Wednesday, November 28. 2007
Administrative Keystroke Mandates To Record Research Output Can Serve As Open Access Mandates Too
There is no need to keep waiting for governmental OA mandates.Harnad, Stevan (2005) The OA Policy of Southampton University (ECS), UK: the "Keystroke" Strategy [Putting the Berlin Principle into Practice: the Southampton Keystroke Policy] . Delivered at Berlin 3 Open Access: Progress in Implementing the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, University of Southampton (UK).University OA mandates are natural extensions of universities' existing record-keeping, asset management, and performance-assessment policies. They complement research-funder OA mandates, and are the most efficient and productive way to monitor and credit compliance and fulfillment for both. Australia's Arthur Sale has done the most work on this. Please read what he has to say:
Arthur Sale The evidence is quite clear that advocacy does not work by itself, and never has worked anywhere. To repeat the bleeding obvious once again: depositing in repositories is avoidable work under a voluntary regime, and like all avoidable work it will be avoided by most academics, even if perceived to be in their best interests, and even if the work is minor. The work needs to be (a) required and (b) integrated into the work pattern of researchers, so it becomes the norm. This is the purpose of mandates - to make it clear to researchers that they are expected to do this work.
My research and published papers show that mandates do work, and they take a couple of years for the message to sink in. Enforcement need only be a light touch - reporting to heads of departments for example. [See references below.]
At the risk of boring some, may I point to a similar case in Australia. All universities are required to produce an annual return to the Australian Government of publications in the previous year in the categories of refereed journal articles, refereed conference papers, books, and book chapters. The universities make this known to their staff (a mandate), and they all fill out forms and provide photocopies of the works. The workload is considerably more than depositing a paper in a repository. The scheme has been going for many years and is regarded as part of the academic routine. The data is used by Government to determine part of the university block grant. The result is near 100% compliance.
What I am doing in Australia is pressing for this already existing mandate to be extended to the repositories. If the researcher deposits in the repository, and the annual return is automatically derived from the repository, then (a) the researcher wins because it takes him/her less time, (b) it takes the administrators less time as the process is automated and only needs to be audited, and (c) the repository delivers its usual benefits for those with eyes to see. All we need is for the research office to promulgate such a policy in each university. It is in their own interests as well as the university's.
Arthur Sale
University of Tasmania
Swan, A. and Brown, S. (2005) Open access self-archiving: An author study. JISC Technical Report, Key Perspectives Inc. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10999/
Sale, Arthur (2006) Researchers and institutional repositories, in Jacobs, Neil, Eds. Open Access: Key Strategic, Technical and Economic Aspects, chapter 9, pages 87-100. Chandos Publishing (Oxford) Limited. http://eprints.utas.edu.au/257/
Sale, A. The Impact of Mandatory Policies on ETD Acquisition. D-Lib Magazine April 2006, 12(4). http://dx.doi.org/10.1045/april2006-sale
Sale, A. Comparison of content policies for institutional repositories in Australia. First Monday, 11(4), April 2006. http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_4/sale/index.html
Sale, A. The acquisition of open access research articles. First Monday, 11(9), October 2006. http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_10/sale/index.html
Sale, A. (2007) The Patchwork Mandate D-Lib Magazine 13 1/2 January/February http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january07/sale/01sale.html
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