Position of CNRS (France) on Open Access

---

SUMMARY: The new Director General of France's large, distributed national research network, the CNRS, has reiterated his predecessor's recommendation to all CNRS researchers to deposit their articles in HAL, the CNRS's nationwide institutional repository. Unfortunately, recommendations alone do not generate much more Open Access self-archiving than the spontaneous worldwide baseline of about 15%. To accelerate CNRS self-archiving toward 100%, the recommendation must be transformed into a requirement. The only obstacle to adopting an OA self-archiving requirement is the perception that it could contravene copyright agreements with publishers, so the simple, certain solution is to make it an immediate deposit requirement (no exceptions, no delays), with Open-Access-setting merely a recommendation rather than a requirement. (For the 31% of postprints that might have a Closed Access embargo interval, the semi-automatic EMAIL-EPRINT request feature of the institutional repository softwares can provide for all would-be users' access needs during the embargo.)

---

On Fri, 23 Jun 2006, Thierry Chanier wrote in the American Scientist Open Access Forum:

"Arnold Migus, the new head of the CNRS recommends depositing in HAL"

Recommending has been demonstrated to be insufficient to generate self-archiving above the worldwide spontaneous self-archiving baseline of 15%: Only requiring (a mandate, directive, compulsory policy) will generate self-archiving that approaches 100% of institutional research output.

Moreover, this CNRS recommendation is not new. It was already registered in ROARMAP on 17 Mar 2005 under the former CNRS Directorate by the former Head of Scientific and Technical Information (Laurent Romary)

Institution's/Department's OA Self-Archiving Policy

"HAL (Hyper Article en Ligne), is an open archive that already covers the fields of Physics, Mathematics and Humanities within CNRS and which is our software platform for our future institutional archive. The CNRS intends to establish an institutional archive -- a high quality and wide coverage repository of its research publication output. It is expected that the adoption of a highly incentivized institutional self-archiving policy for our researchers will ensure that the majority of CNRS publications deposited in the archive will also be made externally visible in Open Access."

From the growth data for HAL, the deposit rate does not seem commensurate with all of CNRS's annual research output. If you consult by year of publication you will find that from the totatlity of the country's CNRS research units, there are, respectively, only 4430, 5462, and 2110 articles for 2004, 2005, and 2006, respectively.

It would be very helpful to know what percentage of CNRS's total annual research output this represents, and how it distributes across CNRS's many fields and research units.

"the researcher should [first] ask the publisher for permission to deposit."

This is a big mistake. No permission is required from anyone merely to deposit.

The CNRS policy should be a requirement to deposit all published articles (full text and metadata) immediately upon acceptance for publication (no exceptions, no delays). The only optional component should concern when the access to the deposited full-text is set as Open Access. (Until then the deposited full-text is in Closed Access, but its metadata are already accessible webwide.) Setting full-text access immediately to Open Access should be recommended, but not required (for the 31% of postprints that might have a Closed Access embargo interval), in order to avoid further delay in adopting the policy, and in order to rule out all exceptions or delays in depositing).

"They suggest spending time to negotiate with the publisher when signing the copyright statement, even asking him the permission to deposit the preprint!"

Nonsense. All deposits should be immediate; negotiation can come afterwards, if the author wishes, in order to decide when to set access to OA for the 31% of postprints that might have a Closed Access embargo interval. In the interim, I would strongly urge that HAL implements the semi-automatic EMAIL-EPRINT request feature of EPrints (now also implemented in DSpace).

Authors need no permission at all from anyone, however, to immediately set access to 100% of their unrefereed preprints to Open Access at the moment of deposit (which can be done even before the preprint is submitted to any journal for refereeing!) -- but the decision about whether or not to deposit an unrefereed preprint at all must be left entirely to the author: encouraged but not required.

"Hence if the publisher is against any form of deposit, the researcher should do nothing."

Nonsense. Deposit should be de-coupled from access-setting. Postprint deposit should be mandatory and immediate, and with no exceptions. Access-setting should be left up to the author, with immediate OA strongly encouraged, but not required. For preprints, deposit itself should only be encouraged but not required -- but access to deposited preprints can always be set as OA immediately.

"I do not that know any French publisher appears on the Sherpa list. They avoided responding and taking any official position. Informally they are against We could consider this text as an invitation to open the debate with them"

Please, before debating: deposit!

" - there is no statement that research funded with public money should in any case be made open access"

It would be a good idea for French research funders to follow the example of other research funders worldwide, including the European Commission, the UK and the US, in requiring that the results of publicly funded research be made be deposited immediately -- and made Open Access as soon as possible.

" - there is no requirement in French research contracts, when claiming funds to deposit the resulting publications in an OA repository [like HAL]"

There is alas no requirement in any other country's research contracts yet either! The EC, UK and US have so far only proposed to require self-archiving: they have not yet implemented their respective proposals. So far, only the Wellcome Trust, a private funder, plus 6 individual universities and research institutions worldwide, have actually implemented a self-archiving mandate. So there is still time for France to become the first...

" - [in any case] it is nonsense to ask the publisher for the right to deposit a preprint, the preprint not being part of any copyright statement"

Correct. But it is also nonsense to ask the publisher for permission to deposit any article: If the publisher's policy is relevant to anything at all, it is relevant only to access-setting, not to depositing.

" - it is contrary to our current position to deposit first and then consider whether the deposit can be made free immediately or after a given delay."

Then please change your current position, which is arbitrary, counterproductive, and has obvious not been thought through.

"What do you think of this position? Will it promote or hamper the development of OA?"

Recommending self-archiving is better than not recommending self-archiving, but it is not enough. What is needed is requiring (i.e., a self-archiving directive or mandate). And the mandate should be an immediate-deposit mandate. Any delay and negotiation should only pertain to the date of Open-Access-setting, not to the date of deposit (which should be on the day of acceptance of the refereed, revised, final draft for publication)...

The failure to distinguish deposit from release, the failure to mandate immediate deposit, and the bad advice on copyright and negotiation would hamper rather than promote OA. But fortunately this is all very easy to correct. All that is required is to understand exactly how and why to correct it -- and then to correct it.

Stevan Harnad

---

A l'attention de Mesdames et Messieurs les directeurs d'unité Sous-couvert de Mesdames et Messieurs les délégués régionaux Objet : Développement des archives ouvertes

Chère Collègue, Cher Collègue,

Le CNRS soutient le mouvement international en faveur des archives ouvertes. Il a, à cet égard, exprimé une position de principe lors de la déclaration de Berlin, signée le 22 octobre 2003, en faveur du modèle du libre accès à la connaissance. Et l'établissement a agi concrètement en mettant en oeuvre la base pluridisciplinaire Hal hébergée au Centre pour la communication scientifique directe (CCSD), unité propre de service (UPS) du CNRS. L'Académie des sciences a exprimé, pour sa part, son fort soutien dans un avis rendu le 5 juillet 2005 et un accord inter-établissements (établissements d'enseignement supérieur et de recherche et organismes de recherche) est en cours de signature pour l'utilisation commune de Hal.

Dans ce contexte, je souhaite que vous invitiez tous les chercheurs des unités propres ou associées au CNRS à déposer, chaque fois que c'est possible, les manuscrits de leurs travaux sur la base Hal, les rendant ainsi librement consultables par la communauté scientifique internationale. Outre une large visibilité immédiate des travaux de recherche, ce dispositif permettra, dans un cadre académique, une préservation à long terme des documents sous forme électronique. Il permettra également aux laboratoires et institutions une identification facilitée de leur production scientifique via une collection constituée sur la base Hal.

Je vous incite donc à prendre des mesures pour que ce dépôt soit effectué régulièrement. Le CNRS veillera, pour sa part, au maintien de ces bases en libre accès, à la conservation à long terme du corpus de connaissances ainsi constitué et à la stabilité des adresses des documents mis en ligne. Il ne s'agit évidemment pas de renoncer à la publication des travaux de recherche dans des revues à comité de lecture. L'évaluation scientifique par les pairs et l'amélioration des textes soumis aux revues scientifiques, en particulier internationales, sont des composantes essentielles de la recherche. Cependant, comme l'ont déjà montré certaines grandes communautés scientifiques, une publication par les canaux classiques n'est pas incompatible avec la communication des résultats sur une base en accès libre.

Il existe bien évidemment des cas oû il est inopportun ou impossible de diffuser les résultats de recherche, que ce soit dans le cadre des bases en libre accès ou des publications traditionnelles. C'est aux chercheurs et aux laboratoires d'appliquer le discernement nécessaire.

Il convient en particulier de veiller à ne pas rendre publics des résultats confidentiels, par exemple s'ils sont destinés à être brevetés, et de vérifier que les droits de diffusion en archives ouvertes n'ont fait pas l'objet d'une cession à un éditeur (cf. le guide du dépôt et du bon usage de Hal qui rappelle les règles à respecter en matière de droit de propriété

Les chercheurs des laboratoires propres ou associés au CNRS sont invités à ce titre à favoriser les revues et éditeurs dont les contrats sont compatibles avec le dépôt des documents sur Hal, mais bien évidemment ce sont eux les mieux placés pour décider en dernier ressort si cela est possible, compte tenu des habitudes dans chaque discipline et de la nécessité d'une bon ne diffusion.

Dans les cas oû il s'avère que le dépôt du texte dans son intégralité n'est pas approprié, il demeure toujours la possibilité de déposer dans Hal une notice bibliographique ne contenant que les références de publication. Sachant pouvoir compter sur votre actif concours pour contribuer à développer le modèle du libre accès à la connaissance, je vous prie de bien vouloir agréer, Chère Collègue, Cher Collègue, l'expression de mes salutations les meilleures,

Arnold Migus, Directeur Général du CNRS