Open Access Archivangelism

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Update Jan 1, 2010: See Gargouri, Y; C Hajjem, V Larivière, Y Gingras, L Carr,T Brody & S Harnad (2010) “Open Access, Whether Self-Selected or Mandated, Increases Citation Impact, Especially for Higher Quality Research”
Update Feb 8, 2010: See also "Open Access: Self-Selected, Mandated & Random; Answers & Questions"

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Response to Comment by Ian Russell on Ann Mroz's 12 November 2009 editorial "Put all the results out in the open" in Times Higher Education:

It's especially significant that Ian Russell -- CEO of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (which, make no mistake about it, includes all the big STM commercials too) -- should be saying:

"It’s not 'lobbying from subscription publishers' that has stalled open access, it’s the realization that the simplistic arguments of the open access lobby don’t hold water in the real world... [with] open access lobbyists constantly referring to the same biased and dubious ‘evidence’ (much of it not in the peer reviewed literature)."

Please stay tuned for more peer-reviewed evidence on this, but for now note only that the study Ian Russell selectively singles out as not "biased or dubious" -- the "first randomized trial" (Davis et al 2008), which found that "Open access [OA] articles were no more likely to be cited than subscription access articles in the first year after publication” -- is the study that argued that in the host of other peer-reviewed studies that have kept finding OA articles to be more likely to be cited (the effect usually becoming statistically significant not during but after the first year), the OA advantage (according to Davis et al) is simply a result of a self-selection bias on the part of their authors: Authors selectively make their better (hence more citeable) articles OA.

Russell selectively cites only this negative study -- the overhastily (overoptimistically?) published first-year phase of a still ongoing three-year study by Davis et al -- because its result sounds more congenial to the publishing lobby. Russell selectively ignores as "biased and dubious" the many positive (peer-reviewed) studies that do keep finding the OA advantage, as well as the critique of this negative study (as having been based on too short a time interval and too small a sample, not even long enough to replicate the widely reported effect that it was attempting to demonstrate to be merely an artifact of a self-selection bias). Russell also selectively omits to mention that even the Davis et al study found an OA advantage for downloads within the first year -- with other peer-reviewed studies having found that a download advantage in the first year translates into a citation advantage in the second year (e.g., Brody et al 2006). (If one were uncharitable, one might liken this sort of self-serving selectivity to that of the tobacco industry lobby in its time of tribulation, but here it is not public health that is at stake, merely research impact...)

But fair enough. We've now tested whether the self-selected OA impact advantage is reduced or eliminated when the OA is mandated rather than self-selective. The results will be announced as soon as they have gone through peer review. Meanwhile, place your bets...

Brody, T., Harnad, S. and Carr, L. (2006) Earlier Web Usage Statistics as Predictors of Later Citation Impact. Journal of the American Association for Information Science and Technology (JASIST) 57(8) pp. 1060-1072.

Davis, PN, Lewenstein, BV, Simon, DH, Booth, JG, & Connolly, MJL (2008) Open access publishing, article downloads, and citations: randomised controlled trial British Medical Journal 337: a568

Harnad, S. (2008) Davis et al's 1-year Study of Self-Selection Bias: No Self-Archiving Control, No OA Effect, No Conclusion.

Hitchcock, S. (2009) The effect of open access and downloads ('hits') on citation impact: a bibliography of studies.

A new (2009) dialogue on Green OA, with passerby's comments appended. (Cf. earlier [2001] dialogue's OA version, here).

Dialog on the Green road to Open Access
[Letter to the editor, D-Lib 15 (11/12) November 2009].
As imagined by Leo Waaijers, Open Access consultant, October 2009 -- Author A following the Green road to OA encounters "roadworker" L

A: Hello, L. This morning my publisher has let me know that my manuscript has been accepted for publication in his journal.
-- L: Congratulations, A.
A: Now he wants me to assign my copyrights to him first.
-- L: That's quite classical.
A: But my funder has mandated that I deposit my manuscript in an institutional repository from where it will be circulated openly over the internet after half a year. I am not sure if my publisher will approve this.
-- L: You may be able to find out about that on a web site called RoMeo. For about 10.000 journals RoMeo gives an overview of what publishers will allow you to do.
A: But what if it turns out that my publisher seems less permissive or my journal is not on the list?
-- L: Maybe your funder has included an opt-out clause for this situation. Most of the so-called mandates do have such a clause.

Mandates may be from funders (42) or from authors’ own institutions, faculties or departments (64).

No need to opt out. And no need to wait for open circulation in a half year either. Deposit immediately upon acceptance for publication. Make deposit Open Access (OA) immediately if the publisher endorses it (63%, which includes most of the top journals in most fields). Otherwise, if you wish, make it Closed Access (37%) and rely on the repository’s “email eprint request” button to provide Almost-OA during any OA embargo.

The “opt-out” clauses in self-archiving mandates pertain to whether you must successfully persuade the journal to accept the “author addendum” that formalizes your right to make your deposit OA immediate: It's worth trying to adopt this addendum, but not essential; hence you may opt out if you fail to persuade the publisher, or do not wish to. But you deposit immediately anyway.

A: The mandate of my funder seems quite rigorous.
-- L: In that case, don't assign your copyrights and write a letter to your publisher instead.
A: A letter?
-- L: It's not so difficult. The European Commission has drafted such letters in all European languages on their Open Access web site.
A: What if my publisher denies my request?
-- L: Then you have to look for another publisher.

Not true, and not necessary. See above.

A: Oh my God!
-- L: Well, I have never heard of a publisher refusing.
A: Thank goodness. And then?
-- L: Sign the copyright transfer and deposit your article.
A: That's it?
-- L: Yes, that's it. But don't forget to mention the half-year embargo period.

Nothing to mention about embargoes. If the copyright agreement imposes one, and the author wishes to honor it, deposit as Closed Access rather than OA (and rely on the Almost-OA Button during the embargo) but in any case deposit immediately, not after an embargo.

A: OK. Thanks.
-- L: My pleasure.
A walks on but returns after a few steps.
A: By the way, L. How can people find my publication during the embargo period?
-- L: Its metadata will be circulated over the internet.
A: What happens if someone wants to read it during this period?
-- L: She may request that you send her a copy.
A: So, that may generate extra readers for my publication?
-- L: Surely.
A: And extra citations?
-- L: Yes, could be.
A: And extra prestige?
-- L: Well, it depends.
A: What do you mean?
-- L: Prestige comes from citation indexes like Web of Science or Scopus. Make sure that all citations of your publication culminate there.

This is a nonsequitur: Citations are citations. If they are made by authors who publish in journals that are indexed by Web of Science or Scopus, then the citations will be indexed by Web of Science and Scopus. The author of the cited article has no way to “make sure” that authors who cite that article publish in journals that are indexed by Web of Science or Scopus. The author had no such power in the pre-OA era, and continues to have no such power in the OA era. (However, in the online and OA era Web of Science and Scopus and Scirus and Google Scholar and Citeseerx and Citebase are indexing more and more journals, hence more and more citations, because it is becoming so much easier and cheaper for them to do so.)

A: How?
-- L: Make sure that the official title, the journal issue and page numbers of the published version of your article are tagged to the manuscript that is in the repository. Then your repository could facilitate things so that these data are used for references in articles by others. You might check to see if they have a policy on that.

The full bibliographic citation (author, title, date, journal, etc.) is course be part the deposit’s metadata. From thereon, it’s up to users whether and where they cite the article, as it always was.

A: Hmm... And after the embargo period. What happens then?
-- L: Then both versions of your publication will be available. The official one only for those who work at institutes that can afford a subscription, and your manuscript for everybody.
A: Are these versions identical?
-- L: No, certainly not. But, as regards content, most differences are trivial and you can always incorporate any ultimate editorial correction in your manuscript afterwards.
A: Thus creating a third version – let's say the post-post-print?
-- L: Yes, if you wish so.

More important: The repository can also host and track postpublication revised drafts of the article, containing corrections, updates and elaborations, alongside the canonical original.

A: And the reuse conditions of the versions may be different?
-- L: Yes, they probably will be. Usually, the reuse conditions of your manuscript are not very well defined.

What “reuse conditions”? The peer-reviewed final draft, accepted for publication (along with any author updated drafts) is there to be linked, downloaded, read, stored, printed-off, data-crunched, quoted and cited by any user.

What further “reuses” are at issue? Google’s harvesting? That’s not the author’s headache... Course packs? Just link the URL.

-- L: the rest comes with the OA (and Almost-OA) territory.
A: Is it old fashioned if I feel a bit nervous about all this?
-- L: Some people might say so.
A: Well, I'll entertain the situation. Thank you very much. Good day, L.
-- L: Bon voyage, A.

Keep it simple, as it is in reality: Deposit all refereed drafts immediately upon acceptance. Set access as OA if the journal was Green (63%), and as Closed Access otherwise (37%), and rely on the Almost-OA Button. That’s all there is to it.

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum

The Electronic Publishing Trust for Development [EPT]'s dedicated, inspired and tireless champion of developing world access to research findings, Barbara Kirsop, has just done a timely and spot-on posting on "Revisiting OA Priorities."

(EPT works with developing country scientists and publishers to improve access to the world's research literature and to raise the visibility of research findings published in developing countries. It provides information, advocacy and support and maintains a web site.)

Soon after OA-week, the UK's Times Higher Education (THE) published two articles on OA plus an editorial on OA Mandates and Metrics. At the same time, Professor Eberhard Hilf announced that in Germany Lars Fischer had initiated a petition to the German Bundestag to mandate Green OA, supported by the Coalition for Action, and inviting signatories from around the world.

OA's chronicler and critic, Richard Poynder, lost no time in interviewing Lars Fischer about his petition:

"German petition takes Open Access movement by surprise"
Interview of Lars Fischer by Richard Poynder
Open and Shut 13 November 2009
Also recommended:

Times Higher Education (THE) Editorial:
"Put all the results out in the open"
By Ann Mroz
THE 12 November 2009
"Researchers, government and society benefit when research is made freely available, so the sooner it is mandated, the better"

"Learning to share "
By Zoë Corbyn
THE 12 November 2009
"Free, immediate and permanently available research results for all - that's what the open-access campaigners want. Unsurprisingly, the subscription publishers disagree. Zoe Corbyn weighs up the ramifications for journals, while Matthew Reisz asks how books will fare"

Ironically, I'll have to leave it to Phil Davis (of the Society for Scholarly Publishing's "Scholarly Kitchen") to flesh out the futility and fatuity of this latest outbreak of pre-emptive gold fever.

(Only known antidote: Green OA Mandates, which Harvard and MIT had had the good sense and foresight to adopt first, before signing on to COPE; Columbia instead shadows the somnambulism of Cornell, Dartmouth and Berkeley.)

SSP (and STM and AAP and ALPSP) have been handed (on a gold platter) yet another free ingredient with which to roast OA.

Meanwhile, as we keep fiddling, our access and impact keep burning.

ROARMAP (Registry of Open Access Repository Material Archiving Policies)
as recommended by the Berlin Declaration
Please register your Institutional OA Policy in ROARMAP
and register your Institutional Repository in ROAR

50 INSTITUTIONAL MANDATES (+2 PROPOSED INSTITUTIONAL +5 PROPOSED MULTI-INSTITUTIONAL)
14 DEPARTMENTAL/FACULTY/SCHOOL MANDATES (+1 PROPOSED DEPARTMENTAL)
42 FUNDER MANDATES (+7 PROPOSED FUNDER)

106 TOTAL MANDATES (+36 THESIS MANDATES +15 TOTAL PROPOSED MANDATES)

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Institution: Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya

Institutional Repository: Upcommons


Institution's OA Self-Archiving Policy:

The University Government has recently established an open access policy requiring the deposit of the UPC research results in Upcommons, the university's open access repository. The relevant points are the following:

- The UPC promotes open online access to academic, scientific and technical publications authored by its faculty, research staff and students.

- The UPC recommends that its authors publish the results of their academic activity in open-access scientific journals (or that they permit authors to deposit copies of their works in open repositories) and/or in open information repositories recognised within the scientific community.

- The UPC requires that academic and research staff employed by the university deposit their academic publications—journal papers, texts published in conferences, and scientific and technical reports—in its own institutional repository: UPCommons

Registered by: Anna Rovira (Director of Library Services) Anna.Rovira AT upc.edu on 09 Nov 2009

This is a reply to a query (anonymized) about CogPrints, a central repository for the deposit of Open Access (OA) content. The topic is whether the locus of direct deposit should be central or institutional:

On 5-Nov-09, at 4:00 AM, [Identity deleted] wrote:

"We [deleted] are informing researchers from the social sciences and humanities in [deleted] about repositories in their domain. We have 2 questions considering cogprints."

I am happy to answer your questions about central disicplinary repositories in general and, in particular, about CogPrints, which was founded in 1997 as a conscious effort to extend to other disciplines the long-standing practice of physicists to self-archive their papers -- both before and after refereeing -- in what used to be called "XXX" and then became the Los Alamos (now Cornell) Physics Arxiv.

The idea of CogPrints was to show that making one's papers freely accessible online was not just feasible and useful in physics, but in all disciplines. The idea was also (vaguely) that it could all be deposited in one global archive -- Arxiv, perhaps, eventually, but that first CogPrints needed to demonstrate the feasibility and usefulness of self-archiving in other disciplines, as evidence that the practice could be generalized and could scale.

But there was always some uncertainty about whether the self-archiving should be central or local (institutional). The original self-archiving proposal (1994) had been for local self-archiving. Somehow, however -- perhaps because of the prominent success of Arxiv (which had launched in 1991, but was preceded by similar practices by high energy physicists in the sharing and distribution of preprints in hard copy form, at central deposit sites such as CERN and SLAC) -- the original proposal to self-archive locally mutated, temporarily, into central self-archiving, and that was when CogPrints was created.

Since then, however, the OAI metadata harvesting protocol (itself first inspired by Arxiv) was created (1999), making all OAI-compliant repositories interoperable and the Budapest Open Access Initiative (2001) was launched; meanwhile CogPrints was made OAI-compliant (1999), and then used to create the first generic OAI-compliant, Open Access (OA) Institutional Repository (IR) software (EPrints) (2000), and the international OA IR movement began, and is now culminating in institutional mandates to self-archive in institutions' own local IRs. 

So the tide has turned, for both functional and practical reasons, to institutional rather than central self-archiving, with the OAI protocol making it possible to harvest the metadata data (or both the metadata and the full-texts) from all the distributed IRs into many discipline-based or geographic central repositories.

This development was natural, and indeed optimal, because institutions (not disciplines) are the universal providers of all of OA's target content (refereed research), across all disciplines and nations. Hence distributed local deposit and central harvesting is the most natural and universal way to ensure (and mandate) that all of OA's target content is systematically provided. That had been the gist of the original 1994 self-archiving proposal.

The notion of direct central deposit was made obsolete by the OAI harvesting protocol. (The idea is the same as with Google: we don't deposit centrally in Google; we deposit content locally, and Google harvests. With research, there are disciplines and countries and funders, and if any or many of them want their own central collection, they need merely harvest it. No need to have researchers depositing willy-nilly here and there, to fulfill funder mandates or to fill disciplinary repositories. Depositing once, in their own institution's IR is enough, and the rest is just a matter of automated import/export and/or harvesting. Moreover, distributed local IRs cost far less to create and maintain than central repositories, because they distribute both the cost and the load.)

So CogPrints -- and other direct-deposit central repositories, even Arxiv -- are obsolescent, with good reason. It is institutional self-archiving mandates that will put an end to the direct-deposit central repository era, but harvested central collections may still continue to flourish, until generic global harvesters manage to provide the same functionality or better, across disciplines and nations. Institutions -- the universal providers of all research output -- have a special interest in hosting, showcasing, managing, monitoring, analyzing and archiving their own research output. 

"Are peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed documents available on CogPrints?"

Yes, both unrefereed preprints and refereed postprints can be deposited in CogPrints -- and in IRs. But only refereed postprint deposit can be mandated by institutions (and funders). Whether researchers choose to make their unrefereed drafts public (as many physicists have found useful to do) must be left up to the individual researchers.

"If yes, do you control whether documents from authors who say they are peer-reviewed are really peer-reviewed? Is there such a control at CogPrints?"

CogPrints certainly does not fact-check whether papers deposited as having been published in a (named) refereed journal were indeed published in that refereed journal. 

Institutions may choose to fact-check that for deposits in their own IRs (but I doubt it's necessary: publicly claiming to have published in a journal when anyone on the web can check and confirm that it is untrue would be a very foolish thing for an academic to do -- and the deception would not last long).

"Is it free for authors to upload their documents on CogPrints or do they have to pay something?"

Of course it is free -- both to the uploading author and to the downloading user. 

But it is not cost-free to maintain a central repository. (And maintaining Arxiv costs a lot of money; it doesn't cost much to maintain CogPrints simply because CogPrints -- and central self-archiving in general [with the sole exception of Arxiv] is either a failure or just a very minor and temporary success. The natural and optimal way to self-archive is institutionally, with central repositories being just harvested collections, not multiple off-site loci of direct remote deposit, competing for or overloading the poor depositing authors' keystrokes, and discouraging instead of facilitating and reinforcing convergent institutional and funder self-archiving mandates.) 

It's a good idea to consider setting up central collections, but crucial to encourage local institutional deposit, and to harvest therefrom, rather than trying to get authors -- who mostly (85%) don't self-archive at all --  to deposit directly in yet another central repository.

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum

I've often reflected that OA is closer to raincoat science than rocket science. The essential message is super-simple:

It's the online age
You're losing research impact...
Make it free online

About as deep and complex as the following -- and yet, for two decades, the response has been Zeno's Paralysis:

Look kids, it's raining
Time to put on your raincoats...

Can't: against the law
Won't: no clouds I saw
Can't: branding's at risk
Won't: I must keep wet
Can't: which coat to choose?
Won't: my pay I'll lose
Can't: coats may go bad
Won't: drought risk increased
Can't: too much to do
Won't: rain's good for you
Can't: can't read instrux 
Won't: need cheaper meds
Can't: standards at risk
Won't: risks towel biz
Can't: weathermen's needs
Won't: there's too much rain
Can't: the look's not right
Won't: let's wait sky-shield
Can't: trees need their jobs
Won't: might miss good drops
Can't: they have no tags 
Won't: need weathercasts 
Can't: careers at risk
Won't: steals druggists' biz
Can't: could dehydrate
Won't: lest I'm not first
Can't: which safe to wear?
Won't: wait for clime change
Can't: raincoats decay 
Won't: cuts medics' pay
Can't: bankrupts brollies
Won't: parents' excess
Can't: global drying
Won't: disrupts climate
Can't: quality risk
Won't: false weathercasts
Can't: risks coat recall
Won't: not wet at all
Can't: can't fasten snaps
Won't: dries others up
Can't: god meant us wet
Won't: dry's not enough

Please feel free to use any of this to promote OA!

[Prior OA Haikus]

ROARMAP

OA Self-Archiving Mandate:
Madurai Kamaraj University (INDIA)

Institution's OA Eprint Archives:
[growth data] http://eprints.bicmku.in
eprints repository for School of Biotechnology from July 2009

Institution's/Department's OA Self-Archiving Policy:
IDOA - immediate deposit and optional access

Added by: S. Krishnaswamy (Senior Professor, Nodal person for open access in MKU) mkukrishna AT gmail.com on 29 Oct 2009

To coincide with the start of Open Access week, EDINA (a JISC UK-national academic data centre based at the University of Edinburgh) is pleased to announce that the Depot has been opened up internationally. Building upon its initial role given to it by JISC, the Depot is now being opened up into a facility to support the Open Access agenda internationally.

The Depot is an assured gateway to make research Open Access - we provide two main services:

1. a deposit service for researchers worldwide without an institutional repository in which to deposit their papers, articles, and book chapters (e-prints).

2. a re-direct service which alerts depositors to more appropriate local services if they exist.

The first time a researcher visits the Depot we will automatically check with OpenDOAR, the registry for open access repositories, to find a more appropriate local repository. If none exists then the author will be invited to deposit their research in the Depot. The Depot is OAI-compliant allowing deposited e-prints to be 'harvested' by search services, and other repositories, giving them instant global visibility.

For the present you can find the Depot at http://www.depot.edina.ac.uk/ but working with eIFL-OA we hope to provide a more international URL to denote its new role.

Warm regards, Theo (on behalf of the Depot team)

Theo Andrew
Edinburgh University Library
& EDINA National Data Centre
Tel: 0131 651 3850 (Mon-Weds)
0131 6502913 (Thu - Fri)