Sunday, January 29. 2006
On Fri, 27 Jan 2006, Hélène Bosc wrote: "Peux tu m'expliquer ce qu'il y a derrière Opendoar?" I'll reply in English to your question about what is behind OpenDoar, so I can post the reply more widely: "Manifestement [ça reprend] les réalisations dejà faites à Southampton..." It is true that -- so far -- DOAR is mostly just re-doing, funded, what Tim Brody had already done, unfunded (with ROAR). DOAR so far covers about 3/5 of the archives in ROAR and 1/2 the number in OAIster, and does not yet measure or provide a way to display the time-course of their growth in contents or number, as ROAR does. (DOAR will need Tim's Celestial to do that.)
However, DOAR does provide an OAI Base URL in what looks (to my eyes: DOAR does not yet give tallies) to be a much larger proportion of archives than ROAR (c. 80%) does, and this is presumably because DOAR has contacted, directly and individually, each archive for which the OAI Base URL was missing.
(This is something I had asked Tim to do, but it is perhaps too much to expect from an unfunded doctoral student, primarily working on his thesis! The solution of course is for archives to expose their own OAI Base URLs for harvesters to pick up automatically, and this will of course be the ultimate outcome. For now, there is no Registry that all archives use or aspire to be covered by. If DOAR incorporates all of the useful features of ROAR (especially celestial), and adds value, it may succeed in becoming that Registry. So far, ROAR's periodic calls to Archives to register have not inspired enough responsiveness. Most of ROAR's new archives for the past year or more have been hand-imported by me and Tim! At least DOAR will be funded to do that thankless task, from now on!)
The second potentially useful feature of DOAR is that it seems to classify separately the different content types; and (I think -- I'm not sure) that DOAR has checked that those are all full-texts (rather than just bibiographic metadata: DOAR will need to make this more explicit in their documentation).
If so, then DOAR can potentially provide size and growth-rate charts by content types (preprints, postprints, theses, etc.), though as of now there is no way to do this (or boolean combinations) in DOAR. (The Eprints software already tags and exposes content types as well as whether or not each entry is a full-text; I expect that the other archive softwares will soon follow suit. Then it's up to the archives to provide and expose those metadata, so the harvesters can pick up, telly, and do other useful things with them.)
Right now, the DOAR entry for an archive looks a lot like a library card catalogue entry for a journal or a book (perhaps by analogy with DOAJ) or even a collection.
This does not quite make sense to me, since users do not consult or use individual online institutional archives as they do when looking up card-catalogue entries for individual books or journals or collections. For one thing, most of the archives will be university IRs. Most universities produce contents of all of the types listed, and in all of the subjects listed; and rarely will any user want all/only, say, articles on subject X from individual institution Y: They will instead use an OAI harvester and service-provider like OAIster or citebase or citeseer or even google scholar, that searches across all institutions on that subject, or even across all subjects.
Hence the only likely use for those type and subject classifications is either (1) for automatic pick-up by OAI harvesters, using them to mediate in harvesting the archives' metadata directly or (2) for individuals interested in gathering summary statistics on individual archive offerings. (And again, the optimal and most likely outcome is that the archives themselves will expose these metadata to be picked up directly by harvesters, rather than having to be mediated by a middle-service, hand-gathering and checking any missing data.)
So there are still functionality issues to be thought through if DOAR is to provide a useful service. But I expect these things will be resolved, and that DOAR will build on ROAR something that provides genuine value to the OA community and the research community in general, helping to hasten the day of 100% OA.
Ceterum censeo: " DOAJ, OAIster and Romeo should chart growth, as EPrints does" (Jan 2004)
Stevan Harnad
Thursday, January 19. 2006
[Update: See new definition of "Weak" and "Strong" OA, 29/4/2008]
Dr. Raveendran, whose message appears at the end of this item, is Chief Editor, Indian Journal of Pharmacology, an OA [" gold") Journal, but he seems to be mistaken about what Open Access (OA) means: He seems to think OA is about "abolishing copyright"! That is certainly not what OA means, or advocates. I am puzzled as to where that erroneous idea came from (and offer 3 hypotheses below), but first, the meaning of OA needs to be made clear straight away (I. DEFINITION OF OA, below).
