WERF Adopts Open Access Policy on Final Reports

The Water Environment Research Foundation today announced a new open access initiative that will bring its wastewater and stormwater research results to the forefront of scientific and technical innovation. The new policy, which was vetted with all subscribers through an initial survey and then with a follow-up invitation to comment on the proposal, will go into full effect on July 1, 2009.

Recognizing that its subscribers benefit when elected officials, regulators, and the public have accurate information on which to base funding and regulatory decisions, WERF intends to improve access to its objective research results.

The open access policy has two primary components:

• First, all WERF final research report PDF files and hard copy reports remain available exclusively to subscribers, or available for sale to the public, through WERF and its publishing partners for two years. After the initial two years, all WERF final research report PDF files will be “open access,” free to the general public, from the WERF website. (Tools are not part of the open access initiative.)
• Second, if the WERF Board of Directors, Research Council, Communications Advisory Committee, or executive director determine that an earlier release of a final research report is in the public’s and subscribers' interest, they will need a majority vote in the affirmative to enact “open access” for that report before the 2-year open access date. Once WERF designates a report as open access, a PDF version of the report will be available, free of charge, on the WERF website.

The new policy went through several months of comments and considerations.

In November, WERF sent an advisory survey to all subscribing organizations, asking if WERF should make its research reports freely available to the public. Subscribers were generous with their comments.

“There was a recognition that subscribers would benefit from accurate scientific information being made available to the public,” explains WERF executive director Glenn Reinhardt. “They pointed out repeatedly that oceans of misinformation exist in cyberspace and that WERF should be a reliable repository of good science.”

Many subscribers voiced strong support for a timed-release of information to open access, although the timing differed.

Armed with the survey results, the WERF Board of Directors engaged in a lively debate on how best to interpret the outcome. They crafted the compromise solution, and approved a resolution in December. Before implementing the policy, however, they asked Reinhardt to ask again for subscriber input. Based on that input, the Board gave the go-ahead at their April 30 meeting.

“This significant step is one more way that WERF helps its subscribers improve services, meet fiscal responsibilities, promote public health, and protect the environment,” Reinhardt says. “Improving access to scientifically valid information supports the development of reasonable public policy and aids more rapid technological development.”

Open access policies are becoming the new standard for research organizations that want to provide objective and peer-reviewed information to an increasingly interconnected world.

“The amount of misinformation readily available on the internet compels WERF to make its work, among the best that exists, available to all interested parties,” noted one subscriber in his response to the November survey.

One responder’s comments set the tone for the compromise policy ultimately adopted by the Board. “It might be reasonable to limit access for something like two or three years and then to have open access,” this subscriber wrote. “For documents where WERF wants wide distribution, open access should start from publication.”

A complete copy of the WERF Open Access Policy, adopted by the Board of Directors at their meeting on December 16, 2008, is on the WERF website.

May 4, 2009