Wednesday, October 6. 2010Campus Open Access Resolutions
![]() Congratulations to your university for taking a stance on OA, but I'm afraid there is nothing yet to register in ROARMAP on the basis of this kind of resolution (encouraging OA), for the following reasons: (1) Ten years of evidence on which kinds of policies succeed and which fail have shown that encouraging deposit simply does not work. Baseline deposit rates remain about 15% of university research output, even with encouragement, recommendations, invitations, and requests. (2) If the encouragement is accompanied by relentless activism, contacts, incentives and assistance from library staff, the deposit rate can be raised somewhat higher (c. 30%). (3) But only a deposit requirement (mandate) can raise the deposit rate to 60%, from which it approaches 100% within a few years (especially quickly if deposit is officially designated as the sole procedure for submitting publications for performance assessment). Neither encouragement nor activism will accomplish deposit rates of that order, no matter how long the policy remains in place. So I am afraid that your university is now destined to have to discover for itself -- by losing several more years of research uptake and impact while other institutions (over 100 now) adopt a deposit mandate -- that encouragement alone simply does not work. I also think it is a mistake to foreground the recommendation to publish in open access journals ("Gold OA"): Unlike "Green OA" -- i.e. depositing (in the institutional repository) articles that have been published in subscription journals (which still constitute about 90% of journals today, and still include virtually all the top journals) -- publishing in Gold OA journals cannot be required; it can only be encouraged. So as a means of providing OA to all the university's annual research output, publishing in Gold OA journals should clearly be portrayed as merely a supplement to a deposit mandate. Your faculty resolution puts the encouragement to publish in OA journals first, followed by an encouragement to deposit. Not only is the crucial requirement to deposit missing altogether, but the priorities are counterproductively reversed. Last, I have to point out that your resolution's statement regarding deposit is so hedged by apparent legal worries that it is virtually just a statement to the effect that "We encourage you to deposit if and when your publisher says you may deposit"! Not only is that legalistic hedging not helpful, but it is unnecessary and misleading. Your university can and should require deposit of the author's final, refereed, revised draft, immediately upon acceptance for publication, without exception. Over 60% of journals (including virtually all the top journals in all fields) already endorse immediate OA self-archiving (see the ROMEO registry). If there is a desire to abide by the remaining journals' OA embargoes, then your university should simply recommend setting access to the (immediate, mandatory) deposit as Closed Access rather than Open Access during the embargo. But the immediate deposit itself should be mandatory, without exception, regardless of publisher policy on the timing of OA. That way even during any OA embargo users can request and authors can provide "Almost OA" on a case by case basis, for research or educational purposes, via the repository's semi-automatic "email eprint request" button. All I can do is hope that as you see the growing evidence of the feasibility and success of immediate-deposit mandates registered in ROARMAP, your university will be emboldened to upgrade its policy to an immediate-deposit mandate (as NIH did, after 2 years lost pursuing the vain hope that encouragement would be enough) before your university needlessly loses many more years of uptake and impact for its annual research output. Invaluable OA policy-making guidance is now available to universities from EOS (Enabling Open Scholarship) Convenor, Alma Swan, Key Perspectives and University of Southampton; Chairman, Bernard Rentier, Rector, University of Liege. We hope many new deposit mandates will be announced during international OA week (beginning October 18): Best wishes, Stevan 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; Carr, L; Swan, A; Sale, A & Bosc H. (2009) Maximizing and Measuring Research Impact Through University and Research-Funder Open-Access Self Archiving Mandates. Wissenschaftsmanagement 15(4) 36-41 Harnad, S. (2010) The Immediate Practical Implication of the Houghton Report: Provide Green Open Access Now. Prometheus 28 (1). pp. 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.) Swan, A. (2010) The Open Access citation advantage: Studies and results to date. Technical Report. School of Electronics & Computer Science, University of Southampton. Monday, September 20. 2010Librarians are self-archiving at twice the global baseline rate![]() Among the potential solutions, the most important and effective one is for institutions and funders to mandate self-archiving. (Several library faculties have already taken the intiaitive of doing this.) It is also important to make institutional repository deposit the official mechanism for submitting publications for institutional and national performance review (see Liège model). One slight correction: Alma Swan's reported rate of 49% self-archiving was not for total articles; it was just the percentage of authors who said they had self-archived at least once. (And both Alma's studies and those of others have found that authors are often not sure what they mean when they say they have self-archived!) This too will be self-corrected as self-archiving mandates, with their links to research assessment, grow. Stevan Harnad American Scientist Open Access Forum Wednesday, September 15. 