Dr. Raveendran also recommends the journals pay author reprint royalties. I discuss this in the second part of this posting (II. AUTHOR REPRINT ROYALTIES?)
I. DEFINITION OF OA OA (Open Access) is about making the full-texts of all published, peer-reviewed research journal articles accessible online toll-free for all would-be users, webwide, in order to maximise their research usage and impact.
There are two ways to provide OA. One (" OA Green," also called BOAI-1) is for the author to publish the article in a traditional journal (with the usual copyright agreements) but also to make his own final draft freely accessible online by self-archiving it in on the web, free for all (usually in his own institutional repository).
Of the nearly 9000 journals published by the 128 publishers processed by SHERPA/Romeo so far (including virtually all of the top international journals), 93% have already endorsed author self-archiving.
The second way to provide OA ("OA Gold") is for the journal in which the article is published to make the published version freely accessible online. (Some, but not all, OA journals charge $500-$3000 per article to the author-institution for this service.) The total number of OA journals is currently 2000 (and Dr. Raveendra's IJP is one of them).
As should now be clear, neither form of OA involves the abolition of copyright. Both forms continue to depend on it. OA green retains conventional copyright or licensing agreements; OA gold sometimes adopts a Creative Commons copyright license, sometimes not.
The only three ways I can even imagine that Dr. Raveendran arrived at his mistaken idea that OA is about abolishing copyright are (1) from the minority of well-intentioned people who are unfamiliar with OA and have been (needlessly) urging researchers to retain copyright (or negotiate a Creative Commons License) rather than to transfer it to the journal in which they publish. There is nothing wrong with doing this, but it is neither OA nor necessary for OA (and implying that it is either OA or a necessary prerequisite of OA, is actually a disservice to OA, needlessly delaying it still longer, when it is already long overdue).
The second possibility is that Dr. Raveendran heard the recommendations (2) from an even tinier number of well-meaning but misinformed individuals who have been urging authors to make their work "public domain." e.g., the ill-fated US Sabo Bill (2003) . That 2003 Bill was not well thought out, and has already failed. It has been replaced in the US by the (pending) 2005 CURES Act, and in the UK by the UK Government Science and Technology Committee 2004 recommendation
which is soon (we hope) to be implemented as the 2006 RCUK self-archiving policy.
My third and last hypothesis as to how Dr. Raveendran might have arrived at his mistaken impression of OA is that it was somehow a result of some early, unfortunate internal squabbling in the OA movement about so-called "Free Access" (FA) vs. "Open Access" (OA).
That squabbling arose from two sources: the first was (i) an unnecessarily exacting initial "definition" of OA, defining it, needlessly, as not only the free online webwide access that it really is, but as also including the retention by the author of certain re-publishing/re-use rights, which the author then gives to all users.
This over-exacting initial definition of OA (since replaced in practice by the more natural, simpler, and more realistic one: "free online access") had itself been inspired by what had at first glance appeared to be valid analogies between the OA movement and (a) the Open Source Initiative, (b) the Creative Commons movement and (c) the data-sharing of the Human Genome Project.
Ultimately, however, all three analogies proved to be misleading and invalid, and the extra requirements they would have entailed (including author copyright retention/renegotiation and the granting of blanket re-use and re-publication rights to all users) proved to be both unnecessary and a retardant to OA, for the simple reason that for article texts (unlike software, data, and other kinds of content), all requisite and legitimate research uses already come with the territory when the full-texts are made immediately and permanently accessible for free for all online, webwide.
