Open Access Archivangelism

Pre-emptive Gold Fever seems to be spreading.

Following hard on the heels of University of California's Gilded New Deal with Springer -- UC subscribes to the Springer fleet of journals for an undisclosed fee, but, as part of the Deal, UC authors get to publish their articles as Gold OA for free in those same Springer journals -- now Universities UK (UUK) and the Research Information Network (RIN) are jointly dispensing advice on the payment of Gold OA fees (which is fine) but without first giving the most important piece of advice:

A university should on no account spend a single penny on Gold OA fees until and unless it has first adopted a Green OA mandate to deposit all of its own refereed journal article output in its own institutional repository.

---

There is still time for UUK and RIN to remedy this, by prominently setting the priorities and contingencies straight. I fervently hope they will do so!

(Peter Suber is expressing the very same hope, but in his characteristically gentler and less curmudgeonly way.)

On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 4:30 AM, David Prosser, Director of SPARC-Europe, wrote in the American Scientist Open Access Forum:

As all of the UK research councils, as well as some of the major UK funding charities, have green mandates in place I don’t see how this can possibly be described as ‘pre-emptive gold fever’.

I'm so glad you said that, David! Here is the very specific reply that should fully elucidate this question, which cuts to the very heart of what is at issue:

(1) There are two kinds of Green OA mandates: funder mandates and university mandates.

(2) Yes, the UK is the only country in the world in which all 7 of its national research funders (plus 7 more charities and intercouncils) mandate Green OA (and that is just wonderful: a global inspiration and example in every respect!).

(3) However, UK funder mandates only cover funded research output.

(4) UK university (and research institution) mandates, in contrast, cover all UK research output, funded or unfunded, across all fields.

(5) And the UUK/RIN advice on Gold OA funding was from and to UK universities, not funders.

(6) Most UK universities do not yet mandate Green OA. (Only 6 UK universities plus two departments do -- although that is still the largest number of university mandates of any country in the world today!).

(7) Therefore my point -- that on no account should funding Gold OA be recommended until and unless Green OA has been mandated -- stands, for the intended recipients of the UUK/RIN advice: UK universities.

(I might add that even funding councils that mandate Green OA for the research they fund can help more by stipulating that the default locus of the mandated Green deposit should be the fundee's own institutional repository -- from which it can be exported/harvested to central repositories if desired -- rather than mandating direct central deposit. That creates a synergy between the two kinds of mandates, with the funder mandates encouraging and facilitating the adoption of university mandates at each of the fundees' institutions, so as to cover their unfunded research output too.)

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum

A second university mandate (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid) plus a second funder mandate (Madrid Autonomous Community) from Spain, raising the worldwide total of Green OA self-archiving mandates to 72!

¡Viva España!