Open Access Archivangelism

It is apparently more than just a semantic matter, but a cognitive one, when one gets the cognitively impenetrable idée fixe that OA = OA publishing. OA just means free online access.

"coglanglab" writes:

"coglanglab":
"there are other open-access models"

No, there are OA publishing models. OA itself just means free online access. OA ≠ OA publishing. OA is not a "model." Nor are researchers, making their own published articles freely accessible online, nor their institutions and funders, mandating it, a "model."

Maybe lexical markers will help: OA (free online access) can be provided in two different ways. OA provided through OA journal publishing is called "Gold OA". OA provided through author self-archiving of non-OA journal articles is called "Green OA."

You have unfortunately contracted the (widespread) syndrome of "Gold Fever," whose only perceived goal becomes Gold OA!

But the OA problem is not journal affordability or economic models, it is research accessibility. Gold fever conflates the two, whereas both the NIH Mandate and the HR 801's attempt to overturn it are about Green OA.

"coglanglab":
"everybody... understands that these [mandatory Green OA] policies hurt subscription-based journals"

Everybody? Not those in the best position to know, apparently, namely, the publishers whose authors have been making their articles (Green) OA the most and the longest:

Swan (2005)

"we asked the American Physical Society (APS) and the Institute of Physics Publishing Ltd (IOPP) what their experiences have been over the 14 years that arXiv has been in existence. How many subscriptions have been lost as a result of arXiv? Both societies said they could not identify any losses of subscriptions for this reason and that they do not view arXiv as a threat to their business (rather the opposite -- in fact the APS helped establish an arXiv mirror site at the Brookhaven National Laboratory)"

Mandated Green OA might or might not eventually lead to Gold OA. That is all just hypothetical conjecture and counterconjecture. What is certain is that it will lead to OA itself: free online access. And that is what the OA movement is all about and for.

"coglanglab":
"papers still need to go through peer-review and publication"

And your point is...?

NIH mandates providing Green OA to fundees' final drafts of their peer-reviewed journal articles.

"coglanglab":
"we have two models: subscription-based journals... and open-access journals"

Yes. And we have one OA -- free online access -- which can be achieved quickly and surely once Green OA is mandated. And that is what both the NIH Mandate and the Conyers Bill's attempt to overturn it are about. The rest is all distracting and profitless speculation about models for publication cost-recovery, not OA, which means free online access.

"coglanglab":
"[Harnad's] focus is not on open-access journals... so he has some stake in pointing out that there are other open-access models"

My focus is on OA, so I have a stake in pointing out that a focus on Gold OA cost-recovery models is missing the point of the NIH policy, which is about mandating Green OA. And OA is not a "model"; it is free online access to peer-reviewed journal articles.

"coglanglab":
"If these policies make the subscription-based journals less profitable, then the open-access journals presumably become more competitive"

Gold Fever, again: The purpose of the NIH policy is to provide OA -- free online access to the peer-reviewed journal articles resulting from NIH funding -- which it is doing as a matter of certainty by mandating Green OA. The rest is irrelevant speculation and counterspeculation about hypothetical sequelae.

"coglanglab":
"If the open-access policies force subscription-based publishers to raise their own publication fees or go out of business, this presumably should help open-access journals..."

If they do and if it does, then presumably it will. But this is all just hypothetical speculation. What the NIH mandate actually does, with certainty, is provide OA (free online access), remember? And access -- not speculative economics -- is what the OA is about, and for.

"coglanglab":
"if there are good reasons to believe that policies like those of NIH and Harvard harm open-access journals and subscription journals alike, then I'd like to know..."

There are good reasons to believe that universal mandated Green OA might eventually induce a transition to Gold OA and there are also good reasons to believe it might not. But what is certain is that that universal mandated Green OA will provide universal OA -- and that the Conyers Bill (HR 801), if passed, will slow or stop that.

So it might be a good idea to restrain the impulse to just keep speculating and counterspeculating about future publishing cost-recovery models and focus instead on providing universal OA while we are still compos mentis and in a position to profit (mentally) from it. And that requires defeating the Conyers Bill.

"coglanglab":
"I'm not really sure what Harnad was getting at in pointing out that some non-profit journals also support Conyers' bill..."

The opposition to Green OA mandates like NIH's comes from journal publishers who argue that it will reduce their revenues and might eventually make the subscription model unsustainable. They may be right or they may be wrong. But they definitely include both for-profit and non-profit publishers.

And, to repeat, OA is free online access to (peer-reviewed) research. OA's purpose is to solve the research accessibility problem. (Not all would-be users can afford to access all research output online today.) Gold OA cannot be mandated. (Publishers are not the fundees or employees of research funders and institutions; the money to pay for Gold OA publishing is currently tied up in subscriptions; research funds are already scarce; and authors don't like to be told where to publish, nor to be required to pay for it.) But Green OA can be mandated, and is being mandated, by NIH plus 66 further funders and institutions worldwide, with many other mandate proposals on the way.

If we can shake off the Gold Fever just long enough to reach for the Green OA that is fully within our grasp, we will have reached (at long last) the optimal, inevitable (and long overdue) outcome for research, researchers, their institutions and funders, the R & D industry, students, teachers, the developing world, and the tax-paying public who fund the research and for whose benefit the research is conducted.

Gold Fever instead focuses obsessively on publishing economics: the publishing tail, that has for too long been wagging the research dog. Green OA mandates are simply the research community taking into its own hands the matter of providing free online access to their own peer-reviewed research output. Whether the peer review service costs continue to be paid via subscriptions, or are instead paid via Gold-OA fees covered out of subscription cancellation savings is a minor matter concerning the dog's tail. We should stop letting that tail wag the dog, by focusing on mandating Green OA (and defeating Conyers-like Bills that try to oppose it), today.

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum

(Thanks to Peter Suber's Open Access News.)

Note that Edinburgh's is the optimal ID/OA Mandate. (Let us hope Edinburgh will also implement the automatized Request a Copy Button for Embargoed or Closed Access Deposits!)

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University of Edinburgh (UK* institutional-mandate)
http://www.ed.ac.uk/

Institution's/Department's OA Eprint Archives:
[growth data] http://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/
http://www.publications.lib.ed.ac.uk/

Institution's/Department's OA Self-Archiving Policy:
http://www.acaffairs.ed.ac.uk/Committees/Senate/Meetings/200809/20090127/C4-OpenAccess.pdf

The University of Edinburgh has adopted an OA mandate. Here's an excerpt from the Open Access Publications Policy (January 27 - February 4, 2009), the proposal which the university's Electronic Senate approved on February 18, 2009:

This... Publications Policy... requires researchers to deposit their research outputs in the Publications Repository, and where appropriate in the Open Access Edinburgh Research Archive in order to maximise the visibility of the University’s research....

This policy will be implemented [i.e. become mandatory] from January 2010, and in the meantime, researchers are encouraged to deposit outputs....

The Publications Repository (PR) is a closed repository for use only within the University of Edinburgh and is an internal University tool for research output management, while Edinburgh Research Archive (ERA) is a public open access repository, making content available through global searching mechanisms such as Google.

This policy requires each researcher to provide the peer reviewed final accepted version of a research output to deposit. The policy encourages the deposit of an electronic copy of nonpeer reviewed research, particularly where this may be used for national assessments. Researchers (or their proxies, eg research administrators) will deposit these research outputs in the PR, and at the same time provide information about whether the research output can be made publicly available in ERA. It will then be automatically passed into ERA, where this is allowable, with no further input from the researcher or their agent....

There are several strong reasons for pursuing the requirement for the deposits of such research outputs at the moment:

1.  The impact of research is maximized because there is growing evidence that research deposited in Open Access repositories is more heavily used and cited

2. The deposit of outputs in ERA will support compliance with Research Council and other funding agency requirements that research outputs are available openly.

3. This will ensure that each research output has consistent metadata and ensures longevity which, for example, a researcher’s own website does not.

4. Items which are already in Edinburgh Research Archive are well used. The average number of times each item was downloaded during 2008 was 228, with the top countries downloading Edinburgh research being: United States, United Kingdom, Australia, China, Iran and India.

5. Researchers, research groups or Schools can use the PR to provide automatically generated output for their own websites, or for their curriculum vitae.

6. Future possible metrics based research assessment will require us to ensure that Edinburgh’s research be cited as much as possible, and this means that it must be as visible as possible....

9. This will become a competitive tool for Edinburgh’s research by enhancing its reputation and branding as a good place to carry out research....

11. The world of scholarly communication is changing—adopting this policy in Edinburgh will help us move forward within this changing environment. Other universities require their researchers to deposit research outputs. Harvard University, Stirling University—the first in the UK to do so, and very recently the University of Glasgow, have adopted institutional requirements for such deposit.

12. Such a deposit requirement is in line with other UoE policies on knowledge exchange, public accountability and serving the public good....

Since this initiative requires changed patterns of work from researchers, there will be many questions some of which are addressed in this section....

-- What happens if I don’t want to make the research output public? There will always be a variety of circumstances where it is not possible to deposit, for example where a researcher does not wish to go public with their research immediately, because they wish to publish further, or where commercial reasons exist or where there are copyright 
issues (considered below). In these cases the research output should be deposited but only the metadata will be exposed in the PR the item will not be passed into ERA until permission is given.

-- What happens if the publisher does not agree? You should try to avoid assigning the copyright to the publisher or granting them an exclusive license. Rather, you should aim to grant a nonexclusive licence which leaves you with the ability to deposit the work in the University Repositories and possibly make it available in other digital forms.

-- How should I communicate this with the publisher? There will be advice and guidance on how to achieve this and template forms to show how you can amend Publisher copyright forms.

-- What about research outputs which are not journal articles? The PR and ERA can accept most research output types including books, book chapters, conference proceedings, performances, video, audio etc. In some cases – for example books not available electronically – the PR/ERA will hold only metadata, with the possibility of links to catalogues so that users can find locations....

-- What about my research data? Data supporting research outputs is also required by RCs to be made available? and this can be included where requested. IS is establishing a working group to consider research data issues....

-- I would like to publish in an author-pays Open Access journal. Does this mean that I also have to deposit?  Yes, please deposit the research output in the normal manner....