Open Access Archivangelism

Research Councils UK are seeking public comments on their draft new OA policy.

Please send any comments to communications@rcuk.ac.uk and use "Open Access Feedback" in the subject line.



Here are my own comments and recommendations to RCUK:

1. It is excellent that RCUK is reducing the allowable embargo period (to 6 months for most research councils).

2. A license that formally allows more re-use rights (e.g., "Libre OA", CC-BY) is desirable, but it asks for more than just free online access ("Gratis OA") at a time when we are still far from having free online access. It thereby puts more constraints on authors, demands more of publishers, and those added constraints make it harder for that vast majority of institutions and funders who have not yet managed to reach consensus on adopting a Green OA self-archiving mandate of their own.

I accordingly recommend to RCUK that "Lbre OA" be strongly encouraged, but that only "Gratis OA" (which automatically includes linking, downloading, local print-off, local storage, local data-mining, search-engine harvesting and search) be required.

This makes it easier and more probable that universities and research institutions will be able to follow suit, adopting complementary Green OA mandates of their own, for all of their research output, whether or not RCUK-funded. It will also make it easier and more probable that other research funders will adopt similar institution-friendly mandates.

Once mandatory Gratis OA prevails, it will not be long before it is upgraded to Libre OA. But first things first. Do not let the best get in the way of the good, of which there is still so very little.

3. The designated locus of deposit should be the fundee's own institutional repository, not an institution-external central repository. Central repositories and search engines can then harvest the metadata from the institutional repository for search or re-display. 

The reason for this is again that there are more publisher restrictions on institution-external deposit than on institutional deposit, and at this time when there is still so little OA and so few OA mandates, it will make it easier and more probable that universities and research institutions will be able to follow suit, adopting complementary Green OA mandates of their own, for all of their research output, whether or not RCUK-funded, if their researchers do not need to do multiple institution-external deposits or to face needless extra publisher restrictions. http://bit.ly/DepLoc

4. The optimal Green OA Mandate is ID/OA -- Immediate Deposit, Optional Access -- is identical to the RCUK Mandate in every respect except that it stipulates that the deposit itself must be done immediately upon acceptance for publication, rather than only after the allowable embargo period has expired. 

This means that users will see the metadata immediately, and can already make automated eprint requests to the author for single copies for research purposes during the embargo.

5. Repository deposit should be officially stipulated as the sole mechanism for submitting publications for research assessment as well as for submitting publication lists for RCUK research proposals.

Gargouri, Y., Hajjem, C., Lariviere, V., Gingras, Y., Brody, T., Carr, L. and Harnad, S. (2010) Self-Selected or Mandated, Open Access Increases Citation Impact for Higher Quality Research. PLOS ONE 5 (10) e13636

Harnad, S. (2009) Open Access Scientometrics and the UK Research Assessment Exercise. Scientometrics 79 (1)

______ (2011) Open Access to Research: Changing Researcher Behavior Through University and Funder Mandates. JEDEM Journal of Democracy and Open Government 3 (1): 33-41.

Sale, A., Couture, M., Rodrigues, E., Carr, L. and Harnad, S. (2012) Open Access Mandates and the "Fair Dealing" Button. In: Dynamic Fair Dealing: Creating Canadian Culture Online (Rosemary J. Coombe & Darren Wershler, Eds.)

Re: Richard Poynder: Open Access, brick by brick. Open and Shut? Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Let universities and research funders follow the UK's lead, not Australia's lag (apart from QUT!): Forget about Gold OA publishing for now and mandate the researcher keystrokes that would have given us 100% [Green] OA 20 years ago, had they only been done, unmandated, 20 years ago.

The reward will not only be 100% [Green] OA at long last, putting an end to 20 years of needlessly lost research impact globally, but Gold OA at a fair price soon thereafter.

(Apart from desperate and appallingly maladroit (and doomed) lobbying efforts with governments (and closed-door bargaining efforts with customers) to try to deter or delay Green OA mandates, Elsevier has nothing to do with it, one way or the other: Providing OA is entirely -- repeat: entirely -- in the research community's hands (at their fingertips), once they awaken from their insouciant slumber and realize at last that it is -- and has been all along.

Harnad, S. (2008) Waking OA’s “Slumbering Giant”: The University's Mandate To Mandate Open Access. New Review of Information Networking 14(1): 51 - 68

Harnad, S. (2009) The PostGutenberg Open Access Journal. In: Cope, B. & Phillips, A (Eds.) The Future of the Academic Journal. Chandos.

Harnad, S. (2010) Gold Open Access Publishing Must Not Be Allowed to Retard the Progress of Green Open Access Self-Archiving. Logos: The Journal of the World Book Community. 21(3-4): 86-93