Canada's SSHRC Just Keeps Spinning Its Wheels

Comments on Richard Akerman's blogged notes on David Moorman's SSHRC talk at Institutional Repositories: The Next Generation (Ottawa, October 10, 2006)

"SSHRC has embraced OA in principle, but [it's] a big challenge going from principle to action"

Five out of the eight UK Research Councils (BBSRC, CCLRC, EPSRC, MRC, NERC) nevertheless seem to have managed to go from principle to action...

"Does SSHRC have a policy? No. There is more to this than just mandating OA."

Four out of the eight UK Research Councils (BBSRC, EPSRC, MRC, NERC) nevertheless seem to have managed to mandate it, and Canada's CIHR seems to have managed to propose to mandate it...

"Figure out how to support OA journals. Conducting experiments to figure out best approach."

Why is SSHRC fussing about supporting OA journals instead of mandating the self-archiving of SSHRC research output? Is SSHRC a research funder or a journal funder? The OA mandate pertains to the former, not the latter: to maximizing the access and impact of SSHRC research output, not to the budgeting of SSHRC's journal subsidies. Journals SSHRC may happen to be subsidising have nothing to do with the mandate in question.

"look at University of California system"

Why not look instead at a system with a mandate, hence one that works -- as voluntarism, demonstrably, does not?

"[Create an] SSHRC IR?"

An SSHRC Central Repositry (CR)? What on earth for? Mandate that SSHRC fundees self-archive their SSHRC-funded research output in their own institutional IRs. SSHRC does not need a CR of its own in the distributed, interoperable OAI age.

"Official Languages Act - websites must be in both languages: how to handle research? 15,000 objects would have to be translated every year"

This is such nonsense as to take one's breath away: Can SSHRC not have a library? Are only bilingual or translated journals admissible? Does SSHRC stipulate which language(s) its fundees must publish in? (Besides, SSHRC does not need a CR of its own: Just mandate self-archiving in the fundees' own institutions' IRs.)

"grant[s] can't have post-award conditions, e.g. can't require article deposit"

Nonsense. If publishing the research in a peer-reviewed journal can be a grant fulfillment condition, so can self-archiving the article.

SSHRC is spinning its wheels; it just keeps citing problems in principle while others are busily putting OA into practice.

"SSHRC Open Access Consultation (Canada)" (Aug 2005)

Replies for SSHRC Consultation on Open Access (Nov 2005)

Canada's SSHRC lacks leader, hence leadership, on OA (May 2006)

Stevan Harnad