白宫科技政策办公室正在征求公众对数字信息获取与保存的意见

武夷山

11月16日上午，有幸列席了中科院第6次文献情报工作会议。在会上，听美国洛斯阿拉莫斯国立实验室研究图书馆馆长Mirriam Blake女士介绍说，11月3日，白宫科技政策办公室开始向公众征求他们对数字信息获取与保存的意见。回来后赶紧上网了解了一下相关情况，是这样的。

白宫科技政策办公室（OSTP）网站11月7日发布消息说：

《2010年美国竞争再授权法》规定，OSTP应与有关机构进行协调以制订相关政策，确保公众能接触到联邦政府资助的非保密科研项目成果信息，确保对这些成果信息的长期管理保存。为此，OSTP上周发出征求信息（Request for Information）公告，希望听取公众对于联邦政府资助的非保密科研项目成果信息之长期保存与公开获取的看法。

征求信息（Request for Information）公告见http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-11-04/pdf/2011-28623.pdf。

希望公众就总共13个问题发表意见，包括：

1．       什么样的联邦政策有利于联邦政府资助的非保密科研项目成果信息之公开获取与保存？什么样的联邦政策有助于美国经济增长和提高美国科学事业的生产率？

2．       与此同时，可采取什么步骤来保护出版者、科学家、联邦机构和其他利益相关者的知识产权权益？

3．       联邦机构在制定数据管理政策时，如何充分考虑学科之间、不同类型数字信息之间的固有差异？

4．       联邦机构如何考虑联邦政府资助的非保密科研项目成果信息之长期保存和扩散所涉及的相对成本和效益方面的差异？

5．       各类利益相关者如何尽其所能对数据管理规划之实施做出贡献？

6．       如何改进资助机制，以应对数字信息保存与扩散所涉及的实实在在的费用问题？

7．       采取什么措施来测度、确证人们是否在贯彻关于信息保存与扩散的联邦政策？采取什么措施来改善这样的政策？

8．       政府还可以采取哪些措施来鼓励人们将公开获取的科研数据创新性地应用于已有市场与产业以及新市场与新产业，从而创造就业岗位，推动经济增长？

9．       采取哪些机制来确保对原始数据生产者的贡献之承认？因为人们见到的往往是对数据的二次报道利用。

第10到第13个问题是关于互操作、信息再利用和针对不同对象的信息再包装（Re-purposing）的数字信息标准问题的，此处不详细介绍。

我觉得，若将上文中的“联邦政府”理解为各国的中央政府，则这13个问题便是全世界各国的情报学家都应认真面对的挑战，也是其最好的时代性选题。

OSTP原消息如下  (http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/11/07/request-information-public-access-digital-data-and-scientific-publications):

The America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010, signed by President Obama earlier this year, calls upon OSTP to coordinate with agencies to develop policies that assure widespread public access to and long-term stewardship of the results of federally funded unclassified research. Towards that goal, OSTP last week released two Requests for Information (RFI) soliciting public input on long term preservation of and public access to the results of federally funded research, including digital data and peer-reviewed scholarly publications.

OSTP previously conducted a public consultation about policy options for expanding public access to federally funded peer-reviewed scholarly articles (the full set of comments can be viewed here).  The current RFIs take that process another step, seeking further guidance on access to scientific publications and initiating a parallel process relating to digital data, as called for in the COMPETES Act.

OSTP has established two interagency policy groups under the National Science and Technology Council—the Task Force on Public Access to Scholarly Publications and the Interagency Working Group on Digital Data—to identify the specific objectives and public interests that need to be addressed by any policies in these two areas. The groups will take into account the varying missions, types of data, and dissemination models associated with the range of Federal science agencies and scientific disciplines, and will help OSTP address other public access requirements of COMPETES—keeping in mind the need to follow statutory requirements and best practices for protecting personal privacy, proprietary interests, intellectual property rights, and author attribution.

We highly encourage stakeholders to consider the questions in the RFIs and provide comments to the questions by email to digitaldata@ostp.gov and publicaccess@ostp.gov. OSTP will make all comments available on its website, including the names of the authors and their institutional affiliations soon after the conclusion of the comment periods, so please do not include any proprietary or confidential information when responding to the RFIs. All comments are due by January 2, 2012.

You can see the RFI on public access here and the RFI on digital data here.