Open Access Archivangelism

Richard Poynder is absolutely right on every point in his reply to my commentary. (Except possibly one [trivial] one: Richard seems to imply that IEEE has already embargoed the author's final refereed draft. It has not. Richard's is only a speculation that they might, given that some other publishers have done so. Richard is quite right that some other publishers have done so. And his speculation about IEEE may prove correct. But it should be noted that it is still just a prediction…!)

Now to what Richard says about "friction." ("[The request-eprint Button] introduces a different kind of friction into the system, including presumably a time delay...")

The request-eprint Button was created for both EPrints and DSpace repositories in 2006 with six very specific objectives:

1. to make it possible for all institutions and funders to mandate OA without being held back by constraints of copyright renegotiation or embargo length

2. to make it possible for all institutions and funders to mandate the deposit component (if not the OA component, nor the copyright retention component) of any OA policy without the need of an opt-out option

3. to make it possible for authors to provide almost-immediate access ("Almost-OA") to their articles during any OA embargo almost as effectively as by making them immediately OA, thereby maximizing uptake, usage and impact and minimizing losses to research and researchers during any OA embargo period

4. to make it possible for the date of deposit (if not the date of OA) to be dictated by institutions and funders, not by publishers

5. to make it possible for all authors to comply with OA mandates at a fixed, natural, determinate date in their publication cycle and work-flow, and to begin providing OA (or Almost-OA) to their (refereed) findings as early as possible.

6. to make it possible, once all or most institutions and funders worldwide have mandated immediate-deposit, to hasten the inevitable, natural and well-deserved death of all OA embargoes, under the mounting global pressure of OA and its benefits (and author fatigue with the "friction" of having to keep clicking the Button to provide Almost-OA!).

So what the Button introduces is not a delay (the publisher embargoes introduce the delay) but a way to provide access during the delay -- with some "friction" (extra keystrokes for authors) -- but that friction may well help put an end to such gratuitous delays sooner rather than later: Read on...

Publishers embargo (Green) OA in order to prevent their subscription revenue streams from being reduced by the revolutionary technical potential opened up by the online medium for as long as they possibly can, at the cost of research access and impact. The Almost-OA Button and the immediate-deposit mandate were jointly designed long before the Finch Fiasco of 2012, to cover the journals that already had OA embargoes, and any journals that might adopt OA embargoes in the future. It is a prophylactic against OA embargoes.

The perverse (but predictable) effect of Finch/RCUK's reckless new OA policy (of preferring to pay for Gold OA instead of reinforcing the requirement to provide cost-free Green OA) has been to give publishers a much stronger incentive to adopt and lengthen Green OA embargoes beyond RCUK's allowable length limit, and to offer hybrid Gold OA (i.e., keep charging institutions for subscriptions, but allow authors to pay them extra to make their individual article Gold OA) instead, so as to ensure that mandated UK authors are obliged to pay them extra for Gold OA rather than just providing cost-free Green OA.

Immediate-deposit plus the Almost-OA Button will be an antidote to this perverse effect of the Finch/RCUK mandate -- which is why it is so important to adopt HEFCE's proposal to make immediate-deposit mandatory in order to make articles eligible for REF2020.

There is a profound conflict of interest between, on the one side, research, researchers, their institutions, their funders, the vast R&D industry, students, teachers, journalists, and the tax-paying public that funds the research, and, on the other, the publishing industry. Publishing is a service industry that had been performing an essential service to research during the Gutenberg era of print on paper, but is now blocking the natural evolution of research communication in the print-free online era by trying to embargo making refereed research freely accessible to all online.

Publishers will not stop trying to delay the optimal and inevitable for research for as long as possible by embargoing Green OA. OA mandates are the way for the research community to overcome the publishing industry's delay tactics -- and the immediate-deposit mandate plus the Button are their key components.

Harvard/MIT/UC-style copyright-reservation mandates are fine, and welcome, but, as noted, they require opt-out options or authors will not comply. The opt-out is invariably needed for cases where the author's journal of choice insists on embargoing OA beyond the allowable limit and authors (rightly) insist on their journal of choice.

But all that the Harvard/MIT/UC-style copyright-reservation mandates need in order to make them work, optimally, is to add an immediate-deposit requirement (whether or not the article is embargoed), without opt-out. Authors who opt out can then rely on their repository's eprint-request Button to provide Almost-OA during the embargo.

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.)