Open Access Archivangelism

Mark Thorley wrote: "Stevan, ...As an advocate of Open Access I would like to think that you appreciate the fact that the UK is leading the world here..."

Mark, no, the UK is no longer leading the world with its new Finch/RCUK/BIS OA policy.

It's time to heed OA advocates that have been at this far longer than you, and fix the RCUK Policy:

Peter Suber: "The UK can do better. In fact, the RCUK can do better. Its 2006 policy was better than the new policy. It only needed to be enforced."

The RCUK Policy is fixable. Indeed it can be made much better than the old RCUK policy. And the UK can once again take the worldwide lead in OA Policy:

I. Drop the 9 words that make the RCUK Policy say the opposite of what it means.

II. Adopt an effective compliance-verification mechanism for Green OA self-archiving:

(IIa) Deposit must be in the fundee's institutional repository.
      (This makes each UK institution responsible for monitoring and verifying timely compliance.)
(IIb) All articles must be deposited immediately upon acceptance for publication.
      (Publisher embargoes apply only to the date on which the deposit is made OA.)
(IIc) Repository deposit must be designated the sole mechanism for submitting publications for UK research assessment (REF).
      (Articles' deposit URL required in all requests for RCUK funding or renewal.)

It is still widely hoped that RCUK will act in a flexible, constructive way rather than a rigid, dogmatic one, in the face of the growing expression of the concerns of the research community and its OA advocates, in the UK and worldwide, about the ambiguity and the potential for perverse effects of the new RCUK OA Policy.

Stevan Harnad

BOAI-10 RECOMMENDATIONS
-- 1.1. Every institution of higher education should have a policy assuring that peer-reviewed versions of all future scholarly articles by faculty members are deposited in the institution’s designated repository...

-- Deposits should be made as early as possible, ideally at the time of acceptance, and no later than the date of formal publication.

-- University policies should respect faculty freedom to submit new work to the journals of their choice. [emphasis added]

-- University policies should encourage but not require publication in OA journals [emphasis added] ...

-- 1.3. Every research funding agency, public or private, should have a policy assuring that peer-reviewed versions of all future scholarly articles reporting funded research are deposited in a suitable repository and made OA as soon as practicable.

-- Deposits should be made as early as possible, ideally at the time of acceptance, and no later than the date of formal publication...

Mark Thorley has posted "RCUK Open Access Policy – When to go Green and When to go Gold" on the RCUK site.

Here are four further questions about the policy:

1. Policy Wording. As repeatedly pointed out and acknowledged at the Imperial College Forum, the wording of the present RCUK policy is confusing and leads to the widespread misunderstanding that fundees may not choose (free) Green (6-12) unless the journal does not offer (paid) Gold (CC-BY). If the intended meaning is that fundees may freely choose Green or Gold, isn't the right place to say that -- and to prevent this confusion and misunderstanding -- in the wording of the policy itself? rather than just in accompanying guidance to the interpretation of the wording of the policy?

2. Perverse Effects. Is RCUK not concerned that only allowing fundees to publish in journals that offer either (paid) CC-BY Gold or (free) 6-12 Green (or both) will simply induce subscription journals (60% of which currently allow immediate, unembargoed Green) to now offer hybrid (paid) CC-BY Gold while increasing their Green embargo to 13+ to make sure that UK authors must pay for Gold?

3. Benefits of 6% CC-BY. The UK produces 6% of worldwide research output. What benefit is it to UK industry, or to UK wealth creation, or to UK research, for the UK to pay (hybrid) subscription publishers worldwide 6% extra, over and above what they are already being paid for subscriptions, in order to make (only) the UK's own 6% of worldwide research output CC-BY Gold? Is it worth the extra UK research money, diverted from research? or the loss (to both the UK and the rest of the world) of Green OA from the rest of the world (94%), because RCUK gives subscription publishers worldwide the irresistible incentive to offer a hybrid Gold option and increase their Green embargo lengths (while the rest of the world, unlike the UK, cannot afford -- or does not wish -- to subsidize hybrid publishers over and above what they are already paying them in subscriptions)?

