Where to Mandate Deposit: Proxy Deposit and the "Denominator Fallacy"

On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 [identity deleted] wrote:

"Re: PubMedCentral (PMC) [is] (relatively) well populated."

PMC is only better populated than any other repository to the degree that some funders have mandated deposit. But there is a "denominator fallacy" here:

Mandates only cover content mandated by the funders in question. As a percentage of the world's (or, if you like, the US's) total annual biological and medical research output, PMC still covers only a small fraction of that total annual target.

The global baseline for spontaneous (unmandated) self-archiving is about 15%. The degree to which PMC is doing better than that -- and it is, but the question is by how much? -- can only be properly determined if we divide the deposits of biomedical articles published in each year by the total published biomedical output for that year (worldwide, or by US authors, if you prefer).

If you do that calculation, you will almost certainly find that PMC is doing no better nor worse for its mandated content than any mandated institutional repository; and for its unmandated content it is likewise doing no better nor worse than any unmandated institutional repository (c. 15%).

We cannot go a single step further on the underlying question -- how to populate repositories, and how well various approaches and repositories are doing -- until the denominator fallacy is corrected.

"It's my understanding that not only is there a funder mandate, but the Wellcome Trust also publicly favour the author-pays model, through which the publisher will deposit the article to PubMedCentral on behalf of the author."

Yes, and that's bad news, and unfortunately that's a bad policy on the part of the Wellcome Trust (WT), ideologically rather than functionally driven, and ill thought-through, but one from which WT seems to be unwilling to consider budging. So the problem is that whereas WT are rightly to be admired for having been the first funder to mandate OA, they have also set a very bad example for other mandates.

(1) Note that squandering research money on funding Gold OA publication for WT-funded research does not increase by a single article the number of articles that are made OA as a result of the WT mandate. (They could all have been simply self-archived instead, setting an incomparably better, and more scaleable example for other funders, who have better things to do with their scarce research funds than to pay for Gold OA when they can mandate Green OA without having to redirect any money from research: Publication is already being paid for, in full, by institutional subscriptions) The prospect of having to pay for Gold just discourages potential emulators who could mandate Green, but cannot afford to pay for Gold.

(2) In addition, WT mandates central deposit instead of institutional, which is, as I've said, counterproductive for facilitating and reinforcing the really crucial mandates, which are the ones by the universal providers of all research: the world's universities and research institutes. Central deposit mandates compete with institutional deposit mandates, for no good reason whatsoever.

(3) And third, allowing a deposit mandate to be fulfilled by a publisher instead of by the fundee (hence the mandatee) is doubly foolish. It lets the publisher decide (and enforce) the embargo period (as well as allowing them to drag their feet, since they are beholden to no one in their timing or compliance); and it reinforces the paid Gold option (self-fulfillingly) by making it the only one likely to generate timely deposit (but at a price).

Three unnecessary, dysfunctional features, adopted completely arbitrarily, simply because WT did not think things through carefully (and would not -- and alas still will not -- listen to advice even today).

But now, because WT were the first mandators (and they still do deserve eternal blessing for that!), their somnambulistic "view" is taken to be oracular by others. So it does damage beyond the ambit of WT's own funding.

"The rights negotiation over what can be done with the full text deposit in that situation is clear and the Wellcome trust openly prefer this route to OA [over] the post-print deposit, although they do support both models if the post-print is deposited to PubMedCentral directly. They also are prepared to pay for such a model of author-pays and publisher deposits."

As I've just said, it's bad news that WT "prefers" the funded Gold OA route because it makes Green appear less adequate for providing OA (though it is in fact more adequate tha Gold), it wastes money, it discourages mandates from those who cannot follow WT's example with paying for Gold, and it is totally unnecessary:

There are no re-uses at all that the access-deprived potential users (for whom OA is intended) require that they do not have with Green OA: All that is needed is immediate, free online access to the full texts of the articles. There are no further uses or re-uses that need sanctioning or licensing. Researchers, students and teachers don't do "mashups" of journal articles, as teenagers do for music, video and text youtube. They just need to be able to access the texts online, download them to read and data-crunch and perhaps print off for themselves. That's it. The published text's content (as opposed to its verbatim text) was always free to be used, applied, built-upon (and cited), if only the user could manage to access the verbatim text. And that's what Green OA provides, 24/7, webwide: access. Teachers can put the URLs in their course-packs (no need to worry about supplying multiple hard copies, or any associated permissions issues: just URLs are enough if the texts themselves are OA). No need to "re-publish" either. So what are these re-use rights that all that extra Gold money is needed to pay for?

And as to timing: WT allows a one-year embargo. If they mandated institutional deposit, the institutional repositories' "email eprint request" Button could do a good deal better than that. 63% of journals endorse immediate OA (no embargo) already. For the remaining 37% the IRs can provide "Almost OA" -- for just a few extra user and author keystrokes and slight delay (but not remotely comparable to a year's delay!) for the semi-automatic eprint request fulfillment.

Instead, WT "prefers" to pay for immediate OA at a high price. The price is higher than they think, because of the emulation (and non-emulation) that their bad example inspires, in place of good, sensible practice that would generate far more (Green) OA and Green OA mandates, far faster, with no loss, only gain, over the dysfunctional WT policy.

"Apparently the route to post-print deposit in PubMedCentral is not particularly easy, although I can't speak from personal experience."

My guess is that it's no harder or easier to deposit in PMC than in any other repository, central or institutional (and the fact is that it's easy and fast to deposit: you just have to be mandated to try it and then you find out). But with WT "preferring" to offer what looks to the author like the even easier option of proxy deposit (some day) by the publisher (if embargoed) and immediate proxy deposit if paid-Gold, the author never even gets to learn from personal experience how easy and fast it really is.

Another bad example to set.

"Such complexities at the deposit stage will also force authors into paying for publication, just to give themselves an easier life!"

I doubt that profoundly. If the choice really were to do a few minutes worth of keystrokes or pay out of their pockets, authors would quickly discover how easy it really was to deposit, and would save their money. But with WT offering to pay for Gold OA in their stead, I don't doubt that a number of years more will be wasted going down that dysfunctional route before it is discovered that it is both unnecessary and wasteful.

"Personally, I'd much rather see the author depositing in institutional repositories, and PubMedCentral harvesting from us."

Yes, that is indeed the optimal way, not just for PMC and WT but for the institution, which, if all funders mandated institutional deposit, would soon realize that it made sense for the institution itself to go on to mandate (institutional) deposit for all of its research output, whether funded or not.

"There have been a couple of lonely requests on discussion lists from repository managers asking whether others have deposited works to PubMedCentral on behalf of authors but no replies so far."

Why on earth should proxy deposit be offered to authors to spare them a few minutes' worth of keystrokes? If it comes to that, that's what secretaries are paid for, or student assistants. Let authors decide for themselves whether it's worth paying money to spare themselves those few extra keystrokes per paper. (I suppose some authors still pay secretaries to do the keystrokes to type their drafts in the first place, so this would just be a few more keystrokes...)

"Why might we do this on authors' behalf? Because authors recognise the importance of subject repositories far more than they do that of institutional repositories and if we can do this for them then we gain their support and understanding. Because, whether there is an institutional mandate or not, it's not right that authors should have to deposit the same article twice."

Unfortunately the above passage has conflated so many unfounded assumptions, I hardly know where to begin!

(i) The reason it's better not to do deposits on authors' behalf is that in reality deposits are fast and easy and it is absurd to fear or avoid them.

(ii) In addition, if everything continues to be done to insulate authors' groundless phobias about a few keystrokes from the simple reality of deposit, that simply makes the path to universal OA longer and more arduous (real arduousness being substituted for the notional arduousness that keeps authors at arms' length).

(iii) The only repositories that authors "recognise the importance of" are mandated repositories, regardless of whether the mandate is from their funder or their institutions (but preferably both!), and regardless of whether the repository is central or institutional -- but it had *#&% well better be just one-time, one-place deposit, otherwise the authors can and will and should revolt: and that's really what this is all about: A few minimal keystrokes, yes, but no unnecessary, redundant or profligate ones. WT did not think this through, otherwise it would have been realized at once that convergent institutional locus of deposit should be specified by both institutional and funder mandates, with automated central harvesting to whatever further loci hearts desire thereafter; the authors' fingers are not involved in that.

(iv) Doing proxy deposit on behalf of authors in order to "gain their support
and understanding"? Their support and understanding for what? So that the next time they want to deposit, they can again appeal to your free keystroke services? Where's the support and understanding in that? What's needed is mandates; that moots the need for "support and understanding."

(v) It's certainly true that "it's not right that authors should have to deposit the same article twice." That's the whole point here. We have WT and NIH to thank for the fact that we need to face this prospect at all. And it discourages the adoption of institutional mandates (and of course diminishes the probability of spontaneous institutional deposit to even below the 15% baseline).

(vi) But an institutional mandate would still remedy this, for then the author could deposit once, institutionally, and the proxy redeposit phase would be much lightened: Instead of having to do each deposit for the author, software (like SWORD) could be used to port the deposits' metadata from their IR to their secondary (central) loci. And then maybe the central deposit stipulation of WT, NIH and other such funders -- not all funders have been silly enough to emulate this dysfunctional stricture -- would die a natural death of its own accord, , eventually short-circuited by increasingly efficient software.

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum