Optimizing the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF) Open Access Mandate 1 (of 2)

"FWF requires all project leaders and workers to make their publications freely available through open access media on the Internet."

Message to Falk Reckling (FWF):

Dear Falk,

I fervently hope that you are communicating with us on GOAL open-mindedly, with a view to gaining information you perhaps did not have, and with a readiness to revise policy if a valid case can be made for the fact that it would help.

Because all too often, I have alas found, those who come to OA policy-making tend to make some initial judgments and decisions, implement them, and then when either practical evidence itself, or those who have more and longer experience in OA and OA policy, call into question those initial judgments and decisions, the response is: "My mind's made up, don't bother me with facts!" and the initial policy simply becomes more and more firmly entrenched, regardless of the consequences.

It is too early for such rigidity, Falk. And Andrew Adams and I (and many others) are trying to explain to you what is amiss with both the FWF policy and the rationales that you are voicing here.

On Sun, May 20, 2012 Falk Reckling wrote on the Global Open Access List (GOAL):

FR:
[1] an [Insitutional Repository] has to exist and that is often not the case.
[2] And if an IR exists it is often not used,
[3] mandate or not.
[4] Here some central disciplinary respositories are much more successfull as PMC/UKPMC.

1. Many, many institutions have repositories, and those that do not yet have one are merely a free piece of software and a server sector away form having one.

2. Yes, almost all existing repositories are unused (at least 80% of annual institutional refereed research output is not deposited). But that is the point! That's precisely why deposit mandates are needed.

3. It is an enormous factual error, however, to say that institutional repositories are unused whether or not they have a mandate. Again, that is the whole point. There is abundant evidence that institutions that mandate deposit are not near 80% empty but near 80% full! (And especially when they have adopted the optimal ID/OA mandate of U. Liege.)

4. It is also an enormous factual error to state that central repositories like PMC/UKPMC are exceptions to the 20/80 rule (i.e., that only 20% of total research output is deposited un-mandated). The total research output of an institution is all the refereed journal articles, in all disciplines, that its authors publish each year. The total research output of a central discipline-based repository is all the refereed journal articles published each year by all authors in that discipline, in all institutions worldwide. To imagine otherwise is to fall into the denominator fallacy:

The annual percentage use of a repository is the annual ratio of deposited articles to all target articles within its ambit. For an institution, the denominator is obvious, and easily estimated. For an entire discipline, it is far from obvious, but it too can be estimated. And I can assure you that the un-mandated Bio-Medical Research content of PMC/UKPMC is no higher than the global 20% baseline for all other disciplines. What gives the illusion that it is otherwise is two things, one trivial, one nontrivial:

The trivial reason for this profound error and misconception is the simple fact that disciplines are much bigger than institutions. So the absolute number of articles in a disciplinary repository is much bigger than those in any institutional repository, even though their un-mandated content is just 20% in both cases.

The nontrivial reason for this profound error is the fact that much of PMC/UKPMC content is mandated (by NIH, MRC, Wellcome Trust), and for that subset the percentage deposit is of course much higher -- exactly as it is with institutional mandated content.

So the overall error is to conflate central repository content and mandated content, and incorrectly (and misleadingly) deduce that central repositories are doing better than institutional repositories because they are bigger and have more deposits.

Reflection will show that it is mandates that generate deposits, not centrality or disciplinarity (irrespective of whether the mandates are institutional mandates or funder mandates). 

(The Physics Arxiv is the sole exception, where un-mandated deposits are close to 100%, and have been for two decades: But two decades is far too long to keep waiting in the hope that the physicists' spontaneous, un-mandated self-archiving practices would generalize to other disciplines: they have not. That's why the OA movement has moved toward supporting mandates.)

And as several of us have now stated, the functionality of a central repository for navigation and search (which is certainly incomparably better than the functionality of any single institutional repository, where no one would ever dream of doing navigation and search) is fully preserved if the central repository harvests the metadata and links to the full-text from institutional repositories. 

The point being made here about the importance of ensuring that both institutional and funder mandates collaborate and converge on institutional deposit instead of diverging and competing is that it makes a huge practical difference -- both to the burden on authors and to the probability of persuading institutions (who are the universal providers of all refereed research, funded and funded, in all disciplines) to adopt deposit mandates of their own -- whether funders mandate institutional deposit or institution-external deposit.

But Falk, you do not seem to be hearing this in these exchanges so far: you seem instead to return over and over to the funding of Gold OA fees rather than the mandating of Green OA. Is there any hope of drawing your attention to this much more fundamental and urgent question, on which the prospects of OA growth in upcoming years hinges?

FR:
b) We believe that OA is better supported by the Gold road and therefore a change of the business model is needed. That means costs should be covered by APCs or institutions or mixed models.

It is a great pity if you are rigidly committed to this belief, which is not only erroneous (for the many reasons we have been describing) but costly, because of the premature, pre-emptive focus on getting OA by paying Gold OA fees instead of by mandating Green OA -- and designating institutional repositories as the locus for direct deposit.

If funders mandate institutional deposit, institutions (the universal providers) will mandate Green OA too, and we will have 100% OA (Green). That will already solve the research accessibility problem, completely.

Moreover, that is also the fastest and surest way to eventually convert journals to Gold OA (and liberate the subscription money to pay for it.)

Solving the research access problem does not immediately solve the journal affordability problem too -- but does make it into a far less urgent, life/death matter (since with 100% Green OA, all users have access, whether or not journals are afforded or cancelled.)

I profoundly hope you will set a good example for other policy-makers, by showing some open-mindedness, flexibility and reflection on these crucial questions.

Best wishes,

Stevan Harnad