Self-Archiving Mandates

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SUMMARY: The SPARC / SCIENCE COMMONS WHITE PAPER on "what faculty authors can do to ensure open access to their work through their institution" proposes the key modification that will upgrade the Harvard self-archiving mandate to the optimal alternative -- a universal, no-opt-out, Deposit Mandate, plus a licensing clause with an opt-out option -- making the mandate suitable for adoption by all universities and funders worldwide. The crucial difference is that the deposit clause must be no-opt-out -- a true mandate. (I hope Harvard too will consider making the tiny change that would upgrade its mandate to this optimal alternative.) This upgraded mandate, more powerful even than what the White Paper notes, should now also make it more evident why it is so important to integrate university and funder mandates, both converging deposit on (and then harvesting from) the repositories of the institutions that are the providers of all the research (attention NIH!).

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OPEN DOORS AND OPEN MINDS:
What faculty authors can do to ensure
open access to their work through their institution
A SPARC / SCIENCE COMMONS WHITE PAPER

Bravo to the drafters of this SPARC/SCIENCE-COMMONS White Paper!

It is such a pleasure (and relief!) to be able to endorse this paper unreservedly.

There are distinct signs in the text that the drafters have been attentive, and paying close heed to what has proved empirically to work and not work elsewhere, and why.

Here are the three crucial paragraphs: The first two, I and II (numbering and emphasis added), give the basic context for the landmark Harvard Mandate. But the third (III) gives the key modification that upgrades the Harvard model to the optimal alternative -- a universal no-opt-out Deposit Mandate, plus a licensing clause with an opt-out option -- now suitable for adoption by all universities and funders worldwide:

[I] Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted to adopt a policy under which (1) faculty are required to deposit a copy of their scholarly journal articles in an institutional repository and (2) automatically to grant to the University a University License... to make those articles openly accessible on the Internet.
Each of these two components is independently important.

[II] The deposit requirement by itself is valuable because it ensures that the University's collection of Harvard-authored scholarship will grow significantly. Institutions (primarily in Europe) that have adopted similar deposit requirements have experienced high rates of deposit, while those with voluntary policies have had low participation. The deposit requirement is also effective even in the absence of a University License, since a large percentage of journal publishers' copyright agreements already permit authors to post their final manuscript in online institutional archives...

**[III] The Harvard policy allows faculty to waive both the deposit requirement and the University License for a given article upon request.
An alternative approach is to allow faculty to waive the University License only, but not the deposit requirement.
Such a policy would ensure that all faculty articles are digitally archived, but those that are deposited by faculty who waive the University License would not be made openly accessible, unless the faculty member allowed it at a later date. Such a policy maximizes archiving while also maintaining faculty flexibility in negotiating with publishers who do not accept open archiving or accept it only after a lengthy embargo period.

The difference between the above alternative (III) and the current Harvard policy, though a tiny one, is the difference between night and day for the success and power of the mandate, and hence its suitability to serve as a model for other universities (and research funders) worldwide: The difference is that the deposit clause must be no-opt-out -- a true mandate. (It is no-opt-out deposit mandates that have generated the high levels of deposit elsewhere; it is hence crucial to restrict the opt-out option only to the license clause.)

"Upgrade Harvard's Opt-Out Copyright Retention Mandate:
Add a No-Opt-Out Deposit Mandate"

I (and many others) will now strongly support and promote this alternative mandate model, for universal adoption. (I hope Harvard too will consider the tiny change that would be required in order to upgrade its mandate to this optimal alternative.)

The strength and scope of this alternative mandate is, if anything, understated by the White Paper. The no-opt-out Deposit Mandate plus the License Clause is far more powerful even than what the White Paper states, but never mind! What the White Paper states (and its excellent practical suggestions) should be more than enough to encourage the universities of the world to adopt this model mandate.

(One ever so tiny quibble that I feel churlish even to mention, concerns the timing of the deposit, and which draft to deposit: The optimal timing for deposit is immediately upon acceptance of the refereed draft for publication. (There is no earthly reason for science and scholarship to wait till the time of publication.) And the draft to deposit is the author's final, refereed, accepted draft ["postprint"]. Of course that draft is citable [as author/title/journal -- in press]; and the citation can be updated as soon as the full year/volume/issue/page-span information is available. And of course quoted passages can be specified by section-heading plus paragraph number: no overwhelming need for the pagination of the publisher's final PDF.)

"Optimizing OA Self-Archiving Mandates: What? Where? When? Why? How?"

I hope that this optimal university mandate will now also make it more evident why it is so important to integrate university and funder mandates (attention NIH!), so that the university IR is the convergent locus of direct deposit for both:

"How To Integrate University and Funder Open Access Mandates"

"One Small Step for NIH, One Giant Leap for Mankind"

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum

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SUMMARY: The European Commission (EC) Grant Agreement mandates that "an electronic copy of the published version or the final manuscript accepted for publication shall also be provided to the Commission" but does not specify how to provide it.
   This is an implementational detail. The only thing the Commission needs to do is to specify that the electronic copy should be provided by providing the Commission with the URL of the deposit in the grant-recipient's Institutional Repository (IR).
   That will create a synergy with the European University Association's recommendation that its 791 universities in 46 countries mandate that their research output (in all disciplines, whether or not EC-funded) be self-archived in each university's IR.
   The US National Institutes of Health (NIH), which likewise needlessly requests direct central deposit, should adopt exactly the same implementational detail. Institutional IR deposit and central harvesting would extend the power and reach of the NIH mandate far beyond just the research NIH funds, and would help to universalize OA and OA mandates.

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N. Miradon wrote on the American Scientist Open Access Forum:

NM: Professor Harnad advises that "...It should be a part of the fulfillment condition on the recipients of all EC research funding -- both the funded researchers and their institutions -- that all refereed research publications resulting from the funding must be self-archived in the fundee's institutional repository. They (or their metadata) can then be harvested/collected/ imported/exported to the EC from the IRs..."[1]
      Diffidently, I would suggest that the advised "self-archiving in the fundees' institutional repositories" should be implemented in the Commission's next Framework Programme of Research and Development (FP8).
      This, because in the current Framework Programme (FP7) there is a general requirement that "...an electronic copy of the published version or the final manuscript accepted for publication shall also be provided to the Commission..." (para II.30.4 of Annex II - General Conditions, FP7 Grant Agreement)[2].
      So the Commission already has its own institutional repository, containing every single publication produced under FP7.
      Tweaking that repository to make it harvestable is likely to be easier than making even a minor rewrite of the Grant Agreement.

Not even a minor rewrite of the Grant Agreement is needed (and a great deal is at stake):

The EC Grant Agreement does not specify how "...an electronic copy of the published version or the final manuscript accepted for publication shall also be provided to the Commission..."

This is an implementational detail. The only thing the Commission needs to do is to specify (in form-letters or instructions to the FP7 grant recipients) that the electronic copy should be provided by providing the Commission with the URL of the deposit in the grant-recipient's Institutional Repository (IR).

That will create a synergy with the European University Association's recommendation that its 791 universities in 46 countries mandate that their research output (in all disciplines, whether or not EC-funded) be self-archived in each university's IR.

It is infinitely more useful, sensible, and conducive to the growth of OA IRs, OA self-archiving mandates and OA itself for the Commission's collection to harvest from the recipients' IRs -- rather than just for EC-funded research to be back-harvestable by authors and institutions from the EC's central collection:

Authors and their institutions already have copies of their own research output. The objective is to get all that research output deposited, whether EC-funded or not. The power of the EC mandate can easily be extended far beyond merely the research that the EC funds, by simply specifying the recipient's own IR as the preferred locus of the direct deposit, with the EC simply harvesting the deposits for its central collection therefrom.

Exactly the same recommendation -- on how this minor detail in the implementation of its OA mandate would make a vast difference for the growth to OA -- has been made to the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), which likewise needlessly requested direct central deposit instead of the institutional IR deposit and central harvesting that would extend the power and reach of the NIH mandate far beyond just the research NIH funds, and would help to universalize OA and OA mandates.

The OA mandates of:

European Research Council,
Australian Research Council
Austria's Foerderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung
Belgium's Research Foundation Flanders
India's National Knowledge Commission
Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering & Technology,
Russian Academy of Science's Central Economics and Mathematics Institute
Swiss National Science Foundation
most of the Research Councils UK

have already specified institutional deposit either as the sole mode of direct deposit, or as one of the options.

How To Integrate University and Funder Open Access Mandates

Optimizing OA Self-Archiving Mandates: What? Where? When? Why? How?

NIH Invites Recommendations on How to Implement and Monitor Compliance with Its OA Self-Archiving Mandate

A Simple Way to Optimize the NIH Public Access Policy

NM: The proposal that the European Commission should "set up a web-based repository for published project results" was suggested by EURAB and subsequently supported by the Cour des Comptes [footnote 1 of page 17 of [0]).
      But Professor Harnad rejects this idea. He says that instead of running its own repository, the European Commission should harvest from the recipients' Institutional Repositories [1].

I did not say the EC should not run its own repository. I said they should not mandate direct deposit therein. They should mandate direct deposit in the author's IR and then harvest to the EC repository from there.

And EURAB did not insist on direct central deposit: "The repository may be a local institutional and/or a subject repository".

NM: This would be fine, if all 100% of those institutional repositories were up and running. But are they?

Each of the universities and research institutions of Europe is only a free piece of software and a couple of days of sysad time away from having its own IR. If the Commission specified the recipient's IR as the preferred locus of deposit, most of the institutions that don't yet have an IR would set one up.

(And for those institutions that don't yet have an IR, there are always interim IRs like DEPOT (and, I hope, soon, through Prof. Bernard Rentier's EurOpenScholar and U. Southampton, "EurOpenDepot") as well as consortial IRs, to tide them over.)

The problem is not and never has been getting an IR, but getting the IR filled with its intended OA content. That's why funder mandates need to complement institutional mandates, with both systematically converging on the IR as the locus of deposit.

NM: I just looked for ["Seventh Framework Programme" projects] in Google. The first hit was the "WELTEMP" project (Water Electrolysis at Elevated Temperatures) [2].
      I could not find any of the WELTEMP partners [3] listed in the Registry of Open Access Repositories [4].
      The coordinator's university (DTU) is listed on Den Danske Forskningsdatabase // Danish Research Database [5]; but today (2008-04-28) this says "NB! The Danish Research Database is currently not being updated, we are working on a new solution planned to release in the 1st quarter of 2008". As regards Technical University of Denmark (DTU), it says "literature and projects available for 1996 - 1999 (2000 onwards will follow)".

The reason IRs are running fallow today is because neither their institutions nor their funders are mandating deposit in them. That is my point!

All research originates from institutions. If the Commission mandates deposit of its EC-funded research institution-externally, it is needlessly doing far less than it easily can, in order to generate 100% OA for all European research, from all disciplines and all institutions, whether EC-funded or not.

NM: I have nothing against WELTREMP or any of its partners. On the contrary, I suspect that they are representative of quite a lot of grant recipients, i.e. that somewhat less than 100% of Framework Programme 7 grantees have got a fully functional Institutional Repository. This may have changed by the time we get to the next Framework Programme - lets hope that it has. But for the moment, since the Commission already has a repository with 100% coverage, I cannot think that EURAB and the Cour des Comptes are wrong to suggest that this repository simply be put on the web.

The objective is not to get EC-funded research into a central EC repository (though that is welcome too). The objective is to get all EC-funded research OA (along with all EC-unfunded research). An extremely minor detail in the implementation of the EC's deposit mandate -- namely, depositing institutionally and then harvesting centrally -- would make a very major difference for OA growth in Europe.

The concern about institutions that do not yet have IRs can be accommodated by stipulating that direct deposit in the grant recipient's own IR (and sending the URL to the EC) is the EC's preferred means of submission, but direct submission is permissible too.

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum

Below is Peter Suber's excellent summary table (excerpted from his original article in Open Medicine), listing (and correcting) the most common misconceptions about the NIH Green Open Access Self-Archiving Mandate.

Note especially the update addendum at the end: NIH's is indeed an Immediate Deposit (IDOA) Mandate (what Peter calls a Dual Deposit-Release Mandate). (I.e., it is not a delayed-deposit mandate.)

Peter also corrects the common error about locus of deposit: the NIH deposit needs to be made in PubMed Central, not in PubMed.

[I would add, however, that it would be infinitely better for worldwide OA if NIH's stipulated locus for the direct deposit were the fundee's own Institutional Repository (from which it could simply be harvested/imported/exported to PubMed Central). That would help enormously to integrate and universalize all Green OA Self-Archiving Mandates, from universities as well as funders, systematically scaling them up to all universities and research institutions worldwide, covering all research output, funded and unfunded, across all disciplines, in a convergent, mutually reinforcing synergy.]

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More on the OA mandate at the NIH

Peter Suber, An open access mandate for the National Institutes of Health, Open Medicine, April 16, 2008.  Also PDF. 

Table 1: Common misconceptions about the new NIH open access policy
Fiction	Fact
The mandate is to publish in open access journals.	The mandate is to deposit in an open access repository (PubMed Central).
The mandate is to bypass journals and peer review.	The mandate is to provide open access to articles already published in peer-reviewed journals.
The mandate applies to the published version of articles.	The mandate applies to the final versions of the authors’ peer-reviewed manuscripts.
The mandate directs deposits to PubMed.	The mandate directs deposits to PubMed Central.
The mandate requires a 12-month embargo on the copy in PubMed Central.	The mandate permits an embargo of up to 12 months on the copy in PubMed Central.
The new NIH budget is US$29 million.	The new NIH budget is US$29 billion.
The new mandate will last for only 1 year.	The new mandate will last indefinitely.
The mandate requires violation of copyright law.	The mandate requires compliance with copyright law.

