Score 9 for Arthur Sale's "Patchwork" Mandate Proposal: U Oregon Departmental Mandate

From: Stevan Harnad <amsciforum_at_GMAIL.COM>
Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 16:32:35 -0400

University of Oregon (UO) has just registered (in�ROARMAP)
UO's�second�Green Open Access (OA) self-archiving mandate in a week
-- the world's 80th Green OA mandate overall.

UO's first mandate was for the�UO Library Faculty. UO's latest one is
for the�UO Department of Romance Languages. It's also the first
departmental mandate in thehumanities�(confirming, along with the
several humanities funder mandates already adopted, that OA isn't,
and never was, just for the sciences!).

This is also the world's 9th departmental mandate, again confirming
Arthur Sale's sage advice about the "patchwork mandate" strategy:
      If your institution has not yet managed to reach
      consensus on adopting a university-wide OA mandate, don't
      wait! Go ahead and adopt departmental mandates, for which
      consensus can be reached more quickly and easily.

The�very first Green OA self-archiving mandate of them all�was
likewise a "patchwork mandate," adopted by the School of Electronics
and Computer Science at University of Southampton. (A university-wide
mandate has since been adopted as well.)

Also, if your institution does not yet have an�Institutional
Repository (IR), urge them to create one. (I recommendEPrints�as by
far best, fastest, and simplest, of the free OS softwares, yet the
one with the most powerful OA functionality.) But, as with mandates,
don't wait for your institution to get 'round to it, if they're being
sluggish: justdownload EPrints�and create a departmental IR of your
own: It can later be integrated with or upgraded into the
university-wide IR.

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum
Received on Fri May 15 2009 - 21:33:28 BST