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In response to Alma Swan's�graphic demonstration�(posted yesterday
and partly reproduced below) of the accelerating growth rate of Green
Open Access Self-Archiving�Mandates�(now
including�NIH,�Harvard,�Stanfordand�MIT), Richard Poynder has posted
some some very useful�comments and questions. Below are some comments
by way of reply:
[almamandgrowth.png]
FIGURE: Accelerating Growth Rate in Worldwide Adoptions
of�Green Open Access Self-Archiving Mandates�(2002-2009,
in half-year increments) by Research Funders,
Institutions, and Departments/Faculties/Schools (Swan
2009)
____________________________________________________________________________
(1)�The latest and fastest-growing kinds of�Green Open Access
Self-Archiving Mandates�are not only self-chosen by the researchers
themselves, but they are department/faculty/school mandates, rather
than full university-wide mandates. These are the "patchwork
mandates" that Arthur Sale already began recommending presciently
back in 2007, in preference to waiting passively for university-wide
consensus to be reached.
(The option of�opting out�is only useful if it applies, not to the
the deposit itself [of the refereed final draft, which should
be�deposited, without opt-out, immediately upon acceptance for
publication], but to whether access to the deposit is immediately set
as Open Access.)
(2)�Another recent progress report for Institutional Repositories,
following�Stirling's, is�Aberystwyth's, which reached 2000 deposits
in May.
(3)�Richard asks:�"Will the fact that many of the new mandates
include opt-outs affect compliance rates? (Will that make them appear
more voluntary than mandatory?)"
[comply1.jpg] According to Alma Swan's�international surveys, most
authors report they would comply willingly with a self-archiving
mandate. The problem is less with achieving compliance on adopted
mandates than with�achieving consensus on the adoption of the mandate
in the first place. (Hence, again, Arthur Sale's sage advice to adopt
"patchwork" department/faculty/school mandates, rather than waiting
passively for consensus on the adoption of full university-wide
mandates, is the right advice.)�
And the principal purpose of mandates themselves is
to�reinforceresearchers' already-existing inclination to maximise
access and usage for their give-away articles, not
to�force�researchers to do something they don't already want to do.�
(Researchers need to be reassured that their departments or
institutions or funders are indeed fully behind self-archiving, and
indeed expect it of them; otherwise researchers remain in a state of
"Zeno's Paralysis" about self-archiving year upon year, because of
countless groundless worries, such as�copyright,�journal choice, and
even how much�time�self-archiving takes.)
(4)�Richard also asks:�"What is full compliance so far as a
self-archiving mandate is concerned?"�
Full compliance is of course 100% compliance, and the longer-standing
mandates are climbing toward that, but their biggest boost will come
not only from time, nor even from the increasingly palpable local
benefits of OA self-archiving (in terms of�enhanced research impact),
but from the global growth of Green OA Self-Archiving Mandates that
Alma has just�graphically demonstrated.
(5)�"What other questions should we be asking?"�
We should be asking what university students and staff can do to
accelerate and facilitate the adoption of mandates at their
institution. (See "Waking OA?s ?Slumbering Giant?: The University's
Mandate To Mandate Open Access.")
And the right way to judge the success of a mandate is not just by
reporting the growth in an institution's yearly deposit rates, but by
plotting the growth in deposit rate as a percentage of the
institution's yearly output of research articles, for the articles
actually published in that same year.
Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum
[ Part 2: "Attached Text" ]
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Received on Sat May 23 2009 - 22:56:52 BST