Peter Suber:  This table is based on the most common misconceptions I'd heard in the first month after the policy's adoption.  Now I'd add at least one more. 

Fiction:  The policy requires deposit at the end of the embargo period. 

Fact:  The policy requires deposit immediately upon acceptance for publication.

First, let me heartily congratulate University College of Boras (UCB) on having adopted an Open Access policy, and for registering it in ROARMAP! This is Sweden's fourth open access policy. (The other three are Lund's, Stockholm's and KB's).

But UCB's policy is so excruciatingly close to being a picture-perfect Green OA mandate -- and could so easily be transformed into one (which would make it the planet's 42nd OA mandate, and Sweden's 1st) -- that I can't resist again playing the preacher. All the essential elements are in place. It's just that the current wording needlessly loses the opportunity to make full use of the components of the policy, and of what is legally open to UCB.

The pertinent current passages are these:

3. All employees at the University College of Boras must register their publications in BADA.

5. Scientific journals often have a policy stating that manuscripts of articles (with certain restrictions) also can be published in an open digital archive. All employees at the University College of Boras are recommended to deposit manuscripts to BADA according to the rules and regulations of the journal, and if such rules and regulations are lacking the author should request permission to publish the article in BADA.

The all-important distinction UCB has failed to make is the one between (a) depositing a document and (b) making it Open Access.

The full text of a document can always be deposited in an Institutional Repository and made Closed Access, which means that no one can access it except the author and the webmaster. No legal restrictions can be placed on such internal institutional record-keeping for an institution's own research output. The metadata are accessible and visible webwide, but the full text is not.

Then there is the option to make the deposit Open Access. This can be done in accordance with the journal's copyright policy. 62% of journals already endorse immediately making the deposit Open Access. (See Romeo [n.b, it is momentarily malfunctioning!])

For the remaining 38%, I strongly recommend that UCB implement the "email eprint request" Button, which makes it possible for authors of Closed Access Deposits to provide, semi-automatically, individual copies to individual eprint requesters, for research purposes, during any embargo period.

All that needs to be done is to change the word "register" in clause 3 above to "deposit", and in clause 5, in the first sentence, the phase should not be "published in an open digital archive" but "made Open Access"; and then replace "deposit manuscripts to BADA" with: "make the deposited manuscript Open Access" according to... etc., as follows:

3. All employees at the University College of Boras must deposit their publications in BADA -- [the final refereed draft ("postprint") immediately upon acceptance for publication].

5. Scientific journals often have a policy stating that manuscripts of articles (with certain restrictions) also can be made Open Access. All employees at the University College of Boras are recommended to make the deposited manuscript Open Access according to the rules and regulations of the journal, and if such rules and regulations are lacking the author should request permission to publish the article in BADA.

With the above changes the UCB policy not only becomes a mandate (which has been demonstrated by Professor Arthur Sale in Australia to work successfully to generate 100% OA within about 2 years) rather than just a request or invitation, which has repeatedly been demonstrated to fail. But such a policy would be in conformity with the unanimous recommendation of the Council of the European University Association, representing 791 universities in 46 countries. It would also be in line with the policy of the European Research Council and the flagship of the European universities' Open Access mandate: University of Liege, of which the Rector, Professor Bernard Rentier, is also founder and director of EurOpenScholar, which is dedicated to promoting OA mandates all over Europe.

I urge UCB to make the few small changes required to make UCB's current policy into the model Immediate-Deposit/Optional-Access ((DOA) mandate, the optimal OA policy for UCB, a model for the rest of Scandinavia, and the 42nd Green OA mandate worldwide.

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum

Scotland's first University-Wide Green OA self-archiving mandate has been adopted by University of Stirling:

      [A]ll journal articles, published from January 2007, are to be self-archived in the University’s Digital Research Repository, Stirling Online Research Repository (STORRE).
     Articles are to be submitted immediately upon acceptance for publication.
     The author's final accepted draft should be submitted.

This is actually Scotland's second Green OA self-archiving mandate: The first was a funder mandate: Scottish Executive Health Department.

This is also the 17th UK Green OA mandate (13 funder mandates, 2 institutional mandates, 2 departmental mandates: Southampton ECS (2 Jan 2003), Brunel ICSM (6 Dec 2006), U Southampton (squeeking in 4 Apr 2008), and now U Stirling) (9 April 2008).

There are now 41 mandates in all, worldwide.

(The UK continues to lead the world in both funder and institutional mandates, but watch out for the waking giant! The 791 universities in 46 countries in the European University Association (EUA), whose Council has unanimously recommended that its individual universities mandate Green OA self-archiving.)