2010Eight More Green Open Access Self-Archiving Mandates Registered in ROARMAP![]() Swedish Research Council Formas (SWEDEN) Wednesday, August 18. 2010While Waiting for Mandates: The Fruits of Tireless Advocacy at the Open University![]() SH: Is that 34% [56% x 60%] of OU's yearly research article output? How did you do that estimate? (We used Thompson/Reuters Web of Science data to estimate staff annual article output.) CS:SH: ![]() CS: Monday, August 9. 2010On COPE Commitments and Double DrippingIn "How much does a COPE-compliant open-access fund cost?", Stuart Shieber, the architect of Harvard's historic faculty consensus on mandating Green Open Access Self-Archiving, has explained that the purpose of the "Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity" (COPE) commitment of funds to pay Gold OA publishing costs is (1) to provide a "safety net" for publishers, that (2) COPE does not fund hybrid Gold or (3) double-dipping, and that (4) the amount of money involved is trivial. Stuart accordingly asks that "harangues [in particular from me!] about open-access funds amounting to throwing away large quantities of valuable dollars [should] please stop now." ![]() It is good that COPE does not propose to fund hybrid Gold (where the journal continues to get paid for subscriptions, and also gets paid for those articles that pay extra to be made OA). That’s double-dipping — though the publishers can (and some do) reply (in words to the effect) that: A safety net to preserve current revenue streams, regardless of their source.“No, it’s not double-dipping, it’s just a safety net, in case the market ever swings toward Gold: For now, we will reduce our subscriptions proportionately, to reflect any Gold OA revenues. If and when the transition is complete, it’s complete: all revenues come from Gold OA fees, zero from subscriptions. Never any double-dipping.” [not a real quote] No, the ones who are double-dripping (sic) are the institutions, who are spending money on buying in subscriptions, and -- whether they pay for hybrid Gold or pure-gold COPE journals (e.g., in the Springer/BMC “Membership" Deal) -- also spending money on Gold (scarce money, reputedly, given the years of agonizing over the serials crisis and journal price inflation). But even that would not matter, if the institutions were just to mandate Green OA first. But committing to paying for Gold OA of any description without first mandating Green OA strikes me as a real head-shaker. (Of the eight universities Stuart lists as having committed to pay [something] for Gold OA, only two -- Harvard and MIT -- have mandated Green OA.) What we need today is OA, not safety nets for publishers. Green OA mandates will bring us OA: 100% OA. Instead fiddling pre-emptively with the future of publishing will not. Stuart has made such a brilliant, unique contribution to OA in orchestrating Harvard’s historic Green OA mandate. I continue to feel perplexed as to to why he is squandering any of his considerable expertise and influence at this critical juncture on persuading universities to squander their scarce resources (no matter how minimally) on pre-emptive Gold (as a publishers’ safety net) without first persuading them to follow his own gloriously Green example first (which was to mandate Green OA first, and then commit to spending some money on Gold OA). Upon reflection, I remember that Stuart has actually given a hint of why he has become so preoccupied with Gold: Because one of the obstacles he had encountered in convincing faculty to vote-in a Green OA mandate by consensus, as Harvard FAS did, was (some) authors’ worries about publishers’ future. So maybe the preoccupation with creating a safety net for publishers is really for the (sense of) safety of authors, so they are more likely to vote-in a Green OA mandate by consensus? But the Harvard FAS’s historic consensus on Green OA came before any commitment to a Gold safety net. And the same is true of the over 150 other Green OA mandates worldwide to date (though most were adopted by presidential or provostial wisdom, rather than waiting for faculty to come to any consensus). Wouldn’t a less costly and circuitous way of calming individuals’ concerns about the safety of publishers under Green OA mandates be to point out that if subscription publishing were ever caused to become unsustainable because of the availability of Green OA, the vast sums of money that institutions are now spending on subscriptions would then by the very same token be released as the “safety net” to pay for the conversion to Gold OA? Does the first step really have to be pre-emptive payment, even token payment, rather than just going ahead and mandating the Green and letting the future of publishing take care of itself -- while the research community takes care of getting its research into the hands of all its intended users at long last, instead of just those whose institutions can afford a subscription? Stevan Harnad American Scientist Open Access Forum Wednesday, August 4. 2010FRPAA Self-Archiving Mandate's Benefits 8 Times Their Cost: New Houghton Study![]() ![]() "Preliminary modeling suggests that over a transitional period of 30 years from implementation, the potential incremental benefits of the proposed FRPAA archiving mandate might be worth around 8 times the costs. Perhaps two-thirds of these benefits would accrue within the US, with the remainder spilling over to other countries. Hence, the US national benefits arising from the proposed FRPAA archiving mandate might be of the order of 5 times the costs." This new Houghton Report from SPARC is especially timely, counterbalancing its cautious empirical evidence against the data-free rhetoric of those publishers who are trying to kill the FRPAA and end President Obama's Request for Information on Public Access Policy by arguing that the purpose of funding, conducting and publishing research is to maximize publishers' revenues rather than to maximize the benefits of research to the tax-paying public that funded it: ![]() Drawing by Judith Economos Feel free to re-use to promote FRPAA and OA. ![]() Nature Publishing Group Keeps Misdescribing Itself As "Liberal" On Open Access![]() Apart from offering to sell its authors immediate (gold) Open Access publishing for an extra fee, Nature Publishing Group (NPG) continues to embargo (green) Open Access self-archiving by its authors until 6 months after publication. Yet in its promotional press release, NPG writes of itself: "Our liberal self-archiving policy and free manuscript deposition service remain an important part of our open access offering and service to authors."From NPG's License to Publish [emphasis added]: "When a manuscript is accepted for publication in an NPG journal, authors are encouraged to submit the author's version of the accepted paper (the unedited manuscript) to PubMedCentral or other appropriate funding body's archive, for public release six months after publication. In addition, authors are encouraged to archive this version of the manuscript in their institution's repositories and, if they wish, on their personal websites, also six months after the original publication.Yes, NPG was indeed in 2002 among the first publishers to request an exclusive license to publish instead of requiring a copyright transfer from its authors. But what did that mean? That new policy was at first clouded in uncertainty as to whether or not it meant that NPG was endorsing immediate, unembargoed author self-archiving of the author's final, refereed, accepted draft (green OA). Then in January 2003 NPG indicated that it did indeed endorse immediate, unembargoed author self-archiving of the author's final draft (green OA), as over 60% of journals (including almost all the top journals -- including, notably -- Nature's rival, Science) have likewise done since. But then in January 2005 NPG back-slid, imposing a 6-month embargo on self-archiving (and instead liberally offered to help ensure that the self-archiving was not done by NPG authors any earlier than 6 months after publication, by offering its authors a free "Manuscript Deposition Service" to take the self-archiving entirely out of the hands of its authors, with NPG doing the self-archiving in their place, for free -- after the embargo!). For authors who nevertheless desired immediate OA for their papers, some NPG journals went on to offer the option of paying NPG about $3000-$5000 (over and above all the subscriptions already generously paying OA for publication) for immediate (hybrid gold) OA. That means NPG is today among the minority of journals (and the even tinier minority of the top journals) not to endorse immediate OA self-archiving. If NPG wishes to promote itself as "liberal on OA," it needs to drop its embargo on green OA, like the rest of the majority of journal publishers that are genuinely on the side of the angels in their policy on green OA (such as APS, IOP, APA, ACS, the Royal Society, Springer and Elsevier). If not, then NPG's embargo on green OA, its paid gold OA option, and its "liberal" willingness to take the chore of self-archiving out of the author's hands is more accurately construed as a marketing strategy to restrict green OA and increase extra revenues from selling gold OA in its place. Stevan Harnad American Scientist Open Access Forum Tuesday, August 3. 2010Is University of Florida Joining the Gold Rush Without First Mandating Green OA?![]() Question: Before adopting its University of Florida Open Access Publishing (UFOAP) Fund Pilot Project in July 2010, did UF adopt the open access self-archiving mandate proposed by UF's long-time OA advocate, Tom Walker, way back in April 2009? Comment: For if not, then UF is making a substantial strategic error, squandering scarce funds to pay for a little more OA for some of UF's research output, instead of first providing OA, at no extra cost, to all of UF's research output.
Never Pay Pre-Emptively For Gold OA Before First Mandating Green OA On Not Putting The Gold OA-Payment Cart Before The Green OA-Provision Horse Why It Is Not Enough Just To Give Green OA Higher Weight Than Gold OA Stevan Harnad American Scientist Open Access Forum Saturday, July 17. 2010Funders Should Mandate Institutional Deposit (and, if desired, central harvest)![]() Stevan Harnad American Scientist Open Access Forum Thursday, June 10. 2010Comments Invited: Internet Evolution and Open Access
« previous page
(Page 13 of 47, totaling 468 entries)
» next page
|
QuicksearchSyndicate This BlogMaterials You Are Invited To Use To Promote OA Self-Archiving:
Videos:
The American Scientist Open Access Forum has been chronicling and often directing the course of progress in providing Open Access to Universities' Peer-Reviewed Research Articles since its inception in the US in 1998 by the American Scientist, published by the Sigma Xi Society. The Forum is largely for policy-makers at universities, research institutions and research funding agencies worldwide who are interested in institutional Open Acess Provision policy. (It is not a general discussion group for serials, pricing or publishing issues: it is specifically focussed on institutional Open Acess policy.)
You can sign on to the Forum here.
ArchivesCalendar
CategoriesBlog AdministrationStatisticsLast entry: 2018-09-14 13:27
1129 entries written
238 comments have been made
Top ReferrersSyndicate This Blog |