Hyperlinked version:
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/678-guid.html
Recent criticisms of ACM's stance on open access (OA) --
http://www.realtimerendering.com/blog/us-gov-requests-feedback-on-open-access-acm-gets-it-wrong-again/
-- are misguided. ACM is on the side of the angels regarding OA.
(1) ACM is Green. ACM is among the 51% of publishers (publishing 63%
of journals) who are completely green on self-archiving. (ACM endorses
immediate, unembargoed OA self-archiving of the author's refereed
final draft in the author's institutional repository.)
(2) Locus of Deposit Matters for Mandates. For authors -- as well as
for institutions and funders who are attempting to mandate OA -- it
makes an enormous difference where deposit is mandated: Divergent
central (i.e., institution-external) vs. institution-internal deposit
mandates from authors' funders and institutions (2a) require multiple
deposit of the same paper by authors, and thereby (2b) put funder
mandates in competition with institutional mandates (needlessly
handicapping and discouraging, especially, the all-important
institutional mandates), whereas convergent inititutional deposit
mandates by both funders and institutions reinforce and facilitate one
another.
(3) Locus of Deposit Does Not Matter for Users. For users, it does not
matter in the least where an OA paper is deposited (as long as the
repository is OAI-compliant), because all deposits can be, and are
being, centrally harvested, by multiple central OAI harvesters (like
citeseer, base, oaister, scirus, google scholar, and the ever more
powerful central harvesters whose creation will be inspired by Green
OA deposit mandates) -- if only we help OA happen by grasping what is
already fully within our reach (by supporting Green OA institutional
deposit mandates, and those publishers, like ACM, that facilitate
rather than obstruct them) rather than over-reaching and insisting on
more than we need now, only to continue to get next to nothing.
Yes, the interests of learned-society publishers like ACM -- and
indeed those of any refereed journal publisher -- are not more
important than the interests of research, researchers, their
institutions, their funders, and the tax-paying public that funds the
funders. But research interests are not well-served if we demonize
even those publishers, like ACM, who are already on the side of the
angels on OA, nor if we gratuitously over-reach instead of grasping
what's already within reach.
Please send OSTP and President Obama the simple, convergent message
that is guaranteed to bring us universal OA in short order, at long
last: Mandate depositing the final refereed draft of all funded
research into the fundee's own institutional repository immediately
upon acceptance for publication. -- No more, no less.
ACM -- unlike the other 49% of publishers -- is not standing in our way.
(And there is absolutely nothing wrong with ACM continuing to produce
their fee-based Digital Library to try to compete with the free
central harvesters of OA content, just as there is nothing wrong with
ACM continuing to produce their fee-based proprietary ACM print and
online editions of the journal articles to try to compete with the OA
drafts [and to recover the cost of peer review]. The future will take
care of itself, but please let us not keep holding it back by
gratuitously insisting on more than necessary today.)
See also: "APA Kerfuffle Redux: No, ACM is NOT Anti-OA"
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/565-guid.html
Stevan Harnad
Received on Sun Dec 20 2009 - 15:49:05 GMT