How to Maximize Compliance With Funder OA Mandates: Potentiate Institutional Mandates

Richard Poynder has raised some interesting questions in "Open Access Mandates: Ensuring Compliance". Here are some suggestions as to why neither NIH nor the Wellcome Trust (WT) has a compliance rate of 100% -- and what could be done to remedy that:

1. How To Comply. Both the NIH and WT mandates designate Gold OA publishing as one of the means of fulfilling the mandate, instead of uniformly designating fundee self-archiving as the sole means of compliance (whether or not the fundee publishes in a Gold OA journal.

2. Who Complies. Funder mandates only apply to fundees: only fundees are bound by them. Yet fulfillment can be done by either fundees or non-fundees (publishers, especially in the case of WT), instead of uniformly designating fundee self-archiving as the sole means of compliance.

3. When To Comply. The designated timing for compliance with both mandates is not immediately upon publication -- instead of uniformly designating fundee self-archiving immediately upon publication as the sole means of compliance (even if the self-archived draft is not made immediately OA). As noted, it is in publishers' interests to make compliance as delayed as possible, and to leave it in their hands rather than the fundees' hands.

4. What Version To Deposit. It contributes to the delay in compliance and the ambiguity as to who is fulfilling the mandate (the fundee or the publisher) if compliance can wait for the publisher's PDF instead of uniformly designating fundee self-archiving of the refereed final draft immediately upon publication as the sole means of compliance (even if the self-archived draft is not made immediately OA and the publisher's PDF is optionally deposited later).

5. Where To Deposit. Both NIH and WT mandates stress direct deposit in PubMed Central (PMC), instead of uniformly designating fundee self-archiving of the refereed final draft in the fundee's own institutional reposiitory immediately upon publication as the sole means of compliance (even if the self-archived draft is not made immediately OA and the publisher's PDF is optionally deposited later), thereby recruiting fundees' institutions to monitor and ensure compliance with the fulfillment conditions of the grant (as institutions are always very eager to do!).

Institututional ID/OA Mandates Work. None of these delays, ambiguities or uncertainties applies to (effective) institutional mandates such as U. Liege's model ID/OA (immediate-deposit/optional-access) mandate. Not only can author self-archiving in the institutional repository be designated by institutions as the sole means of submitting research for institutional reporting and performance assessment (as Cameron Neylon correctly points out), but institutions are in a position to monitor deposits continuously, not just when a research project grant (which may last for years) has elapsed.

Mutual Potentiation Between Institutional and Funder Mandates. In addition, designating institutional repository self-archiving as the means of compliance for both funder and institutional mandates motivates institutions to adopt self-archiving mandates of their own, for all of their research output, in all disciplines, not just NIH- or WT-funded research. (Institutions are the universal providers of all published research, funded and unfunded.) Funder mandates designating institutional deposit make institutional and funder mandates convergent and mutually reinforcing -- rather than divergent and competitive, as funder mandates requiring direct institution-external deposit in PMC (instead of just automated harvesting or export from institutional repositories) do.

Effective Institutional Mandates Can Generate 100% OA Globally. The Liege model institutional ID/OA mandate really works. If funders and institutions worldwide collaborate, 100% OA can be reached not just for NIH and WT funded research but for all research.