(The second source of the squabbling was (ii) a green/gold dispute about whether green OA is "true" OA. This has, I think, now been settled affirmatively, and so we can forget about it.) "Free Access vs. Open Access" (2003)
"On the Deep Disanalogy Between Text and Software and Between Text and Data Insofar as Free/Open Access is Concerned"
"Apercus of WOS Meeting: Making Ends Meet in the Creative Commons" (2004)
"Open Access Does Not require Republishing and Reprinting Rights"
"Proposed update of BOAI definition of OA: Immediate and Permanent" (2005)
II. REPRINT ROYALTIES? The idea of peer-reviewed research journals offering to pay their authors "royalty" revenue from reprint sales is based on a misunderstanding of why researchers publish in peer-reviewed journals. It is in order to maximise the usage and impact of their findings, not in order to make pennies from their sales! (That is why researchers, as authors, give away their texts to their publishers as well as to all would-be users, and that is why researchers, as peer-reviewers, give away their refereeing services to publishers and authors for free.) "Authors 'Victorious' in UnCover Copyright Suit" (2000) Indeed, in the paper era, authors used to take upon themselves the time and expense of providing free reprints to all would-be users who mailed them a reprint request (based, often, on scanning ISI's weekly "Current Contents") -- so eager were authors to maximise the usage and impact of their work. Today the OA movement's main motivation is to end all access-denial to would-be users who cannot afford the access-tolls, thereby ending authors' needless impact loss. Harnad, S. (2006) Publish or Perish - Self-Archive to Flourish: The Green Route to Open Access. ERCIM News (January 2006)
Maximising the Return on UK's Public Investment in Research
Maximising the Return on Australia's Public Investment in Research
Making the case for web-based self-archiving [Canada] Indeed it was Thomas Walker's proposal that authors should pay journals for OA eprints (a precursor of OA gold) that launched the American Scientist Open Access Forum in 1998! Walker, T.J. (1998) Free Internet Access to Traditional Journals. American Scientist 86(5) I doubt, though, that reinforcing access-blocking tolls is what Dr. Raveendra had in mind, given that his is an OA (gold) journal! If I might make a suggestion, a better use of any journal reprint-sale revenue would to be to use it to cover the journal's own costs, to ensure that it remains a viable OA journal in the long term! If there is a surplus, why not use it to reduce the journal's paper subscription costs, or reprint costs themselves, thereby increasing access still more, rather than simply offering the author a share in the access-blocking tolls?
From: R. Raveendran, Chief Editor, Indian Journal of Pharmacology
To: Discussion Group for Open Access Workshop India
Sent: Thursday, January 12, 2006 1:12 PM
Subject: [oa-india] Sharing reprint revenue, OA and FA
"I am not a great enthusiast of OA mainly because of its 'copyright abolition clause'. I have already expressed my concern on this forum that copyright abolition will benefit only the commercial organisations not the researchers and academics. In my opinion, Free Access will be more beneficial to researchers if only journals are willing to change their policies. One such policy and its benefits to the researchers is evident from the announcement given below. Journals can retain the copyright and use it to make money for themselves and the researchers. At the same time journals should not restrict any legitimate, non-commercial use of its contents by academics and researchers. Can't this be achieved by Free Access? Why do we need OA which is likely to kill many journals if not all?"IJP starts sharing reprint revenue with authors
Starting 2005, IJP took a policy decision, to reward authors for their contributions which bring in reprint revenue for the journal. Sale of reprints adds to the financial stability of the journal, while propagating knowledge transmitted by its contributors. Sharing of the reprint revenue by the journal is expected to motivate authors for better quality inputs to the IJP. This practice will be more rewarding for the journal as well as the authors
In 2005, IJP sold reprints for more than one lakh rupees. A German company, bought reprint rights of the paper "Ginger as an antiemetic in nausea and vomiting induced by chemotherapy: a randomized, crossover, double blind study " which was contributed by Smita Sontakke, Vijay Thawani and Meena Naik from Government Medical College, Nagpur (IJP, Feb 2003, 35: 32-36). The chief editor gave away 10% of the reprint revenue to the authors by presenting them with a cheque for Rs 12,000 during the Annual Conference of the IPS at Chennai in December 2005.
The IJP congratulates the first recipients of the "reprint share scheme" and hopes they would utilize this amount for academic pursuit.
R.Raveendran
Chief Editor
Indian Journal of Pharmacology
JIPMER, Pondicherry - 605 006
Ph: 0413-2271969
Stevan Harnad
On Wed, 18 Jan 2006, Melanie Bates wrote in JISC-REPOSITORIES: "The Learning Technology world discovers the Digital Library world and it makes an enormous discovery. That the librarians are storing, cataloguing and managing research content in one place using FREE software. Not only is this software FREE but it is being adopted by almost simultaneously by many Institutions in the UK and around the world - hey even Google are doing it, ... it must be the next big thing! And so the 'Institutional Repository' is born." If anyone is interested in the history, provenance and motivation of all this free software, hence of the "IR" movement itself, they will find it in this October 2000 D-lib item and this August 2001 SPARC E-News item.
This is not by way of touting Southampton's causal role, but by way of suggesting that the fact that OA and OAI were the source of IRs might just have something to do with what IRs should be used for (as a matter of first and urgent priority).
It is not that storing and preserving every digitised object under the sun is not a good idea. It is just a question of priorities. For universities and research institutions, the immediate priority is this: Scholarly and scientific research usage and impact have been needlessly lost, cumulatively, since paper publication first began, because paper costs and distribution necessarily meant that many would-be users could not afford to access and use most research output. This has always meant a great loss of potential research impact and hence research progress to researchers, their institutions, and to research itself.
Ever since the creation of the Internet, however, with FTP, the Web, and now OAI-compliant OA IR software and IRs, this annual research-impact bleed can in fact be stanched. Yet the bleed is still being stanched spontaneously for only about 15% of the planet's annual research output today; 85% of it is still being lost, daily, and cumulatively. This continuing bleed is hence a needless loss to the planet's research institutions, the primary consumers of research findings, whose daily bread (pardon the messy, mixed metaphor!) is research impact and progress (and funding), as well as to the planet's teaching/learning institutions, the secondary consumers of research knowledge and progess, and of course each nation's tax-payers, the tertiary consumers of research applications and benefits, who also happen to be the funders of much of the research.
So, to repeat, whereas there is no doubt a worthy and worthwhile agenda to be pursued in ensuring the long-term storage and preservation of all institutional digital output (and input), there is still some acute and chronic bleeding to be stanched (85%) as a matter of urgent priority.
Until the digital era, the intrinsic limitations of paper itself were the cause of the unstoppable hemorrhaging of daily research usage, impact and progress. Please let us not now make diffuse digital conservationism (a worthy and worthwhile pursuit) into its digital-era cause, through neglect or distraction. Let us stanch the bleeding immediately, as a matter of priority, and then get on with the generic digital preservation agenda.
Stevan Harnad
Monday, January 2. 2006
Two model self-archiving policies for public (and private) research funders have been added as links to the sign-up page of the Institutional Self-Archiving Policy Registry:
The recommended policy model is the Stronger Version.
The Weaker Version is only intended in cases where there is delay in getting the Stronger Version adopted.
The policy models were drafted collaboratively by Alma Swan, Arthur Sale, Subbiah Arunachalam, Peter Suber and Stevan Harnad by modifying the Wellcome Trust Self-Archiving Policy to eliminate the 6-month embargo and the central archiving requirement.
I append the Stronger Version below. The two items in which the Weaker Version differs are (2) and (g). The Optimal National Open Access Policy
The following optimal wording for a National Policy on Open Access for [country-name] is recommended:
The [country-name] Government expects the authors of papers reporting publicly-funded research to maximise the accessibility, usage and applications of their findings. To this end:
As a condition for research funding, the [country-name] Government:
(1) requires electronic copies of any research papers that have been accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, and are supported in whole or in part by Government funding, to be deposited into an institutional digital repository immediately upon acceptance for publication. This requirement will apply to all grants awarded after [date-1] and, from [date-2], to all grants regardless of award date;
(2) encourages Government Grant Holders to retain ownership of the copyright of published papers where possible;
(3) encourages Government Grant Holders to publish in a suitable Open Access Journal where one exists; the Government will cover the publication costs, if any.
FAQs
(a) What are the benefits to researchers of Open Access?
As authors, researchers benefit because their research papers are given a much wider dissemination and can be read without restriction by anyone with Internet access. This increases the impact of their research. Indeed, evidence is accumulating to show that open access articles are cited 25-250% more than non-open access articles from the same journal and year [footnote 1]. As readers, researchers benefit because they will increasingly be able to access and use the full text of all the research published in their area, not just the research available to them via the subscriptions their institution can afford.
(b) What are the benefits to [country-name]?
First, [country-name's] research will be more accessible to global researchers, hence better known and more widely used and cited. The prestige of high-profile [country-name] researchers will increase; even lesser-known researchers will gain more exposure and impact. Second, all [country-name] research will be open to all [country-name] entrepreneurs and the general public with Internet access. This will be beneficial both commercially and culturally. Third, access, usage and citation data on this research will increasingly become available and analysable to help shape researchers', institutions' and nations' strategies and policies.
(c) What should be deposited when I have a paper ready for publication?
The final manuscript of the author's research paper should be deposited. This is the author's own final draft, as accepted for journal publication, including all modifications resulting from the peer-review process. (In addition, depositing pre-peer-review preprint drafts is welcome, if the author desires early priority and peer feedback, but this is of course not a requirement. In some cases publishers may permit their own published version, either in SGML/XML or PDF, to be deposited as well; this too is welcome, but not a requirement.)
(d) When should papers be deposited?
An electronic version of the author's final manuscript resulting from research supported, in whole or in part, by Government funding must be deposited immediately upon acceptance for publication.
(e) Will authors still be able to publish in a journal of their choice?
Authors will of course still decide in which journal they choose to publish their research papers. They will merely have to ensure that a copy of the final, peer-reviewed paper is deposited in their institutional repository immediately upon acceptance for publication.
(f) How can I find out whether my journal has a policy compliant with depositing my manuscript in my institutional repository?
You should consult the individual journal's policy which is given at:
http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php or at
http://romeo.eprints.org/publishers.html
(g) How do I ensure contractual compliance?
Authors' contractual obligations for receiving Government funding to conduct their research pre-date any contractual agreement with the journal in which the resulting research is published (apart from the brief transitional period when this new policy is first announced). Hence authors can ensure in advance that any later contractual agreement for publishing their research complies with the author's earlier contractual agreement for funding their research, informing the journal that they are under an existing obligation to deposit in an open access repository. The Government's Grant Conditions are mandatory and binding on institutions, grant holders, and all others supported by a grant.
(h) What is an open access journal?
An open access journal makes articles it publishes freely accessible online [footnote 2]. Some open access journals also cover their costs by charging the author's institution or funder for publication. The Government will cover such open access publication costs where needed.
(i) What kind of papers should I deposit?
The policy applies to peer-reviewed, original (primary) research publications and reviews that have been supported, in whole or in part, by Government funding. The policy does not apply to book chapters, editorials, or book reviews.
(j) Do I need to deposit my paper if the journal publishing my research
already provides immediate open access to my articles?
Deposit is not required but is still recommended even if a manuscript has been accepted by an open access journal. Your institution will still wish to have your work deposited in its repository to enable it to maintain a compete record of institutional research output.
Footnotes:
1. Ten-Year Cross-Disciplinary Comparison of the Growth of Open Access and How it Increases Research Citation Impact. IEEE Data Engineering Bulletin, Vol. 28 No. 4, December 2005
2. Directory of Open Access Journals
--------------------------
Weaker Version:
(2) encourages Government Grant Holders to set access to their deposited papers to Open Access immediately upon deposit and to retain ownership of the copyright of published papers where possible;
(g) (omitted from weak version)
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