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SUMMARY: Harold Varmus thinks the NIH Green OA self-archiving mandate isn't enough because (1) it doesn't provide enough usage rights, (2) it is subject to embargoes, (3) it only covers research from mandating funders, and (4) it doesn't reform copyright transfer. This is a miscalculation of practical priorities and an underestimation of the technical power of Green OA, which resides in self-mandates by institutions (such as Harvard's), rather than just funder mandates like NIH's. Institutions are the producers of all research output, and their Green OA self-mandates ensure the self-archiving of all their own published article output, in all disciplines, funded or unfunded, in their own Institutional Repositories (IRs). Self-archiving provides for all the immediate access and usage needs of all individual researchers, webwide. Access to most deposited articles can already be set as Open Access immediately. For the rest, IRs' semi-automatic "email eprint request" Button provides almost-immediate access. Access embargoes will die under the growing pressure of universal Green OA's power and benefits. Institutions' own IRs are also the natural locus for mandating direct deposit by both institutional and funder mandates. Copyright retention is not necessary as a precondition for mandating Green OA and puts the adoption of Green OA mandates at risk by demanding too much. Once Green OA mandates generate universal Green OA, copyright retention will follow naturally of its own accord.

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Varmus, Harold (2008) Progress toward Public Access to Science. PLoS Biol 6(4): e101 doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060101

Harold Varmus welcomes the NIH Green OA self-archiving mandate and the increased access it brings, but says it isn't enough because (1) it doesn't provide enough usage rights, (2) it is subject to embargoes, (3) it only covers research from mandating funders, (4) it doesn't reform copyright transfer. He instead stresses his preference for publishing in Gold OA journals, which provide (1) - (4). (He has said elsewhere that he does not consider Green OA to be OA.)

I believe Professor Varmus is mistaken on all four counts because of a miscalculation of practical priorities and an underestimation of the technical power of Green OA. Green OA can be mandated, whereas Gold OA cannot (and need not be). What is urgently needed by research and researchers today is OA, and that is provided immediately by Green OA. (Green OA is also likely to lead eventually to a transition to Gold OA.)

Professor Varmus also speaks of Green OA self-archiving as if it were a matter of central "public libraries" (like PubMed Central, which he co-founded, along with co-founding PLoS) that are "inherently archival" and provide only embargoed access rather than immediate access.

In reality the greatest power of Green OA self-archiving mandates resides mostly in self-mandates by institutions (such as Harvard's), rather than just funder mandates like NIH's. Institutions are the producers of all research output, and their Green OA self-mandates ensure the self-archiving of all their own published article output, in all disciplines, funded or unfunded, in their own Institutional Repositories (IRs). Those IRs are neither libraries nor archives. They are providers of immediate research access for would-be users worldwide, and they also provide an interim solution for usage needs during embargoes:

(1) USAGE RIGHTS. Self-archiving the author's final refereed draft (the "postprint") makes it possible for any user, webwide, to access, link, read, download, store, print-off, and data-mine the full text, as well as for search engines like google to harvest and invert it, for Google Scholar and OAIster to make it jointly searchable, for Citebase and Citeseer to provide download, citation and other ranking metrics, and for "public libraries" like PubMed Central to harvest them into archival central collections.

This provides for all the immediate access and usage needs of all individual researchers. Certain 3rd-party database, data-mining, and republication rights are still uncertain, but once Green OA mandates generate universal Green OA, these enhanced uses will follow naturally under the growing pressure generated by OA's demonstrated power and benefits to the worldwide research community. Over-reaching for Gold now risks losing the Green that is within our immediate grasp.

(2) ACCESS EMBARGOES. Access to 62% of deposited articles can already be set as Open Access immediately. For the remaining 38% of articles, they can be deposited immediately with access set as Closed Access during the embargo. IRs can all implement the semi-automatic "email eprint request" Button, which provides almost-immediate access even to these embargoed deposits. When individual users reach a Closed Access item, they paste their email addresses in a box provided by the IR, click, and the author receives an instant email request for the eprint. With one click, the author authorizes fulfilling the eprint request, and the IR automatically emails the eprint to the requester.

This provides for all the immediate access and usage needs of all individual researchers during any access embargo. Once Green OA mandates generate universal Green OA, access embargoes will die their well-deserved natural deaths of their own accord under the growing pressure generated by OA's demonstrated power and benefits to the worldwide research community. Again, grasp what is within reach first.

(3) UNFUNDED RESEARCH. Funder mandates only cover funded research, but they also encourage, complement and reinforce institutional mandates, which cover all research output, in all disciplines. Institutions' own IRs are also the natural, convergent locus for mandating direct deposit by both institutional and funder mandates. All IRs are OAI-compliant and interoperable, so their contents can be exported to funder repositories such as PubMed Central, and institutions can help monitor and ensure compliance with funder mandates as well as with their own institutional mandates -- but only if direct deposit itself is systematically convergent rather than diverging to multiple, arbitrary, institution-external deposit sites.

(4) COPYRIGHT RETENTION. Copyright retention is always welcome, but it is not only not necessary for providing Green OA, but, in asking for more than necessary, it risks making authors feel that it may put acceptance by their journal of choice at risk. Consequently, Harvard, for example, has found it necessary to add an opt-out clause to its copyright-retention mandate, which not only means that it is not really a mandate, but that it is not ensured of providing OA for all of its research output.

An immediate deposit IR mandate without opt-out (and with the Button) provides for all the immediate access and usage needs of all individual researchers, and once Green OA mandates generate universal Green OA, copyright retention will follow naturally of its own accord. First things first.

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum

Recommendations from the EUA Working Group on Open Access adopted by the EUA Council on 26th of March 2008 (University of Barcelona, Spain) [highlighting and links added]

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I. Working Group: Aims and Scope

In January 2007 EUA established a ‘Working Group on Open Access’ � for a one year period as a platform of expert opinion to provide both a voice for, and visibility to European universities as stakeholders in the policy debate. Its mission was twofold: to raise awareness of the importance of ‘open access’ � issues to the wider university community, both in terms of its impact upon the research process and its financial implications for university libraries, and to develop recommendations for a common strategy for the university sector as key stakeholders in policy development in the field. The decision to set up the Working Group had reflected the general view that the interests of universities were not being heard in the growing policy debate on the issue of the wide implications of rapid development of digital ICT for publishing which tended to be dominated by the commercial interests of the major scientific publishing companies.

The Working Group membership drew upon the range of different university perspectives on the concept of ‘Open Access’ � from those of academic researchers, librarians and university management. In the course of its three meetings in 2007 the Working Group gathered expert opinion on open access publishing business models, legal and copyright issues, technical development of national digital repositories and their European networking, and the policies being developed towards open access publishing by funding agencies at the national level and the European Commission.

Professor Sijbolt Noorda (Chair of the Working Group) and members contributed also to several European Conferences held in 2007 including the major conference on ‘Scientific Publishing in the Digital Age’ � held jointly by the European Commission DG Research and DG Information and Media in Brussels in February 2007 in which the university sector were recognised formally as a major ‘stakeholder’ � in the open access policy debate.

In reaching its recommendations that are addressed to three audiences -- university leaders at the institutional level, National Rectors Conferences and the EUA -- the Working Group has borne in mind the full spectrum of issues involved; these range from the clear opportunity offered to widen access to the results of research, to the implications of open access publishing for peer review and quality assurance in academic research and the rapidly rising costs of scientific publications for university libraries (through high subscription prices for both electronic and printed journals, including ‘bundling’ � marketing strategies by publishers).

II. European and Global Context of the Recommendations

The Working Group recommendations seek to build upon the findings of the ‘Study on the Economic and Technical Evolution of Scientific Publications Markets in Europe’ � (European Commission, DG Research, project report, January 2006), and public statements issued by the European Research Council (ERC) and the European Research Advisory Board (EURAB) on Open Access as well as the current practices of some funding agencies such as UK Research Councils and the newly adopted policy of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States concerning open access mandates for peer-reviewed publications arising from grants.

In the European context the most recent significant development has been the ERC announcement on 17th December 2007 of its position on open access, as follows: The ERC requires that all peer reviewed publications from ERC funded research projects be deposited on publication into an appropriate research repository where available, such as PubMedCentral, ArXiv or an institutional repository, and subsequently made Open Access within 6 months of publication.

The Working Group recommendations seek also to provide support to European level initiatives promoting institutional repositories, their networking and wider accessibility through the future Confederation of European Repositories being developed by the DRIVER project consortium (funded under the European Commission 7th Research Framework Programme) and other university led initiatives such as EurOpenScholar and the UNICA network.

III. Recommendations

The Working Group recommendations (below) are based upon the following core premises: the university’s role and responsibility as guardian of research knowledge as a ‘public good’ �; the results of publicly funded research should be publicly available as soon as possible; and quality assurance peer review processes are preconditions for scholarly publishing and therefore are essential to be maintained in the digital publishing mode.

It is important to emphasise that the scope of the Working Group recommendations cover as a priority the need for the enhancement of open access to peer-reviewed published research literature only, and not scientific research data, teaching materials etc. Issues of access to research data, its archiving and preservation need further attention from universities, funding agencies and scientific professional bodies, and are subject to several initiatives at the national and European level which are not addressed here (e.g. the Alliance for Permanent Access and European Digital Information Infrastructure).