4. Green Compliance Mechanisms. There seem to be plans in the making for verifying compliance with RCUK's paid Gold option. What are RCUK's plans for verifying compliance with the Green OA option? A requirement to deposit is not even mentioned in the current RCUK Policy's wording: just a requirement to choose an RCUK-compliant journal.

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Mark Thorley's Reply (since September 28):
"Your comment is awaiting moderation"

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Rick Rylance (CEO, AHRC) in Independent on RCUK policy:

"because we recognise that… the… pay-to-publish "gold" model of Open Access.. is not always available, we've retained a mixed model for the time being. This means that if there is not a to pay-to-publish option, researchers can opt for the "green" model of open access where the paper would be available via a repository after an embargo period… [emphasis added]

Why "for the time being"?

Why (cost-free) Green only if (paid) Gold unavailable?

Why is Green described as embargoed when over 60% of journals (including the top journals in most fields) already endorse immediate, unembargoed Green (and "Almost OA" is available for the remaining 40%)?

Is RCUK trying to encourage publishers to increase their Green OA embargoes?

Stevan Harnad

Keynote at Digital Research 2012, St. Catherine's College, Oxford, 11 September 2012.

1. High Energy Physics (HEP) already has close to 100% Open Access (OA): Authors have been self-archiving their articles in Arxiv (both before and after peer review) since 1991 ("Green OA").

2. Hence SCOAP3 is just substituting the payment of consortial "membership" fees for publishing outgoing articles in place of the payment of individual institutional subscription fees for accessing incoming articles in exchange for an OA from its publisher ("Gold OA") that HEP already had from self-archiving (Green OA).

3. As such, SCOAP3 is just a consortial subscription price agreement, except that it is inherently unstable, because once all journal content is Gold OA, non-members are free-riders, and members can cancel if they feel a budget crunch.

4. Nor does membership scale to other disciplines.

5. High Energy Physics would have done global Open Access a better service if it had put its full weight behind promoting (Green OA) mandates to self-archive by institutions and research funders in all other disciplines.

6. The time to convert to Gold OA is when mandatory Green OA prevails globally across all disciplines and institutions.

7. Institutions can then cancel subscriptions and pay for peer review service alone, per individual paper, out of a portion of their windfall cancelation savings, instead of en bloc, in an unstable (and overpriced) consortial "membership."

These questions are for the
Imperial College Science Communication Forum
"Open access: Going for Gold?"
Thursday, 27 September 2012
18:30 to 21:00 (BST)
London, United Kingdom

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QUESTION 1: For hybrid subscription journals that offer both Gold OA (CC-BY) for a fee and Green OA (6-12) for free, why does RCUK require authors to pick and pay for Gold? Why not leave the choice to the author?

RCUK Policy:

"…papers must be published in journals which are [RCUK]-compliant… journal [is RCUK-]compliant… if…(1)… journal offers [Gold OA, CC-BY].. Or (2) where a publisher does not offer option 1… journal must allow… [Green OA, 6-12]"

QUESTION 2: If the RCUK official policy really means "RCUK authors may choose Green or Gold" rather than "RCUK authors may choose Green where Gold is not offered", then why does it not say "RCUK authors may choose Green or Gold" rather than "RCUK authors may choose Green where Gold is not offered"? All that's needed to make this perfectly clear is is to drop the words "where a publisher does not offer option 1".

(It is not clear why the clause  "Where a publisher does not offer option 1" was ever inserted in the first place, as the logic of what is intended is perfectly clear without it, and is only obscured by inserting it. The only two conceivable reasons I can think of for that gratuitous and misleading clause's having been inserted in the first place are that either (a) the drafters half-forgot about the hybrid GREEN+GOLD possibility, or (b) they were indeed trying to push authors (and publishers!) toward the GOLD option in both choices: the between-journal choice of GOLD versus GREEN journal and the within-journal choice of the GOLD versus GREEN option -- possibly because of Gold Fever induced by BIS's Finch Folly.)

