Open Access Archivangelism

In the case of the high-profile NIH Public Access Policy, the difference between a "Request" and a "Requirement" turned out to be substantial. Formulated initially as a "Request," the policy failed to elicit more than 5% compliance for two years. Within a year of being upgraded from a "Request" to a "Requirement," the compliance rate rose to 60%, and is since steadily approaching 100%.

It is for this reason that U. Athabasca's Open Access (OA) Policy is not listed as a mandate in ROARMAP, but only as a policy. By the very same token, however, U. Ottawa's policy is not listed at all in ROARMAP, since it is merely a commitment to provide some funds to pay to publish some U. Ottawa research output in OA journals ("Gold OA"), not a mandate to provide OA to all of U. Ottawa research output ("Green OA") by self-archiving it in an OA repository, as NIH requires and U. Athabasca recommends.

By this criterion, U. Concordia's is the first university-wide Green OA mandate in Canada. Canada also has 3 departmental OA mandates (Calgary, Guelph, Queens) and 8 funder mandates.

There is not much point in being the "first" to do something if one does not do it right: The only university that has done it right university-wide so far in Canada is Concordia. Let us hope that this will now inspire many emulators.

The other important course-correction Canada could benefit from making is to make sure that all OA mandates (university-wide, departmental and funder) are convergent and cooperative, not divergent and competitive. Here too, Concordia has adopted the right policy, promising not to require double-deposit on the part of their researchers (i.e., having to deposit in both the Concordia repository and, say, PubMed Central Canada). Universities (and research institutions) are the universal providers of all research output, funded and unfunded, across all fields.

PubMed Central Canada is a welcome advance if what Canada needed was more space (to make its research OA). But what Canada needed was to fill available space with OA content, not to make more space available -- and the only way to do that is by mandating (i.e., requiring) deposit.

Let us hope Canada's funders will have the good sense to mandate convergent university deposit rather than divergent central deposit. Central repositories like PubMed Central Canada can then harvest from Canada's network of university repositories. Deposit should be institutional; a central collection is just that -- a collection -- not a locus for direct deposit:

"Designing the Optimal Open Access Mandate"

"How to Integrate University and Funder Open Access Mandates"

"Deposit Institutionally, Harvest Centrally"

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum