Leaving aside the bandwidth-wasting remarks about the inability of people to read what Harnad writes, I still find Harnad's answer unsatisfactory. The reason is that he and I agree that a repository without a mandate is ineffective. Consequently, arguing that one is not against "institution-external OA depositories" while "driving against mandating direct deposit" is more than a little disingenuous. Both Harnad and I know that, without mandates, the depository will not fill beyond 15%. Fighting against the mandate is tantamount to ensuring ineffectiveness, which is of course what Harnad wishes for these "institutional-external OA depositories".
Jean-Claude Guédon
-------- Message d'origine--------
De: American Scientist Open Access Forum de la part de Stevan Harnad
Date: mer. 23/07/2008 12:57
À: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Objet : Re: Harnad's faulty thinking on OA deposit and APA policy
On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 8:34 AM, Guédon Jean-Claude <
jean.claude.guedon_at_umontreal.ca> wrote:
How can Harnad simultaneously state that there is no drive on his part
> against "institution-external OA repositories" and then proceed to state
> point 4?
To repeat:
No drive against institution-external OA repositories, just a drive against
MANDATING DIRECT DEPOSIT in institution-external OA repositories.
(Deposit mandates should be convergent, on institutional OA repositories,
not divergent; then institution-external OA repositories can harvest the
deposits from the institutional OA repositories.)
Reason:
To facilitate instead of retarding the scaling up to universal OA.
(It would save readers a lot of time and bandwidth if those rushing to
proclaim "Harnad's faulty thinking on OA deposit and APA policy" would first
take the trouble to understand what Harnad is saying on OA deposit and APA
policy...)
Stevan Harnad
-------- Message d'origine--------
> De: American Scientist Open Access Forum de la part de Stevan Harnad
> Date: mar. 22/07/2008 15:44
> À: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
> Objet : Re: Harnad's faulty thinking on OA deposit and APA policy
>
> On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 2:06 PM, Armbruster, Chris <Chris.Armbruster_at_eui.eu
> >
> wrote in SOAF:
>
> I fail to see how Harnad's drive against the best that exists: large,
> functional and service-oriented repositories, is of any service to the OA
> movement.
>
> (1) No drive against institution-external OA repositories, just a drive for
> mandating direct deposit in institutional OA repositories instead of
> institution-external ones -- into which the institutional repository
> contents can then be harvested.
>
> (2) Institutions are the research-providers (of all of OA's target research
> output, funded and unfunded, across all disciplines, institutions and
> countries).
>
> (3) Institutions are in the position to mandate and monitor the deposit of
> all their own research output (funded and unfunded, across all
> disciplines) in their own OA institutional repositories.
>
> (4) Funder OA mandates need to converge with and reinforce institutional OA
> mandates, rather than diverge from or compete with them, so as to
> facilitate
> a coherent transition to universal OA.
>
> Chris keeps talking about the functional benefits of central services,
> which
> are neither disputed by anything I am saying nor diminished in the least
> by
> the locus of deposit I am urging. Meanwhile Chris completely overlooks th
> real problem of OA, which is getting the content provided.
>
> Convergent institutional and funder mandates will facilitate and accelerate
> this OA content provision; divergent ones will needlessly complicate and
> retard it.
>
> (APA has, as predicted, withdrawn its proposed $2500 surcharge for
> institution-external deposit, and continues to be Green on immediate
> deposit
> in the institutional OA repository, without charge, as it has been since
> 2002.)
>
> "The OA Deposit-Fee Kerfuffle: APA's Not Responsible; NIH Is"
> http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/436-guid.html
>
>
> Stevan Harnad
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 2:06 PM, Armbruster, Chris <Chris.Armbruster_at_eui.eu
> >
> wrote:
>
> Stevan Harnad keeps on claiming that the natural and only sensible locus
> for
> > Green OA deposits is the institutional repositories. He says we must fill
> > the institutional repositories first. He also claims that any kind of
> > service based on repositories (like SSRN, RePEc, CiteSeerX, Arxiv, PMC,
> > European Research Paper Archive etc.) will then take care of itself. The
> > proposed solutions is centralised harvesting, inlcuding harvesting from
> IRs
> > to PMC.
> >
> > Steven Harnad is currently publicly applauding the policy of the APA
> > (American Psychological Association), which wishes to charges authors USD
> > 2500 for NIH-compliant OA deposit in PMC, but leaves standing an earlier
> > policy that enables Green OA deposit in the author's IR for free.
> >
> > Given the APA stance, is it conceivable that they would watch as all
> > manuscripts are harvested by PMC (as a 'third-party' provider, like
> Harnad
> > likes to call them) to provide service? The logical corollary of the APA
> > policy is to slap on conditions that prevent harvesting, for why else
> would
> > they seek to prevent deposit in PMC in the first place? Now, we may
> > speculate on whether APA will back down or not, but the fundamental point
> is
> > this one:
> > You cannot applaud efforts to prevent Green OA archiving in large,
> > functional repositories that have a decent service for scholars and then
> say
> > we must all deposit in the individual IRs, which are little more than a
> > storage facility, and then claim that - as in a miracle - functionality
> and
> > service will emerge. The point of APA's policy is to try to prevent that
> > Green OA will ever become functional and meaningful.
> >
> > I fail to see how Harnad's drive against the best that exists: large,
> > functional and service-oriented repositories, is of any service to the OA
> > movement.
> >
> > Chris Armbruster
> >
> > http://ssrn.com/author=434782
> >
> >
>
Received on Thu Jul 24 2008 - 18:02:37 BST