A. Recommendations for University Leadership

1. Universities should develop institutional policies and strategies that foster the availability of their quality-controlled research results (in the form of research papers and other outputs) for the broadest possible range of users, maximising their visibility, accessibility and scientific impact.

2. The basic approach for achieving this should be the creation of an institutional repository or participation in a shared repository. These repositories should be established and managed according to current best practices (following recommendations and guidelines from DRIVER and similar projects) complying with the OAI-PMH protocol and allowing interoperability and future networking for wider usage.

3. University institutional policies should require that their researchers deposit (self-archive) their scientific publications in their institutional repository upon acceptance for publication. Permissible embargoes should apply only to the date of open access provision and not the date of deposit. Such policies would be in compliance with evolving policies of research funding agencies at the national and European level such as the ERC.

4. University policies should include copyright in the institutional intellectual property rights (IPR) management. It should be the responsibility of the university to inform their faculty researchers about IPR and copyright management in order to ensure the wider sharing and reuse of the digital research content they have produced. This should include a clear policy on ownership and management of copyright covering scholarly publications and define procedures for ensuring that the institution has the right to use the material produced by its staff for further research, educational and instructional purposes.

5. University institutional policies should explore also how resources could be found and made available to researchers for author fees to support the emerging ‘author pays model’ � of open access.

B. Recommendations for National Rectors’ Conferences

1. All National Rectors’ Conferences should work with national research funding agencies and governments in their countries to implement the requirement for self-archiving of research publications in institutional repositories and other appropriate open access repositories according to best practice models of the ERC and existing national research funding agencies operating open access mandates. National Rectors’ Conferences should encourage governments to work within the framework of the ‘Council of the European Union Conclusions on Scientific Information in the Digital Age: Access, Dissemination and Preservation’ � adopted at the EU Competitiveness Council meeting on 22nd23rd November 2007.

2. National Rectors’ Conferences should attach high priority to raising the awareness of university leadership to the importance of open access policies in terms of enhanced visibility, access and impact of their research results.

C. Recommendations for the European University Association

1. EUA should continue to contribute actively to the policy dialogue on Open Access at the European level with a view to a self-archiving mandate for all research results arising from EU research programme/project funding, hence in support of and building upon the ERC position and other international initiatives such as that of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH).

2. EUA should continue to be visible and to rally expertise from Europe’s universities on Open Access issues to provide input to European and International events advancing open access to scientific publications, research data and their preservation.

EUA Working Group Membership OPEN ACCESS

Chairman: Sijbolt Noorda, (EU Council member, NL)

From the European University Association Newsletter about the EUA Spring Conference at the University of Barcelona [with thanks to Prof. Bernard Rentier]:

Universities need to do more to develop institutional policies and strategies that increase access to their peer-reviewed research results to the widest range of users, to maximise the impact and visibility of university research.

This is one of the key recommendations published by EUA’s Working Group on Open Access, which aim to raise awareness of the importance of the open access issue within the university community, both in terms of its impact upon the research process but also its financial implications for university libraries.

EUA is recommending that universities across Europe [each] set up an ‘institutional repository’ (or take part in a shared repository) as a key first step to achieving this goal. These repositories should be established and managed according to current best practices and policies developed by universities should ensure that researchers deposit their publications in the repository on acceptance of publication. Embargoes should only apply to the date of open access provision and not the date of deposit.

University policies should also take better account of copyright and the institutional intellectual property rights (IPR) management.

The recommendations were published following a meeting of the EUA Council, which took place before the opening of the EUA Spring Conference at the University of Barcelona. The working group’s recommendations are based on the core premises: the university’s role and responsibility as guardian of research knowledge as a “public good” and that the results of publicly funded research should be publicly available as soon as possible; and that quality assurance peer review processes are pre-conditions for scholarly publishing.

Please click here to read the full recommendations.

Here is the LINK to a video sampler of OR-08.

And here is the LINK to the EurOpenScholar session, at which there were two brilliant, timely (and, I predict, historic-landmark) presentations. One was by (1) Professor Bernard Rentier, Founder and Director of EurOpenScholar, a university consortium for informing about and advancing OA, and Rector of University of Liege, the first University to adopt the ID/OA self-archiving mandate, the implementation details of which Prof. Rentier described.

The second presentation was by (2) Dr. John Smith, Deputy Secretary-General of the European University Association (EUA), representing nearly 800 universities in 46 countries; EUA has unanimously recommended mandating OA self-archiving and is providing very strong and welcome support for implementing OA in Europe.