QUESTION 3: Are Finch/RCUK not bothered by the fact that the new policy that "RCUK authors may choose Green [only] where Gold is not offered" (if that's what it means) would be in direct contradiction with the recommendations of BOAI-10 to institutions (see excerpt at end of this posting)?
 
QUESTION 4: How many UK research fields urgently need CC-BY today? Have Finch/RCUK not confused the re-use needs of research data (Open Data) with the need for free online access to articles? What percentage of all research fields needs and wants CC-BY (machine data-mining and re-publication rights) for its articles today, compared to the percentage that needs and wants free online access to its articles? What is the relative urgency of these two needs today (and the price worth paying to fulfill them)?

QUESTION 5: What good does it do UK industry to have BIS subsidize Gold OA for the UK's 6% of worldwide research output (out of the UK's scarce research funds) when the rest of the world is not doing the same (and unlikely to afford or want to) for the remaining 94% of worldwide research output? Does UK industry need Open Access to the UK's own research output only, in order to "create wealth"?

QUESTION 6: Is RCUK not concerned that a policy requiring UK authors to choose Gold over Green would simply induce subscription publishers to offer a pricey hybrid Gold option and to increase their Green embargoes (for all authors worldwide) so as to ensure that all UK researchers must pay for Gold? Won't that make it tougher for other others (94%) to provide and mandate Green OA worldwide?

QUESTION 7: Has anyone troubled to do the arithmetic on the UK subsidy for Gold? The UK publishes 6% of worldwide research output. The UK presumably also pays 6% of publishers' worldwide subscription revenue. Most publishers today are subscription publishers. So, in response to the current policy that "RCUK authors may choose Green where Gold is not offered", would it not make sense for all subscription publishers worldwide simply to add a hybrid Gold option, so that their total subscription income can be increased by 6% for hybrid Gold, subsidized by the UK tax-payer and UK research funds? Has it not been noticed by Finch/RCUK that even if publishers made good on the promise to lower their subscription fees in proportion to any increase in their Gold OA revenue from the UK, the UK would only get back 6% of the 6% it double-pays for hybrid Gold?

QUESTION 8: The Finch Report (cited also by RCUK) claimed that Green OA had failed, and suggested it should be downgraded to just preservation archiving. But is it not rather the prior RCUK Green OA mandate that failed, because it adopted no compliance verification mechanisms? Green OA mandates with effective compliance mechanisms (integrated with institutional mandates) are succeeding very well elsewhere in the world. Why does the new RCUK policy again focus only on confirming compliance with Gold, rather than with Green?

ANSWER: RCUK already has a Green OA mandate. If the UK wants 100% UK OA within two years, it need only add the following simple, cost-effective compliance verification mechanism: (1) Deposit must be in the fundee's institutional repository. (This makes each UK institution responsible for monitoring and verifying timely compliance.) (2) All articles must be deposited immediately upon acceptance for publication. (Publisher embargoes apply only to the date on which the deposit is made OA.) (3) Repository deposit must be designated the sole mechanism for submitting publications for UK research assessment (REF).

BOAI-10 RECOMMENDATIONS

-- 1.1. Every institution of higher education should have a policy assuring that peer-reviewed versions of all future scholarly articles by faculty members are deposited in the institution’s designated repository...

-- Deposits should be made as early as possible, ideally at the time of acceptance, and no later than the date of formal publication.

-- University policies should respect faculty freedom to submit new work to the journals of their choice. [emphasis added]

-- University policies should encourage but not require publication in OA journals [emphasis added] ...

-- 1.3. Every research funding agency, public or private, should have a policy assuring that peer-reviewed versions of all future scholarly articles reporting funded research are deposited in a suitable repository and made OA as soon as practicable.

-- Deposits should be made as early as possible, ideally at the time of acceptance, and no later than the date of formal publication...

