Berkeley Press's Advice to Universities on Institutional Repositories

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SUMMARY: Instead of supporting the current groundswell of Green OA self-archiving mandates to help universities fill their own Institutional Repositories (IRs) with their own published research journal articles, Bankier & Perciali (2008) of Berkeley Electronic Press recommend in Serials Review that universities should become Gold OA publishers of their own research output. It is not clear whether B&M mean that each university should become the in-house publisher of its own output (in which case one wonders about peer review and neutrality) or whether university presses should simply try to take over more of the existing journals from commercial and society publishers. In any case, recommendations have proved resoundingly ineffective in accelerating the transition to 100% OA, whether the recommendation has been to publishers to convert to Gold OA or to authors to provide Green OA for what they have published. Mandates, in contrast, have consistently proved highly effective and mandates are now growing rapidly, facilitating OA provision by allaying authors' fears about copyright and uncertainty about priorities. But Gold OA cannot be mandated: Only Green OA can be. So advocates of Gold OA are advised to be patient, and to allow Green OA mandates to have their beneficial effect, generating 100% OA. Then we can talk about whether, when and how to convert journals to Gold OA. Not before. For sounder advice to universities on how to make better use of their IRs in managing and showcasing their research assets, see: Swan & Carr (2008), likewise in Serials Review.

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Bankier, J-G & Perciali, I. (2008) The Institutional Repository Rediscovered: What Can a University Do for Open Access Publishing? Serials Review (in press)

ABSTRACT: Universities have always been one of the key players in open access publishing and have encountered the particular obstacle that faces this Green model of open access, namely, disappointing author uptake. Today, the university has a unique opportunity to reinvent and to reinvigorate the model of the institutional repository. This article explores what is not working about the way we talk about repositories to authors today and how can we better meet faculty needs. More than an archive, a repository can be a showcase that allows scholars to build attractive scholarly profiles, and a platform to publish original content in emerging open-access journals.

Bankier is President, The Berkeley Electronic Press, Berkeley, CA 94705, USA
Perciali is Director of Journals, The Berkeley Electronic Press, Berkeley, CA 94705, USA

This article is rather out of date. The authors, B&P, note (correctly) that Institutional Repositories (IRs) did not fill spontaneously upon creation. But their article does not mention or take into account today's swelling tide of funder and university Green OA self-archiving mandates.

This oversight is perhaps partly because some of the most recent mandates (European Research Council, NIH, and the unanimous recommendation for a Green OA self-archiving mandate by the Council of the European University Association, with 791 universities in 46 countries) came after B&P's article -- which is very thin on citation or discussion of actual mandate progress or rationale -- went to press.

So, instead of supporting the current mandates for universities to fill their IRs with their own published research journal articles, B&P argue that universities should become Gold OA publishers of their own research output.

It is not clear whether each university, according to B&P, should become the in-house publisher of its own output (in which case one wonders about peer review and neutrality) or whether university presses should simply try to take over more of the existing journals from commercial and society publishers. Either way, Berkeley Press is here again recommending spontaneous Gold OA publishing reform (which, in terms of number of articles for which it has provided OA has been even slower than spontaneous Green OA self-archiving by authors).

Recommendations have proved resoundingly ineffective (across what will soon be a decade) in accelerating the transition to 100% OA, whether the recommendation has been to publishers to convert to Gold OA or to authors to provide Green OA to what they have published.

Mandates, in contrast, have consistently proved highly effective, in every instance where they were adopted, and mandates are now growing rapidly. Researchers comply, and comply willingly. It is apparent that mandates play the role of welcome facilitation, not unwelcome coercion, serving to allay author fears about copyright and author uncertainty about priorities.

But Gold OA cannot be mandated: Only Green OA can be.

So advocates of Gold OA are advised to be patient, and to allow Green OA mandates to have their beneficial effect, generating 100% OA. Then we can talk about whether, when and how to convert journals to Gold OA. Not before.

As to advice to universities on how to make better use of their IRs in managing and showcasing their research assets: for a much more current and realistic article, see:

Swan, A. and Carr, L. (2008) Institutions, their repositories and the Web. Serials Review, 34 (1) (in press).

ABSTRACT: It will soon be rare for research-based institutions not to have a digital repository. The main reason for a repository is to maximise the visibility of the institution's research outputs (provide Open Access), yet few contain a representative proportion of the research produced by their institutions. Repositories form one part of the institution's web platform. An explicit, mandatory policy on the use of the repository for collecting outputs is needed in every institution so that the full research record is collected. Once full, a repository is a tool that enables senior management in research institutions to collate and assess research, to market their institution, to facilitate new forms of scholarship and to enable the tools that will produce new knowledge.

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum