Open Access Archivangelism

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Armbruster, Chris, Implementing Open Access Policy: First Case Studies. Chinese Journal of Library and Information Science, Vol. 3, No. 4, pp.1-22, 2010. ["a concise summary of many of the pioneering (e.g. QUT, Wellcome, Zurich, HHMI, FWF), comprehensive (e.g. PMC, ukPMC, INRIA/France) and international (e.g. SCOAP3) implementation efforts."]

Armbruster, Chris, Open Access Policy Implementation: First Results Compared. Learned Publishing, Vol. 24, No. 3, 2011. ["a comparative evaluation discussing the most salient issues, such policy mandates and matching infrastructure requirements, content capture and the issue of scholarly compliance, benefits to authors, and efforts to provide access and enable usage"]

Armbruster, Chris, Implementing Open Access: Policy Case Studies (October 14, 2010). [original report]

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Chris Armbruster's policy cases, comparisons and conclusions make several useful points, some new, others already noted and published by others.

There is also a lot missing from Armstrong's policy cases, comparisons and conclusions, partly because they do not take into account what has already been observed and published on the subject of OA policy and outcome, and partly because Armstrong fails to cover several of the key institutional repositories and their policies, including the first of them all, and among the most successful: the U Southampton School of Electronics and Computer Science green OA self-archiving mandate was adopted in 2003, provided the model for mandatory OA policies in the BOAI Handbook, and continues to provide both OA repository guidance and (free) OA repository software and services; it is also the source of most of the OA policy variants at the institutions that Armbruster does take into account.

There are also some rather important confusions in Armstrong's conclusions, notably about versions, embargoes, "digital infrastructure," and the nature of green vs. gold OA.

For those who seek a clear, practical picture of the woods, rather than a rather impressionistic sketch of some of the trees, what both institutions and funders need to do is:

1. Mandate deposit of the author's final refereed draft, immediately upon acceptance for publication, in the author's institutional repository.
2. Designate repository deposit as the sole mechanism for submitting refereed publications for institutional performance evaluation and for national research assessment.
3. Implement the email-eprint-request button to tide over researcher needs during the embargo, for any publisher-embargoed deposits.

Once institutions and funders have done that, all the rest will take care of itself (including versions, embargoes, "digital infrastructures" and gold OA.

Beginning this autumn, guidance to institutions and funders worldwide on implementing OA policies will begin to be provided by EnablingOpenScholarship (EOS), founded by the rector of the University of Liege, another institution whose highly successful OA policy Chris Armbruster neglected to mention in his comparisons.

Stevan Harnad