legislation has raised the profile of the issue: the Association of American Universities, which represents top research universities in the U.S. and Canada and is an influential voice in higher education policy, weighed in for the first time in February 2009, supporting the NIH policy and opposing the Conyers bill.

The Obama administration has yet to make a public pronouncement on the policy. The Bush White House raised concerns about the NIH policy but didn’t strongly oppose it, and President Bush signed the policy into law as part of an appropriations bill. President Obama in March also signed the policy into law as part of an appropriations bill—this time amended to make the policy permanent—without publicly criticizing it. When I asked Kei Koizumi, assistant director for federal R&D at the Office of Science and Technology Policy, whether the Obama administration would support the policy, the answer was noncommittal. But supporters of public access are well-placed within the administration, including Harold Varmus, an outspoken advocate and former NIH director, who was appointed to co-chair the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

The policy is the first open access mandate adopted by the U.S. government, and puts teeth into the voluntary policy in place at the agency since 2005. The NIH, which supported the provision, moved quickly to implement the law, announcing its new policy on Jan. 11. The measure follows similar policies instituted by funding agencies abroad, foundations and universities.

The new policy is not only notable for its novelty and the whopping amount of research it will make available, but for its storied history.

Under the new policy, grantees—who will receive $29 billion in taxpayer funding in fiscal 2008, a figure greater than the GDP of 100 countries—will deposit a copy of their research articles accepted for publication into the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central database. PubMed Central will then provide free online access to the article—to the worldwide research community as well as citizens and taxpayers. Public access can be delayed up to one year at the researcher’s request, for example, if the publishing journal asks for the delay. Previously, grantee research was only available from the publisher by subscription—and scientific journal subscriptions can cost thousands of dollars annually.

The new policy is not only notable for its novelty and the whopping amount of research it will make available, but for its storied history. The House appropriations committee had first asked for open access at the NIH in 2004. In 2005, the NIH adopted a voluntary policy, asking but not requiring grantees to deposit their research. Researchers, accustomed to relying on journals to disseminate their findings, adapted slowly to the new environment; less than five percent of grantees complied with the NIH’s request. NIH director Elias Zerhouni told a House subcommittee in 2006 that the voluntary policy wasn’t working; the House, in turn, passed language to require a mandate. But the Senate didn’t include a mandate in its appropriations, and the Democratic takeover of Congress pushed the budget into continuing resolutions, maintaining the status quo.

The NIH policy is the biggest legislative victory to date for the American open access movement—and, given the size and impact of NIH funding, for advocates worldwide.

In 2007, open access advocates ramped up their efforts, led by the Alliance for Taxpayer Access—a letterhead coalition driven by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, a consortium of academic libraries. (Full disclosure: the author is a consultant and former intern for SPARC.) In addition to rallying grassroots support, advocates circulated a letter of support signed by 26 Nobel Laureates, including former NIH director Harold Varmus. Opponents, led by members of the Association of American Publishers, launched their own coalition—dubbed PRISM, the Partnership for Research Integrity in Science and Medicine—to cast doubts on the provision’s impact on the peer review process and publisher copyrights, even equating public access with government censorship. PRISM in turn drew ridicule from science bloggers, who criticized the group’s statements as Orwellian and the group as astroturf, as PRISM declined to list its own membership. Even some AAP members distanced themselves from the effort. PRISM was seen as the offspring of Eric Dezenhall, known as “the pit bull of PR,” who had been hired by the AAP to develop a PR strategy to combat open access. Despite the dramatic flare-ups, both the House and the Senate included mandatory language in their appropriations bills—only to have it vetoed by President Bush in a broader debate about spending. But the open access provision survived the post-veto scramble to amend the bill to the president’s liking, and on Dec. 26 it was signed into law.

The NIH policy is the biggest legislative victory to date for the American open access movement—and, given the size and impact of NIH funding, for advocates worldwide. The adoption of the policy will introduce more authors to self-archiving—posting one’s own research results online for free access—then any single event to date. NIH funding results in an estimated 80,000 published articles annually, each of which may have several authors. With any luck, the experience will encourage researchers to internalize the benefits of open access—and to share their experience with the students they teach and mentor. Journals likely will not suffer many, if any, cancellations. High rates of self-archiving in physics have not resulted in any attributable cancellations of journals in that field—though they may feel more pressure to provide value and limit price inflation. From 1986 to 2002 journal costs rose 227 percent, more than triple the rate of inflation in the same period as measured by the Consumer Price Index. But science and consumers will benefit immeasurably.

Researchers will gain more complete access to the scientific record; even the wealthiest research institution cannot afford to subscribe to every journal in publication. Free online access also lays the foundation to remove unnecessary permission barriers, using approaches such as the Creative Commons licenses, and to facilitate machine-assisted research via Semantic Web technologies. Taxpayers will benefit from free access to high-quality scientific information—which, for those without an annual subscription, is often sold by the article for $30 apiece. In the case of NIH research, that could mean the best source of information about potential treatments for a spouse, parent, or child who suffers from a disease. Indeed, patient advocacy groups are well-represented and active members of the pro-open access Alliance for Taxpayer Access, including the 600 organizations of the Genetic Alliance.

Moreover, the impact of the NIH policy will be felt outside of biomedical research. If NIH grantees take a shine to open access, as have other research communities where open access has thrived, it will become even more difficult for publishers and nay-sayers to disparage open access. As the PRISM coalition found out, scientists don’t take kindly to being told their research is junk solely because it is shared for free. Other research funding agencies will find more courage to pursue open access policies of their own, perhaps paving the way for a government-wide mandate akin to the Federal Research Public Access Act floated by Sens. John Cornyn and Joe Lieberman in 2006. Some may even push for stronger mandates than the NIH policy—such as the European Research Council policy released on Jan. 10, which halves the NIH’s maximum allowable delay from 12 months to 6.

Open access is a positive development for several goals of science policy: to accelerate research, control costs in higher education, and share information more effectively. The NIH public access policy will move forward on all three fronts and pave the way for progress to come.

Gavin Baker is an information policy consultant and commentator with Baker Open Strategies, LLC.