The One Sure Way To OA

The One Sure Way To OA

Stevan Harnad
Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Sciences
Université du Québec à Montréal
CANADA
&
School of Electronics and Computer Science
University of Southampton
UNITED KINGDOM

ABSTRACT: When research is accessible free for all on the web (Open Access, OA) it is used and cited substantially more than if it is accessible only to users whose institutions can afford to subscribe to the journal in which it is published.  This is called the OA Impact Advantage. Researchers, their institutions, their funders, the tax-paying public, and research itself all benefit from this enhanced research impact. Rich and diverse new metrics of research impact are being designed to measure and reward it, in research evaluation and funding.  There are two ways to provide OA: by publishing in an OA journal that makes it free for all online ("Gold OA") or by publishing in any journal at all and making it free for all by self-archiving the final, refereed draft in the author's institutional repository ("Green OA"). The percentage of research that is made OA is only about 20% until and unless the author's research institution or  funder mandates that research must be made OA, in which case the rate rapidly rises toward 100%. Only Green OA can be mandated. Hence the one sure way to OA is to mandate Green OA self-archiving.

Gargouri, Y., Hajjem, C., Lariviere, V., Gingras, Y., Brody, T., Carr, L. and Harnad, S. (2010)  Self-Selected or Mandated, Open Access Increases Citation Impact for Higher Quality Research. PLOS ONE 5(10) e13636

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Harnad, S. (2001) The Self-Archiving Initiative. Nature 410: 1024-1025

Harnad, S., Brody, T., Vallieres, F., Carr, L., Hitchcock, S., Gingras, Y, Oppenheim, C., Stamerjohanns, H., & Hilf, E. (2004) The Green and Gold Roads to Open Access. Nature Web Focus.

Harnad, S. (2007) The Green Road to Open Access: A Leveraged Transition. In: Anna Gacs. The Culture of Periodicals from the Perspective of the Electronic Age. L'Harmattan. 99-106.

Harnad, S. (2008) Waking OA’s “Slumbering Giant”: The University's Mandate To Mandate Open Access. New Review of Information Networking 14(1): 51 - 68

Harnad, S. (2009)  Open Access Scientometrics and the UK Research Assessment Exercise. Scientometrics 79 (1) 

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Harnad, S. (2010) The Immediate Practical Implication of the Houghton Report: Provide Green Open Access Now. Prometheus 28: 55-59

Sale, A., Couture, M., Rodrigues, E., Carr, L. and Harnad, S. (2010) Open Access Mandates and the "Fair Dealing" Button. In: Dynamic Fair Dealing: Creating Canadian Culture Online (Rosemary J. Coombe & Darren Wershler, Eds)