How to Upgrade Sweden's New UCB Open Access Policy to a Green OA Mandate

First, let me heartily congratulate University College of Boras (UCB) on having adopted an Open Access policy, and for registering it in ROARMAP! This is Sweden's fourth open access policy. (The other three are Lund's, Stockholm's and KB's).

But UCB's policy is so excruciatingly close to being a picture-perfect Green OA mandate -- and could so easily be transformed into one (which would make it the planet's 42nd OA mandate, and Sweden's 1st) -- that I can't resist again playing the preacher. All the essential elements are in place. It's just that the current wording needlessly loses the opportunity to make full use of the components of the policy, and of what is legally open to UCB.

The pertinent current passages are these:

3. All employees at the University College of Boras must register their publications in BADA.

5. Scientific journals often have a policy stating that manuscripts of articles (with certain restrictions) also can be published in an open digital archive. All employees at the University College of Boras are recommended to deposit manuscripts to BADA according to the rules and regulations of the journal, and if such rules and regulations are lacking the author should request permission to publish the article in BADA.

The all-important distinction UCB has failed to make is the one between (a) depositing a document and (b) making it Open Access.

The full text of a document can always be deposited in an Institutional Repository and made Closed Access, which means that no one can access it except the author and the webmaster. No legal restrictions can be placed on such internal institutional record-keeping for an institution's own research output. The metadata are accessible and visible webwide, but the full text is not.

Then there is the option to make the deposit Open Access. This can be done in accordance with the journal's copyright policy. 62% of journals already endorse immediately making the deposit Open Access. (See Romeo [n.b, it is momentarily malfunctioning!])

For the remaining 38%, I strongly recommend that UCB implement the "email eprint request" Button, which makes it possible for authors of Closed Access Deposits to provide, semi-automatically, individual copies to individual eprint requesters, for research purposes, during any embargo period.

All that needs to be done is to change the word "register" in clause 3 above to "deposit", and in clause 5, in the first sentence, the phase should not be "published in an open digital archive" but "made Open Access"; and then replace "deposit manuscripts to BADA" with: "make the deposited manuscript Open Access" according to... etc., as follows:

3. All employees at the University College of Boras must deposit their publications in BADA -- [the final refereed draft ("postprint") immediately upon acceptance for publication].

5. Scientific journals often have a policy stating that manuscripts of articles (with certain restrictions) also can be made Open Access. All employees at the University College of Boras are recommended to make the deposited manuscript Open Access according to the rules and regulations of the journal, and if such rules and regulations are lacking the author should request permission to publish the article in BADA.

With the above changes the UCB policy not only becomes a mandate (which has been demonstrated by Professor Arthur Sale in Australia to work successfully to generate 100% OA within about 2 years) rather than just a request or invitation, which has repeatedly been demonstrated to fail. But such a policy would be in conformity with the unanimous recommendation of the Council of the European University Association, representing 791 universities in 46 countries. It would also be in line with the policy of the European Research Council and the flagship of the European universities' Open Access mandate: University of Liege, of which the Rector, Professor Bernard Rentier, is also founder and director of EurOpenScholar, which is dedicated to promoting OA mandates all over Europe.

I urge UCB to make the few small changes required to make UCB's current policy into the model Immediate-Deposit/Optional-Access ((DOA) mandate, the optimal OA policy for UCB, a model for the rest of Scandinavia, and the 42nd Green OA mandate worldwide.

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum