Open Access Archivangelism

The Open Access (OA) guidelines of Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) are very, very welcome, but I hope that a few seemingly minor details (see below) can be revised to make them an effective model for others worldwide:

DFG Passes Open Access Guidelines

Information for Researchers No. 04 30 January 2006

In 2003 the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities. The DFG supports the culture of open access. Unhindered access to publications increases the distribution of scientific knowledge, thereby enhancing the authors' visibility and contributing to their reputations.

The DFG has now tied open access into its funding policy. During their meetings in January 2006, the DFG's Senate and Joint Committee recommended encouraging funded scientists to also digitally publish their results and make them available via open access.

The first problem concerns this clause:

"recommended encouraging funded scientists to also digitally publish their results and make them available via open access"

On the one hand, this clause is too weak: It is specifically because the NIH only "recommended/encouraged" that its public access policy has failed and now needs to be strengthened to "required/mandated."

On the other hand, the present clause is far too vague and ambiguous:

(1) Virtually all journals today are hybrid paper/digital already, so recommending/encouraging that the publication should have a "digital version" is breaking down open doors.

(2) What needs to be brought out clearly is that what is actually being required is that a digital version of the publication should be made open access (OA) -- by self-archiving it (depositing it in an OA repository).

(3) What can also be recommended/encouraged (but not required) is to publish in an OA journal where possible.

(4) All ambiguity about "publishing" and "publication" should be eliminated, by saying (and meaning) that "publishing" means publishing in a peer-reviewed journal, whereas depositing a published article in an OA repository is not publishing but access-provision. A published article is already published! Self-archiving increases the access to that publication by making it available to those would-be users who cannot afford subscription access to the publisher's proprietary version.

Recommended re-wording:

"require funded scientists to also self-archive their published results in an online repository to make them available via open access"

(5) No rights renegotiation is necessary at all for the 93% of journals that already endorse immediate self-archiving

(6) For the 7% of journals that do not yet endorse self-archiving, no rights renegotiation is needed for immediate depositing, but rights can be negotiated for setting Open Access.

NB: "OA Self-Archiving" means (i) depositing the full text and metadata in a web repository and (ii) setting access to the full-text as Open Access. The depositing itself (i) (where no one can see the full-text but the author) requires no permission from anyone! The only conceivable rights issue concerns access-setting.

"In order to put secondary publications (i.e. self-archived publications by which the authors provide their scientific work on the internet for free following conventional publication) on the proper legal footing, scientists involved in DFG-funded projects are also requested to reserve the exploitation rights."

(7) Please don't call providing OA to an already-published article "secondary publication"! In a formal sense self-archiving can indeed be construed that way, but that is not a construal that clarifies, it merely confuses. Leave publication to publishers. Authors don't publish their own articles, let alone publish their own already-published articles! They provide access to them, just as they did in paper days when they provided reprints or photocopies, none of which were called "secondary publication." Secondary publishers are publishers, 3rd parties (not the author, and not the primary publisher), that republish an entire published work; or they are indexers/abstracters, that republish parts of it. Self-archivng authors are not secondary publishers of their own published work.

(8) Whereas it is certainly useful and desirable to "reserve the exploitation rights" for authors' published articles, this is not a prerequisite for self-archiving their own drafts (rather than the publisher's PDF), and certainly not for the 68% of journals that are already "green," having given their official blessing to author self-archiving of postprints -- nor for the 25% more that have endorsed preprint self-archiving. Rights renegotiation is hence moot for all but 7% of the c. 8800 journals indexed in Romeo (and that includes virtually all the principal international journals).

(9) Most important: The rights negotiation is not about the depositing (which should be mandatory, and immediate upon acceptance for publication) but only about the access-setting -- i.e., whether access to the deposited full-text is set to "Open Access" or only "Restricted Access" (and if the latter, then for how long).

Recommended re-wording:

"For publications that they self-archive on the internet for free following publication, scientists involved in DFG-funded projects are also encouraged -- if the publisher has not already endorsed immediate author self-archiving -- to retain the immediate right to set access as 'Open Access'."

The guidelines continue:

Recommendations are currently being integrated into the usage guidelines, which form an integral part of every approval. They are worded as follows:

The DFG expects the research results funded by it to be published and to be made available, where possible, digitally and on the internet via open access.

"To achieve this, the contributions involved should either be published in discipline-specific or institutional electronic archives (repositories), or directly in referenced or recognised open access journals, in addition to conventional publishing."

The last sentence is awkward and ambiguous, mixing up publishing and self-archiving, but it is easily clarified:

"To achieve this, all work should be published either in conventional journals or in recognised peer-reviewed open access journals; and in addition (the author's draft of) all publications should be self-archived in discipline-specific or institutional electronic archives (repositories)."

The guidelines continue:

"When entering into publishing contracts scientists participating in DFG-funded projects should, as far as possible, permanently reserve a non-exclusive right of exploitation for electronic publication of their research results for the purpose of open access. Here, discipline-specific delay periods of generally 6-12 months can be agreed upon, before which publication of previously published research results in discipline-specific or institutional electronic archives may be prohibited."

Recommended revision:

"When entering into publishing contracts with journals that do not already explicitly endorse immediate author self-archiving, scientists participating in DFG-funded projects should, as far as possible, permanently reserve a non-exclusive right to set access to their deposited draft as Open Access immediately upon deposit. An access-delay interval of 6-12 months is discouraged, but allowable under current DGF policy; during this interval the publication, always deposited immediately upon acceptance, may be placed under Restricted Access rather than Open Access."

(During the Restricted Access period, the metadata will still be visible webwide, and individual users can email the author to request an eprint of the full text.)

Allowing any Restricted Access interval at all is the weaker form of OA mandate, but it is still sufficient. It is critically important, however, that:

(a) Depositing the full text is required, not just requested

(b) The depositing itself must always be done immediately upon acceptance for publication, not after the access-delay interval agreed with the publisher

(c) During any agreed access-delay interval (one year maximum) access to the full-text can be set as Restricted Access rather than Open Access

I would also recommend against permitting a delay as long as one year: NIH is now moving from a year to 4 months; Wellcome allows 6 months but is planning to reduce that. There is no need for DFG to be more permissive of access restriction.

The guidelines finish thus:

Please ensure that a note indicating support of the project by the DFG is included in the publication.

The revised usage guidelines are expected to be available in April 2006.

Further information on open access is available at
http://www.dfg.de/lis/openaccess

For further information contact Dr. Johannes Fournier, Tel.: +49 (0)228/885-2418, e-mail: johannes.fournier@dfg.de.

Stevan Harnad