Stevan Harnad

Time for the call to fix RCUK OA policy's fatal flaw to go viral

If you want to help, please re-tweet and re-post

The Two Tweaks Needed
to Disambiguate RCUK OA Policy
The Research Councils will recognise a journal as being compliant with their policy on Open Access if:

1. [GOLD] The journal provides via its own website immediate and unrestricted access to the publisher’s final version of the paper (the Version of Record), and allows immediate deposit of the Version of Record in other repositories without restriction on re-use. This may involve payment of an ‘Article Processing Charge’ (APC) to the publisher. The CC-BY license should be used in this case.

Or

2. [GREEN] *REMOVE* Where a publisher does not offer option 1 above,*REMOVE* the journal must allow deposit of Accepted Manuscripts that include all changes resulting from peer review (but not necessarily incorporating the publisher’s formatting) in other repositories, without restrictions on non-commercial re-use and within a defined period. In this option no ‘Article Processing Charge’ will be payable to the publisher. Research Councils will accept a delay of no more than six months between on-line publication and a research paper becoming Open Access, except in the case of research papers arising from research funded by the AHRC and the ESRC where the maximum embargo period is 12 months.

ADD: "Where a journal offers both suitable green (2.) and suitable gold (1.) options the PI may choose the option he or she thinks most appropriate" .

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For those with patience for logic, here is how the ambiguity crept into the RCUK Open Access Policy, where it resides, and why it is all the more important to set it right promptly, before it takes root:

The RCUK fundee is actually faced with not one but two semi-independent choices to make in order to comply with the RCUK OA mandate: the between-journals choice of a suitable journal, and the within-journal choice of a suitable option.

These two semi-independent choices have been (inadvertently) conflated in the current RCUK policy draft, treating them, ambiguously, as if they were one choice.

Both choices are nominally GREEN versus GOLD choices.

Let's quickly define "GREEN" and "GOLD," because they mean the same in both cases. I will use a definition based on the current RCUK policy draft:

GOLD means the journal makes the article OA with CC-BY ("Libre OA"), usually for a fee.

GREEN means the author makes the article OA ("Gratis OA") by depositing it in a repository, and making it OA within 0-12 months of publication.

These two definitions are not what is in dispute here.

But now the GREEN versus GOLD choice applies to two different things: 

(1) the author's choice of which journal is an RCUK-suitable journal to publish in (this is the between-journals choice) 

and then, if the journal offers both the GREEN and GOLD option: 

(2) the author's choice of which option to pick (this is the within-journal choice).

A perfectly clear and unambiguous way to state the intended policy would be:

An RCUK-suitable journal is one that offers
(i) GREEN only or (ii) GOLD only or (iii) BOTH (i.e., hybrid GREEN+GOLD).

An RCUK author may choose (i), (ii) or (iii).

If the choice is (iii), the RCUK author may choose GREEN or GOLD.

That would dispel all ambiguity.

But what the current RCUK policy actually states instead is:

An RCUK-suitable journal is one that offers (i) GOLD, or, if it does not offer GOLD, then an RCUK-suitable journal is one that offers (ii) GREEN OA.

The possibility that the journal offers (iii) both (i.e., hybrid GREEN+GOLD) is not mentioned, and the between-journals choice of journal is hence left completely conflated with the within-journal choice of option.

So the conclusion the RCUK fundee draws is that GREEN can only be chosen if GOLD is not offered: "GREEN IF AND ONLY IF NOT GOLD."

When a policy so fully conflates two distinct, independent choice factors, it is extremely important to disambiguate it so as to undo the conflation.

Dropping the 9-word -- and completely unnecessary -- clause 

"Where a publisher does not offer option 1 above" [i.e., does not offer GOLD]

would remove the conflation and the ambiguity.

To make this even more transparent, the statement from Mark Thorley, interviewed by Peter Suber, could also be added:

"Where a journal offers both suitable green (2.) and suitable gold (1.) options" [i.e., hybrid GREEN+GOLD] , "the PI may choose the option he or she thinks most appropriate" 

This would make it perfectly clear that if a hybrid GREEN+GOLD journal is chosen, the author is free to choose either its GREEN or GOLD option.

It is not clear why the clause  "Where a publisher does not offer option 1 above" was ever inserted in the first place, as the logic of what is intended is perfectly clear without it, and is only obscured by inserting it. 

(The only two conceivable reasons I can think of for that gratuitous and misleading clause's having been inserted in the first place are that either (a) the drafters half-forgot about the hybrid GREEN+GOLD possibility, or (b) they were indeed trying to push authors (and publishers!) toward the GOLD option in both choices: the between-journal choice of GOLD versus GREEN journal and the within-journal choice of the GOLD versus GREEN option -- possibly because of Gold Fever induced by BIS's Finch Folly.)

The RCUK OA Policy can be fixed very easily (and without any fanfare) by doing the two tweaks highlighted at the beginning of this posting -- the first for disambiguation, the second for clarification.

Once that is done, we can all unite in support of the RCUK policy and do everything we can to make it succeed. (There is still a lot of work to do in the implementation details, to provide a reliable fundee-compliance-assurance mechanism.)

If these two essential tweaks were not made, however, then the RCUK OA policy would not only fail (because of author resistance to constraints on journal choice, resentment at the diversion of scarce research funds to double-pay publishers, and outrage at the prospect of having to use their own funds when the RCUK subsidy is insufficient): It would also handicap OA policies by funders and institutions all over the world, by giving publishers worldwide the strong incentive to offer hybrid Gold OA (which, for publishers, is merely a license change, for each individual double-paid article) and -- to maximize the chances of increasing their total revenues by a potential 6% (the UK share) at the expense of UK tax-payers and research funds -- lengthen their Green OA embargoes beyond RCUK limits to make sure UK authors must choose paid Gold.

The failed RCUK policy would not only mean that the UK fails to provide OA to its own research output, but it would make it harder for the rest of the world to mandate and provide (Green) OA to the remaining 94% of worldwide research output. The perverse effects of the UK's colossal false start would hence be both local and global.

[Note: I am using very approximate estimates here, but, within an order of magnitude, they give a much-needed sense of the proportions, if not the exact amounts involved.]

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If the Finch/RCUK OA Policy is not revised, worldwide publishers' subscription revenues stand to increase by c. 6% (the approximate UK percentage of all annual peer-reviewed research published) over and above current global subscription revenues, at the expense of the UK taxpayer and UK research, in exchange for Gold OA to UK research output.

(This essentially amounts to the author's buying back a copyright license from a hybrid subscription/Gold publisher, in exchange for c. $1000 per article for c. 60,000* articles per year, while letting the publisher continue to sell the article as part of the journal's subscription content. The c. $1000 per article hybrid Gold OA fee is approximately 1/Nth of total worldwide subscription revenue for journals publishing N articles per year.)

I don't know how much the UK as a whole is paying currently for subscriptions. If the UK publishes 6% of worldwide research, perhaps we can assume it pays 6% of publishers' worldwide subscription revenues (if the UK consumes about the same amount as it produces), hence another 60 million dollars.

If so, that means that paying pre-emptively for Gold OA for all UK research output approximately doubles what the UK is paying for publication. (And even if publishers make good on their promise to translate their double-dipping hybrid Gold revenues into proportionate reductions in their worldwide subscription rates, for the UK that only means a 6% rebate on the 100% surcharge that the UK alone pays to make its own output Gold OA -- i.e., $36 million back on a total UK expenditure of $60 million for subscriptions + $60 million for pre-emptive Gold OA license buy-backs.)

And it gets worse: The UK can't cancel its subscriptions, because UK researchers still need access to the other 94% of annual research worldwide.

Nor is that all: By (1) giving subscription publishers the incentive to offer a hybrid Gold OA option (in exchange for 6% more revenue at virtually no added cost to the publisher, since CC-BY is simply a license!) as well as (2) giving subscription publishers the incentive to increase the embargo length on the Green option (cost-free for authors), Finch/RCUK's "Gold trumps Green" policy also denies UK (and worldwide) researchers access to what could have been Green OA research from the rest of the world (94%) for those institutions and individuals in the UK and worldwide who cannot afford subscription access to the journal in which articles they may need are published.

And the perverse effects of RCUK's "Gold trumps Green" policy also make it harder for institutions and funders worldwide to adopt Green OA mandates, thereby reducing the potential for worldwide Green OA (which is to say, worldwide OA) still further.

And that suits subscription publishers just fine! It's win/win for them, just so long as funders and institutions don't mandate Green.

That's why subscription publishers lobbied so hard for the Finch/RCUK outcome -- and applauded it as a step in the right direction when it was announced.

What is more of a head-shaker is that "pure" Gold OA publishers lobbied for "Gold trumps Green" too, hoping it would drive more business their way (or, to be fairer, hoping it would force subscription publishers to convert to pure Gold).

But the only thing the promise of Finch/RCUK's Grand Gold Subsidy (6%) actually does is inspire subscription publishers to create a hybrid Gold option (cost-free to them) and to stretch embargoes beyond RCUK's allowable limits, to make sure RCUK authors who wish to keep publishing with them pick and pay for the Gold option (whether or not RCUK gives them enough of the funds BIS co-opted from the UK research budget to pay for it all), rather than the cost-free Green option (which Gold trumps).

Ceterum censeo...: But all these perverse effects can be eliminated by simply striking 9 words from the RCUK policy, making the Gold and Green options equally permissible ways of complying.

Apart from that, what is needed is to shore up the RCUK mandate's compliance verification mechanism. See: "United Kingdom's Open Access Policy Urgently Needs a Tweak" (appears in D-Lib tomorrow, Friday, September 14).

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*The percentage of all peer-reviewed journals indexed by Ulrichs that are "pure" (not hybrid) Gold is about 13%, using the numbers in DOAJ. An analysis of the Thomson-Reuters-ISI subset of all articles published in 2007-2011 with a UK affiliation for the first author yielded 324,587 UK articles (65K/year) of which 13,260 articles (3K/year) (4%) were published in pure Gold OA journals -- i.e., not double-dipping hybrid subscription Gold journals.

Unless 9 words are removed from the new RCUK OA policy, it is in direct contradiction with the very first item of the new BOAI-10-Recommendations for institutions.

RCUK Draft OA Policy:

3. Research Council Expectations of Researchers

...Peer reviewed research papers which result from research that is wholly or partially funded by the Research Councils:

1. must be published in journals which are compliant with Research Council policy on Open Access (see section 4)....

4. Compliance of Journals

The Research Councils will continue to support a mixed approach to Open Access. The Research Councils will recognise a journal as being compliant with their policy on Open Access if:

1. The journal provides via its own website immediate and unrestricted access to the publisher’s final version of the paper (the Version of Record), and allows immediate deposit of the Version of Record in other repositories without restriction on re-use. This may involve payment of an ‘Article Processing Charge’ (APC) to the publisher. The CC-BY license should be used in this case.

Or

2. Where a publisher does not offer option 1 above, the journal must allow deposit of Accepted Manuscripts that include all changes resulting from peer review (but not necessarily incorporating the publisher’s formatting) in other repositories, without restrictions on non-commercial re-use and within a defined period. In this option no ‘Article Processing Charge’ will be payable to the publisher. Research Councils will accept a delay of no more than six months between on-line publication and a research paper becoming Open Access, except in the case of research papers arising from research funded by the AHRC and the ESRC where the maximum embargo period is 12 months.

BOAI-10 OA Policy Recommendations for Institutions and Funders:

1. On policy

1.1. Every institution of higher education should have a policy assuring that peer-reviewed versions of all future scholarly articles by faculty members are deposited in the institution’s designated repository...

Deposits should be made as early as possible, ideally at the time of acceptance, and no later than the date of formal publication.

University policies should respect faculty freedom to submit new work to the journals of their choice. [emphasis added]

University policies should encourage but not require publication in OA journals [emphasis added] ...

1.3. Every research funding agency, public or private, should have a policy assuring that peer-reviewed versions of all future scholarly articles reporting funded research are deposited in a suitable repository and made OA as soon as practicable.

Deposits should be made as early as possible, ideally at the time of acceptance, and no later than the date of formal publication...