At the EurOpenScholar session the University of Southampton's university-wide OA self-archiving mandate was also officially announced on behalf of the Vice Chancellor by the Library Director, Mark Brown. (Dr. Alma Swan also gave a presentation -- handicapped by the fact that Prof. Rentier and Dr. Smith had already made brilliant use of her material! I too gave a talk, and likewise had nothing more I could add!) The OA momentum gathering in Europe is exceedingly gratifying (and about time!).

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum

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SUMMARY: NIH is now calling for a round of public recommendations on the best way to implement and monitor compliance with its OA Self-Archiving mandate. My own recommendation below is designed to make the NIH mandate efficient and successful for NIH and its fundees and to ensure that it reinforces and converges with the growing number of complementary university self-archiving mandates (such as Harvard's). The gist is that (1) NIH's preferred locus of direct deposit for the postprint should be the fundee's Institutional Repository (IR) (from which it can then be downloaded to NIH) and that (2) the fulfillment conditions on the NIH grant should stipulate that the fundee institution monitors that the deposit has been made. Please make your own recommendations here.

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In a very responsible and timely way, NIH has now called for a round of public recommendations on the best way to implement and monitor compliance with NIH's Green OA Self-Archiving mandate.

If you feel (as I do) that it is important to implement the NIH mandate in a way that will maximize its efficiency and likelihood of success, as well as making it an optimal model for all research funder mandates worldwide to follow, I urge you to make your recommendations here.

I append my own recommendation below. It is extremely simple, and designed not only to make the NIH mandate efficient and successful for both NIH and its fundees, but also to ensure that it reinforces and converges with the growing number of complementary university self-archiving mandates (such as Harvard's) rather than diverging, competing or complicating.

The gist is that (1) NIH's preferred locus of direct deposit for the postprint should be the fundee's Institutional Repository (IR) (from which it can then be downloaded to NIH) and that (2) the fulfillment conditions on the NIH grant should stipulate that the fundee institution monitors that the deposit has been made.

(There is also a Question 3 for you to recommend ways to improve NIH instructions to fundees, and a Question 4 where you can -- and I hope will -- reaffirm support for the NIH policy itself.)

Here are my own recommendations for 1 and 2, and my expression of support for 4:

Question 1:  Do you have recommendations for alternative implementation approaches to those already reflected in the NIH Public Access Policy?

Yes. Modify the procedure for fulfilling the deposit requirement of the NIH self-archiving mandate in order to make it compatible with, and to reinforce, university self-archiving mandates (such as Harvard's):

In the NIH interface, at the point of deposit, add a feature that allows the full-text deposit to be downloaded from the URL where the full-text has already been deposited in the fundee's institution's Institutional Repository (IR).

And stipulate in the overall instructions that the preferred way to fulfill NIH's self-archiving mandate is to deposit the full-text directly in the fundee's IR and then download it to the NIH deposit site.

Question 2:   In light of the change in law that makes NIH’s public access policy mandatory, do you have recommendations for monitoring and ensuring compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy?

Yes. The optimal way to monitor and ensure compliance is by making it part of the grant fulfillment conditions for the fundee's institution that it must monitor and ensure that the deposit is made.

The best and easiest way that an institution can monitor and ensure deposit -- and at the same time encourage or mandate the self-archiving of all the rest of its own institutional research output in all disciplines (not just NIH-funded research) -- is to require direct deposit in the institution's own IR.

See: "How To Integrate University and Funder Open Access Mandates."

Do not rely on direct deposit by publishers! It will only make the monitoring of compliance more divergent and difficult. Direct deposit should be convergent on the fundee's IR, to create a synergy with institutional mandates.

Question 3:   In addition to the information already posted at http://publicaccess.nih.gov/communications.htm, what additional information, training or communications related to the NIH Public Access Policy would be helpful to you?

[See Public Access Communications and Training and suggest what would make it clearer and easier for you. The principal thing is that the deposit itself should be in your own university's IR. The deposit can then be downloaded to NIH.]

Question 4:  Do you have other comments related to the NIH Public Access Policy?

The NIH Green OA Self-Archiving policy is splendid, timely, historic. But it can be made orders of magnitude more successful, effective, and worthy of emulation worldwide if the one small implementational detail recommended above is adopted. It will create a synergy between funder OA self-archiving mandates like NIH's and institutional OA self-archiving mandates like Harvard's, with one convergent point of direct deposit (the institution) and both the institution and NIH jointly monitoring and ensuring compliance. It will also maximize the contribution of the NIH OA mandate to the growth and success of OA mandates, and OA, in all fields, worldwide.

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum