Sunday, March 25. 2007
The European Commission has already mandated Green OA!
I append below another brilliant suggestion from the redoubtable N. Miradon (who may be retired but hardly retiring -- and tireless!) in the form of a proposed letter to European MPs and MEPs about the forthcoming EC deliberations on Open Access policy.If I have not misunderstand, N. Miradon has drawn to our attention here an existing EU/EC policy under which it would be possible to implement an ID/OA mandate for EU research funding with no further legislative or consultative changes required at all!
(See comments further below: It looks to me as if pointing this out to the EC would be the shortest and easiest route to the adoption of the EC A1 recommendation -- since strongly supported by the Brussels Open Access Petition -- to implement Green OA self-archiving, for, in effect, it is already mandated! The only thing that still needs to be specified is trivial and noncontroversial: the locus and mode of submission and storage of the already mandated publication. Currently it needs to be sent in by email; the only change needed is to require it to be deposited in a Closed Access URL in an Institutional Repository! More about this below.)
A few suggestions are added below concerning the all-important locus of deposit of the published research documents.
It is very important (in order to generate a coherent, systematic, universally scaleable solution) that the default locus of deposit should be specified as the researcher's own (OAI-compliant) Institutional Repository (IR). Other loci are possible if the researcher's institution does not yet have an IR: there are numerous possible Central Repositories (CRs), national and international, and the EU could perhaps also provide one of its own; but the preferred locus should be the researcher's own IR. The EU policy will also help encourage research institutions to create their own IRs if they have not done so already, and to fill them also with their non-EU-funded research output. That will complement the funded research and make all European peer-reviewed research output OA, maximising its usage and impact:
Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR)
"Central vs. Distributed Archives" (began Jun 1999)
"Central versus institutional self-archiving" (began Nov 2003)
"France's HAL, OAI interoperability, and Central vs Institutional Repositories" (started Oct 2006)
Optimizing OA Self-Archiving Mandates: What? Where? When? Why? How?
A few comments and suggestions on N. Miradon's text:
On Sat, 24 Mar 2007, N. Miradon wrote in the American Scientist Open Access Forum:I would add here that depositing them in an interoperable OAI-compliant repository would be optimal, preferably the researcher's own Institutional Repository (IR).
This is about the forthcoming parliamentary discussions of "Scientific Information in the Digital Age: Access, Dissemination and Preservation".
I have drafted a letter to my MP and to my MEP. Copy of my draft letter below the fold.
I would be v grateful if you could read my letter for errors and omissions, and send corrections to me off list (or post them here).
And if you have 2 minutes to spare, perhaps you could send something like this to your own deputé/ member of parliament.
N. Miradon
Dear Member of Parliament/Member of the European Parliament:
I understand that Parliament has received a Communication from the European Commission "On Scientific Information in the Digital Age: Access, Dissemination and Preservation". There is an accompanying "Staff Working Paper" - details in footnotes [1] and [2] below.
The reason for this letter is to ask you to pursue some questions which are relevant to "Access, Dissemination and Preservation" of scientific information; but which the Commission papers do not seem to mention.
I am a retired research scientist. I have always found that the European Research programmes are well structured at the start, but that it is difficult to find the results at the end. The problem is that the scientific information that is produced by each EU research project is dispersed through publications in a multitude of books, journals, pamphlets and Commission and other web pages.
So I would like to ask why all published results from EU-supported research projects cannot be grouped together and made available via one well-organised EU web page or 'portal'.
The web page or portal can be harvested from the EU researchers' IRs, or it can consist of a list of the projects, or the papers resulting from the projects, together with a link to their URL in the IR in which they are deposited.
I think that it is reasonable to ask the Commission to do this. The three necessary constituents of a 'portal' are -
(i) the published research documents,
(ii) a web site,
(iii) a data standard for classifying and linking the documents.
The OAI protocol is the standard for making the IRs interoperable. There may need to be some further tag for specifically selecting EU funded publications.
The European Commission already possesses (i) and (ii) and (iii);
(i) The Commission's "Seventh Framework Programme Grant Agreement" already requires that every research contract funded under the Seventh Framework Programme should send to the Commission an electronic copy of every publication produced, and that the Commission shall, with appropriate safeguards, be authorised to publish every document sent to it - see footnote [3].
This existing EU/EC policy is already a godsend, as it already provides the basis for the EU to adopt the Immediate-Deposit/Optional-Access Mandate (ID/OA) (also called the "dual deposit/release strategy") without any further need of legislation or consultation:
As the EU already requires (i.e., mandates) both (1) the electronic copy of the publication, and (2) the right to make it OA (if and when the copyright agreement with the publisher allows it), the only thing left to stipulate is how "send[ing] to the commission an electronic copy" should be done, immediately upon acceptance for publication, in the form of depositing it in the researcher's own IR (preferably, or in a OAI-compliant CR otherwise), in immediate Open Access if possible, otherwise in Closed Access -- and merely sending the commission the URL for the (Closed Access) deposit!
The EU can harvest the document if it wishes, or link it in a portal. The only change involved here is a specification of the mode of submission for what has already been mandated by the EC.
"Optimizing OA Self-Archiving Mandates: What? Where? When? Why? How?"
"Generic Rationale and Model for University Open Access Self-Archiving Mandate: Immediate-Deposit/Optional Access (ID/OA)"
Dual Deposit/Release Strategy
A National Open Access Policy
(The NIH had a similar opportunity to do this in 2004, but failed to take notice.)
"A Simple Way to Optimize the NIH Public Access Policy(Oct 2004)"
And through links to the researcher's own IR.
(ii) The Commission already has numerous web pages from earlier Framework Programmes, each showing the reports of its particular research projects - some examples are listed in [4].
(iii) The Commission has already developed a "Common European Research Information Format". The Commission has also sent it to the member states as a formal recommendation - see [5].
However the Commission has not yet managed to join up (i) + (ii) + (iii) So, for the results of EU research projects, "Access, Dissemination and Preservation" are substandard. I have sketched some of the current rather untidy situation in footnote [4].
It is of course understandable that a large bureaucracy should sometimes fail to join up the various elements under its control.
It is also understandable that bureaucracies should not draw attention to internal problems in their published Papers.
However I trust that you and your colleagues will investigate the matter when you discuss "On Scientific Information in the Digital Age: Access, Dissemination and Preservation".
It should not be too difficult or expensive for the Commission to ensure that the publications that are sent to the Commission, are made available on the websites that the Commission runs, using the information format which the Commission itself recommends.
If this is done, then all published documents from the research that is funded in the Seventh Framework Programme will become available over the web. Industry, research workers and citizens will all benefit - and they should be grateful to the Commission and to you.
Yours sincerely
N. Miradon
Footnotes
1. "Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council and the European Economic and Social Committee on scientific information in the digital age: access, dissemination and preservation {SEC(2007)181}" / COM/2007/0056 final /
in English, French and German.
2. "Commission staff working document - Document accompanying the Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council and the European Economic and Social Committee on scientific information in the digital age: access, dissemination and preservation {COM(2007) 56 final}" / SEC/2007/0181 final /"
3. "FP7 Grant Agreement - Annex II General Conditions Version 20.12.06 ISC clean 3."
Article II.30 (Dissemination) says - "... Furthermore, an electronic copy of the published version or the final manuscript accepted for publication shall also be provided to the Commission at the same time for the purpose set out in Article II.12(2) if this does not infringe any rights of third parties."
And Article II.12. (Information and communication) says - "... 2. The Commission shall be authorised to publish, in whatever form and on or by whatever medium, the following information: ... the details/references and the abstracts of scientific publications relating to foreground and, where provided pursuant to Article II.30, the published version or the final manuscript accepted for publication; ..."
Compare the above to the ID/OA Mandate (or "Dual Deposit/Release Strategy"): "Deposit, in the author's own Institutional Repository (IR), of the author's final, peer-reviewed draft of all journal articles is required immediately upon acceptance for publication... but whether access to that deposit is immediately set to Open Access or provisionally set to Closed Access (with only the metadata, but not the full-text, accessible webwide) is left up to the author..."
Stevan Harnad
4. The "Fifth framework programme of the European Community for research, technological development and demonstration activities (1998 - 2002)" was divided into thematic programmes and horizontal programmes (TP and HP).
Programmes TP and HP were divided into sub programmes, and each sub programme was further divided into key actions (KA).
Here are the starter web pages of TP1
TP 1 Quality of life and management of living resources
TP 1, KA 1
TP 1, KA 2: ?
TP 1, KA 3
TP 1, KA 4
TP 1, KA 5
TP 1, KA 6
TP 1, KA 7:
Note that each of these pages has a different design, and that none of them has a search engine.
If you are looking for particular information, you may also need to look through the rest of the structure (web pages not listed here)
1 Thematic programmes
TP 2 User friendly information society
TP 3 Competitive and sustainable growth
TP 4 Energy, environment and sustainable development
2 Horizontal programmes
HP 1 Confirming the international role of community research
HP 2 Promotion of innovation and encouragement of participation of SMEs
HP 3 Improving human research potential and the socio-economic knowledge base
5. CERIF (Common European Research Information Format) was developed with the support of the EC (European Commission) in two major phases: 1987-1990 and 1997-1999. It is an European Union Recommendation to member states.
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