Open Access Archivangelism

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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

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[Update: See new definition of "Weak" and "Strong" OA, 29/4/2008]

SUMMARY: The BBB "definitions" of OA still need some tweaking to get them right. OA means free online access to the full-text of refereed journal articles. With that comes the capability of linking, reading, downloading, storing, printing off, and data-mining, and that is what is urgently needed by researchers today. Let the Green OA mandates provide that, and the rest will all come naturally of its own accord. We'll never get self-archiving mandates adopted if we insist in advance that they include 3rd-party re-use rights. Nor does demanding machine-readable XML make sense when most authors still aren't even doing the few keystrokes it takes to deposit the drafts they already have. Let's not risk getting less by needlessly insisting on more.

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I think it would be a big strategic mistake if today, when the cupboards are still 85% bare, we were to start insisting that deposits must all be Cordon Bleu ****.

OA just means free online access to the full-text of refereed journal articles. Please let's not risk getting less by needlessly insisting on more. The rest will come in due time, but what is urgently needed today, and what is still 85% overdue by more than 10 years today, is free online access. Let the Green OA mandates provide that, and the rest will all come naturally with the territory soon enough of its own accord.

But over-reach gratuitously now, and we will just delay the optimal and inevitable, already within our reach, still longer.

Ceterum Censeo: The BBB "definitions" (which were not brought down to us by Moses from On High, but puttered together by muddled mortals, including myself) are not etched in stone, and need some tweaking to get them right.

"Time to Update the BBB Definition of Open Access"

OA is free online access. With that comes, automatically, the individual capability of linking, reading, downloading, storing, printing off, and data-mining (locally).

The further "rights" for 3rd-party databases to data-mine and re-publish will come after universal Green OA mandates generate universal OA (free online access). But you'll never get universal Green OA mandates if you insist in advance that the 3rd-party re-use rights must be part of the mandate! (Notice that the Harvard mandate has an opt-out, which means it's not a mandate.)

"On Patience, and Letting (Human) Nature Take Its Course"

And as to demanding machine-readable XML from authors: 85% of authors cannot now be bothered to do even the few keystrokes it takes to deposit the drafts they already have: Does this sound like a reasonable time to ask them to upgrade their drafts to Cordon Bleu XML?

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.

Re: More on the AAP complaints about the NIH policy

When will research journal publishers realize that research is conducted by researchers and funded by the tax-paying public for the sake of what is best for research, researchers, their institutions, the vast R&D industry, and the tax-paying public? Research is not being conducted and funded as a service to the research journal publishing industry.

Publicly elected officials and the NIH especially need to realize and remember this, rather than allowing themselves to be persuaded by the publisher lobby that there is some sort of "balance" issue here.

Research publishing is a service industry: Publishers are given the results of funded research, by researchers, for free, to be refereed (by researchers, again for free) and then published for subscription sales revenue (in which the researchers ask no share), so that the refereed research can be made accessible to all those who can use, apply and build upon it -- once again, to the benefit of research, researchers, and the tax-paying public that funds them.

Publishers' revenues come from subscription sales, which are currently making ends meet quite adequately.

If and when it should ever come to pass that Green Open Access self-archiving mandates make subscriptions unsustainable, the obvious solution will be for journal publishers to convert to Gold Open Access publishing (which some publishers have done already). But AAP is pre-emptively lobbying (and now even threatening to sue!) to continue to restrict the very access for the sake of which research is being given to publishers to be published -- in order to protect their current cost-recovery model from the hypothetical risk of one day having to convert to Gold OA Publishing.

Though the analogy is a bit shrill, it is very much as if tobacco companies were lobbying against no-smoking ordinances because they might hurt their sales (even though they protect public health) -- except that in the case of the no-smoking mandates, there isn't even Gold waiting at the end of the rainbow!

Drawn by Judith Economos
(feel free to use to promote OA and to bait "pit-bulls")


Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum

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

   [See also the original posting to which this is a follow-up: Part I.]

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SUMMARY: I agree completely with Jonathan Oppenheim's and Bill Unruh's ends: (1) that authors should be able to publish and post derivative works and (2) that they should be able to adopt the Creative Commons license of their choice. I disagree only with their means: The American Physical Society (APS), the most progressive and adaptable of traditional journal publishers and the first to have adopted a formal policy endorsing Green OA self-archiving after the practice had evolved among its authors, should not now be publicly pressured into making further formal changes as if it were the villain, while so many other publishers still aren't even Green. Evolving practice should precede formal precept in the online age, when the research community is still discovering and exploring the potential of the new medium. The APS would no more try to prevent its authors from posting derivative works than it did in the case of the posting of their preprints and postprints. The practice (and mandating) of Green OA self-archiving, once it has generated universal OA, will effectively moot everything that stands in the way of CC licensing too.

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Re: "Physicists slam publishers over Wikipedia ban" and "Traditional journals and copyright transfer"

Following an exchange of correspondence with Jonathan Oppenheim and Bill Unruh about the above posting, I want to stress that I agree completely with Jonathan Oppenheim's and Bill Unruh's ends:

(1) Derivative Works. Authors should be able to publish new articles which "differ in some reasonable way from the original work, even while possibly retaining much of the original."

I also think APS authors can already do this, and that APS would no more try to prosecute its authors for this practice than it tried to prosecute them for practicing self-archiving (before APS went on to adapt to evolving practice by formally adopting its Green OA policy, the first Green OA publisher policy, and a model for them all).

With derivative works too, formal APS policy will eventually adapt to evolving practice that is to the benefit of research progress in physics. Let practice again precede and guide precept.

(Note that published postprints are in fact "derivative works" relative to unpublished preprints.)

(2) Creative Commons Licensing. I am also fully in favor of CC licensing -- but not as a precondition for OA self-archiving today. All authors should adopt the CC license of their choice whenever they can. And where they cannot, they should just go ahead and self-archive under the Green publisher's current copyright agreement.

(If the publisher is not Green, authors should immediately deposit anyway; and if they wish to set access to their deposit as Closed Access instead of OA during an embargo period, they should rely on their repository's semi-automatic "email eprint request" Button to provide almost-immediate, almost-OA for all would-be users during any publisher embargo.)

(I do believe, though, that CC licensing will prevail as a matter of natural course, after universal OA has prevailed.)

So whereas I agree with Jonathan's and Bill's ends, I do not agree with their means.

Rather than trying to force an immediate formal policy change (if APS feels it needs more time to think it through), I think Jonathan and Bill should just go ahead and practice what they seek to practice: publish new articles which differ in some reasonable way from the original work, even while possibly retaining much of the original, or post them to wikis like Quantiki if they wish. APS formal precept will again follow evolving practice in due course, as it did with author self-archiving.

(By the way, the meaning of the enigmatic title "The American Physical Society is Not the Culprit: We Are" was of course that the reason we don't yet have universal OA [and all that follows from it] is that we are not yet universally self-archiving: I have dubbed this "Zeno's Paralysis.")

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum