Self-Archiving Mandates

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SUMMARY: The reason the much stronger author licensing mandate has a far higher consensus/compliance hurdle to surmount is that it raises the problem of authors' free choice of journals and author risk of journal non-acceptance.
    In contrast, the weaker author deposit mandate (ID/OA) faces only author inertia about doing the few extra keystrokes required. Author surveys and outcome studies on actual practice show that the vast majority of authors will comply with a deposit mandate, willingly.
    Hence it makes no sense at all to delay still further the certainty of immediately providing at least 63% OA + 37% almost-OA (by mandating immediate-deposit), to keep on waiting instead for a much stronger mandate (mandatory author licensing) for which achieving consensus on adoption is far more difficult and author willingness is far less certain. There can be (and are) stronger deposit mandates than ID/OA, but ID/OA is the default option, the mandate for which consensus on adoption is most easily achieved because -- unlike the stronger mandates -- it effectively moots all copyright concerns.
    If success can be achieved on adopting a stronger mandate, then by all means adopt the stronger mandate (such as Immediate-Deposit/Immediate-OA, or Immediate-Deposit plus a 6-month cap on embargoes, or Immediate-Deposit [without Opt-Out] plus Author Licensing with Opt-Out).
    But on no account delay the adoption of the weaker, certain mandate that is already within immediate reach, in order to hold out for a stronger, uncertain mandate that is not! It is fine to prefer to have a stronger benefit rather than a weaker one if both are within reach and you have a choice; but it is certainly not fine to fail to grasp a weaker benefit that is already fully within reach in order to hold out for a stronger but much less certain benefit that is not yet within reach. They are not mutually exclusive: Weaker will lead to Stronger.

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On 2-Dec-08, at 7:08 AM, Leo Waaijers [LW] wrote (in SPARC-OAForum):

LW: "this is about a comparison between a ‘mandate to self-archive’ and the usage of a ‘licence to publish’."

For comparability, it needs to be a comparison between a 'mandate to self-archive' and a 'mandate to successfully adopt a license to publish'. Neither self-archiving nor licensing is being done spontaneously by authors, hence we are talking about mandates in both cases, and the question is (1) for which mandate is it more likely that consensus on adoption will be achieved at all, and (2) what is the likelihood of compliance, if mandated? 

Moreover, both questions have to be considered separately for (i) funder mandates and for (ii) institutional mandates, as funders and institutions have different prerogatives. 

(Institutional consortia on mandates are yet another category, though at a time when consensus on adopting even individual institutional mandates is still hard to achieve, reaching successful consortial consensus on mandates is all the more difficult; the analogy with consortial consensus on subscription licensing is, I think, highly misleading: Subscription licensing consortia are based on strong shared interests on the part of institutional libraries, and no countervailing interests on the part of institutional authors; author licensing mandates, in contrast, involve the problem of authors' free choice of journals and author risk of journal nonacceptance.) 

Hence the reason an author licensing mandate has a much higher consensus/compliance hurdle to surmount is that it raises the problem of authors' free choice of journals and author risk of journal nonacceptance, whereas author deposit mandates face only the inertia about doing the few extra author keystrokes required -- and both surveys and outcome studies on actual practice show that most authors will comply with a deposit mandate, willingly.

LW: "Both tools only apply to the domain of toll-gated publishing where they try to improve the accessibility of publications. It is the copyright owner who decides about the conditions of access and reuse and the toll-gated domain is characterized by many access limitations and conditions that only may be lifted after payment. However, there is an important legal exception to that model; the fair use clause states that these access limitations do not apply for a personal copy."

Digital documents that are made freely accessible on the web can be accessed, read on-screen, downloaded, stored, printed-off, and data-crunched by any individual user. (They can also be harvested by harvesters like google.) That is the use that access-denied researchers urgently need most today, and that is all the use that ("Gratis") OA need provide today. (Moreover, the best chance of eventually fulfilling the stronger demands of "Libre" OA, and even an eventual transition to universal Gold OA publishing, is first to mandate and provide universal Green Gratis OA.)

LW: "In the self-archiving approach the author assigns the full copyrights to a publisher and subsequently utilises the fair use clause to facilitate access to the publication. The licence to publish leaves the copyrights with the author, gives the publisher the right of first publishing and adopts an embargo period for other publishing modes."

This is incorrect, I am afraid. In the self-archiving approach, the author makes the article freely accessible online, and the rest comes with the territory. As I said, this is done with the official blessing of the journal for 63% of journals, providing full OA for all those articles. For the remaining 37%, the author has the option of intially depositing them in Closed Access rather than Open Access (but depositing them immediately in nonetheless) and letting users rely on the "email eprint request" button during any publisher embargo. This is "Almost OA" -- and once immediate-deposit mandates are universally adopted, the resultant universal deposit itself will -- over and above immediately providing 63% OA + 37% almost-OA -- soon usher in 100% OA as a matter of natural course. All along, the only real hurdle has been keystrokes; hence all we really need to surmount that hurdle is universal keystroke mandates.

It makes no sense at all to keep delaying still further the certainty of immediately providing 63% OA + 37% almost-OA (by mandating immediate-deposit) -- in order to keep trying instead for a much stronger mandate (mandatory author licensing) on which a consensus for adoption is much harder to achieve (because of the problem of authors' free choice of journals and author risk of journal nonacceptance) and author compliance much more uncertain -- just because of the interim possibility of 37% almost-OA owing to publisher embargoes with an immediate-deposit mandate. Indeed, even the successful universal adoption of a "licence to publish [that] leaves the copyrights with the author, gives the publisher the right of first publishing and adopts an embargo period for other publishing modes" would leave users worse off during the embargo than universal ID/OA.

Providing 63% OA + 37% almost-OA immediately is already fully within reach and long overdue. We should not delay grasping it for one minute longer, in quest of something stronger yet not now within rich and far less certain.

"The Immediate-Deposit/Optional Access (ID/OA) Mandate: Rationale and Model"

Note that there can be -- and are -- stronger self-archiving mandates than ID/OA, but that ID/OA is the default option, the mandate for which consensus on adoption is most easily achieved and all legal concerns are completely mooted. If success can be achieved on adopting a stronger mandate -- such as Immediate-Deposit/Immediate-OA, or Immediate-Deposit plus a 6-month cap on embargoes, or Immediate-Deposit [without Opt-Out] plus Author Licensing with Opt-Out -- then by all means adopt the stronger mandate. But on no account delay the adoption of the weaker, certain mandate that is already within immediate reach, in order to hold out for a stronger, uncertain mandate that is not!

LW: "For a fair comparison of the two tools, let’s assume that in both cases an institutional mandate applies."

I am afraid that that is not at all a realistic comparison, because it simply assumes (a) that the probability of success in achieving consensus on adopting the mandate in the first place is equally probable for both mandates, the weaker and the stronger one, and that (b) compliance is equally probable in both cases, weaker and stronger. Neither of these assumptions is correct because of the problem of authors' free choice of journals and author risk of journal nonacceptance. Neither handicap is shared by the weakest, easiest and surest ID/OA mandate, which is only about keystrokes, and already fully within all institutions' immediate rich.

LW: "When it comes to mandating self-archiving, the only party involved is the author. That makes such a mandate relatively easy of course. But it also has a high price. Open Access remains to the publisher’s discretion."

The weakest mandate is always relatively the "easiest" (to agree on, adopt, and comply with) but it is also infinitely preferable to no mandate at all, with continued delay and debate, instead, about stronger mandates. Let the weaker mandates be adopted universally, now, and then let's debate about strengthening them!

What the ID/OA guarantees, immediately, is 63% OA + 37% almost-OA. Every day we keep delaying and speculating about stronger mandates, less certain of consensus and compliance, we are simply losing yet another day of 63% OA + 37% almost-OA, needlessly, after already having allowed years and years of needless delay, and needlessly lost research access, progress and impact.

LW: "Currently that’s a complete mess. Publishers’ policies vary widely when it comes to permitting access to different versions (pre-print, post-print, pdf) for different uses (author’s web site, institutional window, educational usage, commercial usage) after different embargo periods. In the meantime for personal copies an end user may use the request button in the same way as she uses the SFX button of her library. (Why not combine the two buttons?). Under the circumstances the request button is a smart invention. Kudos for you!"

    (1) The variation in publisher policy is completely described and covered by 63% OA + 37% almost-OA for OA's target content: the peer-reviewed postprint. (For the preprint, the figure is even higher; and the publisher's proprietary PDF is completely irrelevant.)

    (2) The SFX button is largely for licensed (i.e., toll-gated) content for institution-internal users. The "email eprint request" ("Almost-OA") Button, in contrast, is for all IR-deposited content, worldwide, for any user. There is a world of difference there (and again, the institutional-library subscription-licensing perspective is profoundly misleading, just as it is with the analogy of multi-institution subscription-licensing consortia.)

Nevertheless, yes, it would be fine to add to SFX all links to Closed Access IR deposits and their "email eprint request" buttons (if Ex Libris is interested). The objective, after all, is to interlink all citations. But to make the exercise worthwhile, we must first mandate deposit...

LW: "When an institution considers mandating the usage of the licence to publish they should involve the publishers as well. It would be unfair just to issue such a mandate and leave the authors to the mercy of the publishers."

    (a) Institutions' employees, and funders' fundees can be mandated, but publishers cannot: They are not within employers' and funders remits.

    (b) A big funding agency like NIH might be in a position to summon publishers to the table, and to apply their clout for the research they fund, but individual universities certainly cannot.

    (c) Institutional library consortia have clout on subscription licensing agreements, but author licensing is another matter, and involves another party: authors.

    (d) Meanwhile, authors would indeed be left "to the mercy of their publishers"  (because of the problem of authors' free choice of journals and author risk of journal nonacceptance) if individual institutions adopted the stronger author licensing mandates without prior successful consortial negotiations.

    (e) So let's go ahead and adopt the weaker ID/OA mandate that is already within universal reach, at no risk to the author; and let's pursue stronger mandates thereafter, rather than needlessly continuing to delay OA still longer, this late in the day, in order to keep holding out for a possible future stronger-mandate.

LW: "It’s my guess that negotiations with publishers may not be prospectless. A common interest, not only for authors and their institutions but also for (some) publishers is to raise their social and academic profile and clear the operational situation. In order to have a stronger position institutions should combine their efforts in (national) consortiums. By the way, I allready know of several occasions where a publisher (including Elsevier and even Wiley) has published articles without the copyrights being transferred to them." 

    (i) It is not at all evident that the interests in and benefits from OA to authors, institutions and funders are matched by corresponding interests and benefits to publishers!

    (ii) Yes, by all means, if such consortial negotiations are "not prospectless," pursue them: But not at the price of failing to grasp what is already immediately within reach, which is individual institutional (and funder) Green OA self-archiving mandates.

    (iii) (The occasional individual exception to copyright transfer that has been accommodated for decades by publishers is not the same as a blanket acceptance of universal copyright retention.)

LW: "To conclude. Indeed, in the toll gated domain I prefer mandating the usage of the licence to publish over mandating of self-archiving. The first option involves a higher commitment of the institutions which makes it tougher of course. But the operational result is much clearer and better sustainable."

It is fine to prefer to have a stronger benefit rather than a weaker one if both are within reach and you have a choice; but it is certainly not fine to fail to grasp a weaker benefit that is already fully within reach in order to keep holding out for a stronger but much less certain benefit that is not yet within reach -- especially when they are not mutually exclusive: Weaker will lead to Stronger.

Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien.

LW: "Thanks for your reply. You have a point that there are 58 self-archiving mandates and no licence-to-publish mandates so far. I will allow for that in the future."

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum

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SUMMARY: Leo Waaijers recommends (1) that authors should retain copyright, (2) that institutions should use metrics richer than just the journal impact factor to assess their researchers, and (3) and that "supra-institutional organisations" (such as the European University Association) should "take the necessary initiative" for "[s]witching to Open Access" [OA] from the "traditional subscription model."
    It is good for authors to retain copyright whenever they can, but it is not necessary -- and hence gratuitously raises the bar -- if stipulated as a precondition for providing or mandating OA: The only thing necessary for providing or mandating OA is that authors should deposit in their Institutional Repositories (IRs) (and that their institutions and funders should mandate that they deposit) the final drafts of their peer-reviewed journal articles, which 63% of journals already formally endorse making OA immediately upon acceptance. (The remaining 37% can be provisionally deposited in Closed Access, likewise immediately upon acceptance, with the IR's semi-automatic "email eprint request" button tiding over all user needs during any publisher embargo, during which the author can also try to negotiate copyright retention with the publisher, if he wishes. But on no account should copyright retention be required as a precondition, either for depositing or for adopting an institutional mandate to deposit.)
    It is good to use richer metrics, but these will not generate OA; rather, OA will generate richer metrics.
    Institutions can mandate deposit in IRs, and deposits can be made OA, but this is Green OA self-archiving of articles published in "traditional subscription model" journals; it is not Gold OA journal publishing. Institutions and funders cannot mandate that publishers switch to Gold OA publishing, nor should they try to mandate that authors switch to Gold OA journals just for the sake of providing OA, since OA can already be provided by mandating Green OA self-archiving, without constraining authors' choice of journal.

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In Ariadne 57, October 2008, Leo Waaijers has written an article on "What Institutions Can Do to Ease Open Access."

Since Open Access (OA) itself needs no "easing," I assume that what Leo meant was something more like: "What Institutions Can Do to Facilitate a Transition to Open Access."

In his article, Leo made three recommendations, which I discuss in an exchange below:

On 1-Dec-08 Leo Waaijers wrote in SPARC-OAForum:

LW:
Dear Stevan,

Most authors do not self-archive their publications spontaneously. So they must be mandated. But, apart from a few, the mandators do not mandate the authors. In a world according to you they themselves must be supermandated. And so on. This approach only works if somewhere in the mandating hierarchy there is an enlightened echelon that is able and willing to start the mandating cascade.

Leo, you are quite right that in order to induce authors to provide Green OA, their institutions and funders must be induced to mandate that they provide Green OA, as far too few authors will otherwise do the few requisite keystrokes. Authors can be mandated by their institutions and funders to do the keystrokes, but institutions and funders cannot be mandated to mandate (except possibly by their governments and tax-payers) -- so how to persuade them to mandate the keystrokes?

The means that I (and others) have been using to persuade institutions and funders to mandate that their authors provide OA have been these:

(1) Benefits of Providing OA: Gather empirical evidence to demonstrate the benefits of OA to the author, institution, and funder, as well as to research progress and to tax-paying society (increased accessibility, downloads, uptake, citations, hence increased research impact, productivity, and progress, increased visibility and showcasing for institutions, richer and more valid research performance evaluation for research assessors, enhanced and more visible metrics of research impact -- and its rewards -- for authors, etc.).

(2) Means of Providing OA: Provide free software for making deposit quick, easy, reliable, functional, and cheap, for authors as well as their institutions. Provide OA metrics to monitor, measure and reward OA and OA-generated research impact.

(3) Evidence that Mandating (and Only Mandating) Works: Gather empirical data to demonstrate that (a) the vast majority of authors (> 80%) say, when surveyed, that they would deposit willingly if it were mandated by their institutions and/or funders, but that they will not deposit if it is not mandated (< 15%) (Alma Swan's surveys); and that (b) most authors (> 80%) actually do what they said in surveys they would do (deposit if it is mandated [> 80%] and not deposit if it is not mandated [< 15%] even if they are given incentives and assistance [< 30%] (Arthur Sale's Studies).

(4) Information about OA: Information and evidence about the means and the benefits of providing OA has to be widely and relentlessly provided, in conferences, publications, emails, discussion lists, and blogs. At the same time, misunderstanding and misinformation have to be unflaggingly corrected (over and over and over!)

There are already 58 institutional and funder Green OA mandates adopted and at least 11 proposed and under consideration. So these efforts are not entirely falling on deaf ears (although I agree that 58 out of perhaps 10,000 research institutions [plus funders] worldwide -- or even the top 4000 -- is still a sign of some hearing impairment! But the signs are that audition is improving...)

LW:
To create such a cascade one needs water (i.e. arguments) and a steep rocky slope (i.e. good conditions). The pro OA arguments do not seem to be the problem. In all my discussions over the last decade authors, managers and librarians alike agreed that the future should be OA also thanks to you, our driving OA archivangelist.

But alas it is not agreement that we need, but mandates (and keystrokes)! And now -- not in some indeterminate future.

LW:
So, it must be the conditions that are lacking. This awareness brought me to the writing of an article about these failing conditions. Only if we are able to create better conditions mandates will emerge and be successful on a broad scale. A fortiori, this will make mandates superfluous.

I am one of the many admirers of your splendid efforts and successes in the Netherlands, with SURF/DARE, "Cream of Science," and much else.

But I am afraid I don't see how the three recommendations made in the Ariadne article will make mandates emerge (nor how they make mandates superfluous). On the contrary, I see the challenge of making the three recommendations prevail to be far, far greater than the challenge of getting Green OA self-archiving mandates to be adopted. Let me explain:

LW Recommendation 1: Transferring the copyright in a publication has become a relic of the past; nowadays a “licence to publish” is sufficient. The author retains the copyrights. Institutions should make the use of such a licence part of their institutional policy.

Persuading authors to retain copyright is a far bigger task than just persuading them to deposit (keystrokes): It makes them worry about what happens if their publisher does not agree to copyright retention, and then their article fails to be published in their journal of choice.

Doing the c. 6-minutes-worth of keystrokes that it takes to deposit an article -- even if authors can't be bothered to do those keystrokes until/unless it is mandated -- is at least a sure thing, and that's the end of it.

In contrast, it is not at all clear how long copyright retention negotiations will take in each case, nor whether they will succeed in each case.

Moreover, just as most authors are not doing the deposit keystrokes spontaneously, but only if mandated, they are not doing the copyright retention negotiations either: Do you really think it would be easier to mandate doing copyright retention than to mandate a few keystrokes?

(Harvard has adopted a kind of a copyright-retention mandate, though it has an opt-out, so it is not clear whether it is quite a mandate -- nor is it clear how well it will succeed, either in terms of compliance or in terms of negotiation [nor whether it is even thinkable for universities with authors that have less clout with their publishers than Harvard's]. But there is a simple way to have the best of both worlds by upgrading the Harvard copyright-retention mandate with opt-out into a deposit mandate without opt-out that is certain to succeed, and generalizable to all universities -- the Harvards as well as the Have-Nots. To instead require successful copyright renegotiation as a precondition for providing OA and for mandating OA, however, would be needlessly and arbitrarily to raise the bar far higher than it need be -- and already is -- for persuading institutions and funders to mandate deposit at all: "Upgrade Harvard's Opt-Out Copyright Retention Mandate: Add a No-Opt-Out Deposit Clause.")

LW Recommendation 2: The classic impact factor for a journal is not a good yardstick for the prestige of an author. Modern digital technology makes it possible to tailor the measurement system to the author. Institutions should, when assessing scientists and scholars, switch to this type of measurement and should also promote its further development.

This is certainly true, but how does using these potential new impact metrics generate OA or OA mandates, or make OA mandates superfluous? On the contrary, it is OA (and whatever successfully generates OA) that will generate these new metrics (which will, among other things, in turn serve to increase research impact, as well as making it more readily measurable and rewardable)!

Brody, T., Carr, L., Gingras, Y., Hajjem, C., Harnad, S. and Swan, A. (2007) Incentivizing the Open Access Research Web: Publication-Archiving, Data-Archiving and Scientometrics. CTWatch Quarterly 3(3).

Harnad, S. (2007) Open Access Scientometrics and the UK Research Assessment Exercise. In Proceedings of 11th Annual Meeting of the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics 11(1), pp. 27-33, Madrid, Spain. Torres-Salinas, D. and Moed, H. F., Eds. h

Harnad, S. (2008) Validating Research Performance Metrics Against Peer Rankings. Ethics in Science and Environmental Politics 8 (11) doi:10.3354/esep00088 The Use And Misuse Of Bibliometric Indices In Evaluating Scholarly Performance

Shadbolt, N., Brody, T., Carr, L. and Harnad, S. (2006) The Open Research Web: A Preview of the Optimal and the Inevitable, in Jacobs, N., Eds. Open Access: Key Strategic, Technical and Economic Aspects. Chandos.

LW Recommendation 3: The traditional subscription model for circulating publications is needlessly complex and expensive. Switching to Open Access, however, requires co-ordination that goes beyond the level of individual institutions. Supra-institutional organisations, for example the European University Association, should take the necessary initiative.

The European University Association has already taken the initiative to recommend that its 791 member universities in 46 countries should all mandate Green OA self-archiving! Now the individual universities need to be persuaded to follow that recommendation. The European Heads of Research Councils have made the same recommendation to their member research councils. (I am optimistic, because, for example, 6 of the 7 RCUK research funding councils have so far already followed the very first of these recommendations to mandate -- from the UK Parliamentary Select Committee on Science and Technology.) And the 28 universities that have already adopted Green OA self-archiving mandates show that institutional mandates are at last gathering momentum too.

But if it is already considerably harder to mandate author copyright-retention than it is to mandate author self-archiving in their institutional repositories (Green OA), it is surely yet another order of magnitude harder to mandate "Switching to Open Access" from the "traditional subscription model":

If authors are likely to resist having to renegotiate copyright with their journal of choice at the risk of not getting published in their journal of choice, just in order to provide OA, they are even more likely to resist having to publish in a Gold OA journal instead of in their journal of choice, just in order to provide OA -- especially as they need do neither: They need merely self-archive.

And journal publishers are likely to resist anyone trying to dictate their economic model to them. (Moreover, publishers' economic policies are beyond the bounds of what is within the university community's mandate to mandate!)

So mandating Green OA is still the fastest, surest, and simplest way to reach universal OA. Let us hope that the "enlightened echelon" of the institutional hierarchy will now set in motion the long overdue "mandating cascade."

Best wishes,

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum

Two articles [with which I could hardly agree more!] by France's OA pioneer, Hélène Bosc: -- SH

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Bosc, H, (2008) [in French]
L’auto-archivage en France : deux exemples de politiques différentes et leurs résultats 
[Self-Archiving in France: Two Different Policies and Their Results]
Liinc em Revista, 4 (2): 196-217 
   
ABSTRACT (in English: French abstract below): In France, the first Institutional Repositories (IRs) were set up in 2002, using the E-Prints software. At the same time, a centralized repository was organized by CNRS, a French multidisciplinary research institute, for the deposit of all French research output. In 2006, most of the French scientific and scholarly research organisations signed a “Protocol of Agreement” to collaborate in the development of this national archive, HAL. Independently, the Ifremer Research Institute launched its own IR (Archimer) in 2005. We have compared the development of HAL and Archimer. Our results show that Ifremer’s policy of self-archiving has resulted in 80% of its research output being made Open Access (OA). In the same time interval, HAL, lacking a self-archiving mandate, had only 10% of its target research output deposited. Ifremer’s specific implementation of its mandate (a staff dedicated to self-archiving) is probably not affordable for most French research institutions but its self-archiving mandate itself is, and Arthur Sale’s comparative studies in Australia have shown that the essential element is the mandate itself. The European Universities Association, mindful of the benefits of mandating OA, has recommended self-archiving mandates for its 791 universities. Self-archiving mandates have already been adopted by 22 universities and research institutions worldwide (including Harvard, Southampton, CERN, and one CNRS research laboratory) as well as 22 research funding agencies (including NIH, ERC, & RCUK). OA maximizes research usage and impact. It is time for each of the universities and research institutions of France to adopt their own OA self-archiving mandates.

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Bosc, H. (2008) (preprint; in French)
Le droit des chercheurs à mettre leurs résultats de recherche en libre accès : appropriation des archives ouvertes par différentes communautés dans le monde
[Researchers' Right to Self-Archive Their Articles In Open Access Repositories: Evolving Policy Worldwide]

ABSTRACT (in English: French abstract below): In 2002, a group of researchers, librarians and publishers, launched the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI), formulating the concept of Open Access (OA) as well as the two strategies for achieving it – OA self-archiving (BOAI-1, “Green OA”) and OA publishing (BOAI-2, “Gold OA”). The concept of OA spread rapidly among researchers and research policy-makers, but was at first equated almost completely with Gold OA publishing alone, neglecting Green OA self-archiving, despite the fact that it is Green OA that has the greatest immediate scope for growth. After considerable countervailing effort in the form of strategic analysis, research impact and outcome studies, and the development of technical tools for creating OA archives (or  “Institutional Repositories” IRs) and measuring their impact, the importance and power of Green OA has been demonstrated and recognised, and with it has come a growing number of IRs and the adoption of mandatory OA self-archiving policies by universities, research institutions and research funders. In some countries OA self-archiving policies have even been debated and proposed at the governmental level. This strong engagement in Green OA by policy makers has begun to alarm journal publishers, who are now lobbying vigorously against OA, successfully slowing or halting legislation in some cases. It is for this reason that the research community itself – not vulnerable to publisher lobbying as politicians are – is now taking the initiative in OA policy-making, mandating self-archiving at the university level.

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L’auto-archivage en France: deux exemples de politiques différentes et leurs résultats
      Résumé: Les premières archives ouvertes se sont développées en France, en 2002 avec le logiciel E-Prints. Dans ce même temps une archive centralisée, à vocation nationale (HAL)1 a été mise en place par le CNRS. En 2006, la plupart des institutions de recherche française ont adhéré au projet HAL et se sont engagées à participer au développement de cette archive en signant un « protocole d’accord ». Presque au même moment, en 2005, un organisme de recherche l'Ifremer a mis en place une archive institutionnelle (Archimer)2 indépendamment de HAL. Nous avons comparé le développement de HAL et celui d’Archimer. Les résultats montrent que la politique de l’Ifremer permet de mettre en Libre Accès (LA) 80% la production « majeure » de l’organisme. HAL qui n’a pas été accompagnée de mesures fortes ne met en LA qu’environ 10% de la production française. Les moyens mis par l’Ifremer (financement de postes dédiés à l’autoarchivage) ne peuvent sans doute pas être pris par toutes les institutions de recherche françaises mais celles-ci peuvent exiger que leurs chercheurs déposent eux-mêmes leurs documents dans une archive -les études d’Arthur Sale ayant montré que l’obligation de dépôt est l’élément essentiel de la réussite d’une archive. L’Association des Universités Européennes (UEA) qui a vu tout l’intérêt de cette obligation pour le chercheur et pour son organisme, soutient cette démarche. Cette obligation a déjà été adoptée par plusieurs institutions de recherche dans le monde (entre autres Harvard, Southampton, le CERN et un laboratoire du CNRS) tout comme 27 fondations qui subventionnent la recherche (parmi lesquelles les NIH, l’ECR, les RCUK, et l'ANR en France). Le Libre Accès permet une meilleure utilisation de la recherche et augmente son impact. Les universités françaises et les organismes de recherche pour tirer profit de tous ces avantages, doivent maintenant obliger le dépôt de leur production.

Le droit des chercheurs à mettre leurs résultats de recherche en libre accès : appropriation des archives ouvertes par différentes communautés dans le monde
      Résumé: Le développement d'Internet a permis à la communauté scientifique de prendre conscience de son droit : celui de mettre en libre accès ses propres résultats de recherche. En 2002, un groupe de chercheurs et éditeurs a lancé la Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI). Il a formulé le concept du libre accès (LA) et les deux stratégies pour y parvenir : déposer dans une archive ouverte le double d'un article publié dans un périodique payé par souscription (« LA Vert »), et/ou publier dans une revue en libre accès (« LA Doré »). Le concept du libre accès s'est rapidement étendu mais il a d'abord été presque complètement assimilé au seul « LA Doré ». L'auto-archivage a été négligé en dépit du fait que cette voie verte représente la possibilité de croissance du LA la plus immédiate et la plus rapide. Les efforts déployés alors (analyses stratégiques, études, développement d'outils techniques pour créer des archives institutionnelles et mesurer leur impact) ont permis de démontrer l'importance et les avantages de l'auto-archivage. De ce fait le nombre d'archives a augmenté, tout comme l'obligation d'auto-archiver dans les universités, les institutions et les fondations de recherche. Dans quelques pays, une politique d'auto-archivage a été proposée au niveau gouvernemental. Cet engagement des hommes politiques commence à inquiéter certains éditeurs scientifiques, qui s'organisent en lobby anti-LA et réussissent dans certains cas à ralentir ou arrêter la législation. C'est pour cette raison que la communauté scientifique, moins vulnérable au lobby des éditeurs - que peuvent l'être les politiciens - prend l'initiative d'organiser une politique de LA avec l'obligation d'auto-archivage au niveau de l'université.

At the Students for a Free Culture Conference, Lawrence Lessig advised students, on "Remix Culture":

"I think the obvious, low-hanging-fruit fight for the Students for Free Culture movement right now is to start having sit-ins in universities where they don’t adopt Open Access publishing rules. It’s ridiculous that scholars publish articles in journals that then charge 5, 10, 15 thousand dollars for people around the world to get access to it."

It may just be because of the wrong choice of words ("Open Access publishing rules"), but as stated, this does not sound like the right advice to give to students on what to do to help persuade universities to provide Open Access to their refereed research journal article output, nor does it correspond with what is being mandated by the 28 pioneer universities and departments (including Harvard and Stanford), and the 30 research funders (including NIH) that have actually mandated OA.

As noted in Larry's link, OA is

"free, immediate, permanent, full-text, online access, for any user, web-wide... primarily [to] research articles published in peer-reviewed journals."

But that OA can be provided by two means:

"Gold OA" publishing (authors publishing in journals that make their articles free online, sometimes at a fee to the author/university)

and

"Green OA" self-archiving (authors publishing articles in whatever journals they choose, but depositing their final refereed draft in their university's institutional repository to make it free online)

The 28 pioneering universities/departments (plus 30 funders) have all mandated Green OA (mandatory deposit), whereas Larry seems her to be advocating that students strike for mandating Gold OA (mandatory publishing in a Gold OA journal?).

Please see

"The University’s Mandate to Mandate Open Access"

on the Open Students: Students for Open Access to Research blog, where I have tried to describe what students can do to help persuade universities to provide Open Access to their refereed research journal article output.

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum

Autism Speaks (US* funder-mandate)

Institution's/Department's OA Eprint Archives

Institution's/Department's OA Self-Archiving Policy

All researchers who receive an Autism Speaks grant will be required to deposit any resulting peer-reviewed research papers in the PubMed Central online archive, which will make the articles available to the public within 12 months of journal publication.

ETH Zürich (SWITZERLAND* institutional-mandate)

Institution's/Department's OA Eprint Archives

Institution's/Department's OA Self-Archiving Policy

It is the policy of the ETH Zürich to maximise the visibility, usage and impact of their research output by maximising online access to it for all would-be users and researchers worldwide.

Therefore the ETH Zürich:

Requires of staff and postgraduate students to post electronic copies of any research papers that have been accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal (post-prints), theses and other scientific research output (monographs, reports, proceedings, videos etc.), to be made freely available as soon as possible into the institutional repository “ETH E-Collection” (http://e-collection.ethbib.ethz.ch/), if there are no legal objections. The ETH Zürich expects authors where possible, to retain their copyright. For detailed information see the rules of the ETH E-Collection.

Hong Kong University (CHINA* proposed-multi-institutional-mandate)

Institution's/Department's OA Eprint Archives

Proposed OA Self-Archiving Policy

HKU Research Committee Agrees to Endorse [the following policy proposal]:

As the majority of research in Hong Kong is funded by the RGC/UGC, their policies are critical. We would like to propose the following specific actions for the RGC/UGC’s consideration:

a) State clearly that all researchers funded by an RGC grant should aim to publish their results in the highest quality journals or books so as to maximize the influence and impact of the research outcome and that to achieve this when publishing research findings:

i. Researchers should look for suitable OA journals so that, where there is a choice between non OA and OA journals that are equally influential and high impact, the choice should be to publish the results in an OA journal.

ii. When a comparable OA journal does not exist, they should send the journal the Hong Kong author’s addendum (University of Hong Kong, 2008), which adds the right of placing some version (preprint or postprint) of the paper in their university’s institutional repository (IR). If necessary, seek funds from the RGC to pay open access charges up to an agreed limit; perhaps US$3,000, which is the fee agreed with the Wellcome Trust for most Elsevier journals (Elsevier, 2007).

iii. For books and book chapters that are published without a royalty agreement, send the publisher the Hong Kong author’s addendum to seek the right of placing some version in their university’s IR.

iv. Deposit all published papers in their IR, unless the journal refuses in writing. If the published version is refused, deposit the preprint or postprint, as allowed in number ii above.

v. Must provide evidence to the RGC in their progress report that the above steps have been undertaken.

"The Open Access Advantage"

by: John Bacon-Shone, Edwin Cheng, Anthony Ferguson, Carmel McNaught, David Palmer, Ah Chung Tsoi

Hong Kong Baptist University
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
The University of Hong Kong

October 3, 2008

University of Glasgow (UK*
funder-mandate)

Institution's/Department's OA Eprint Archives

Institution's/Department's OA Self-Archiving Policy

The policy policy requires staff to deposit:

-- electronic copies of peer-reviewed journal articles and conference proceedings

-- bibliographic details of all research outputs, and to encourage staff to provide the full text of other research outputs where appropriate.

National Cancer Institute of Canada (CANADA* funder-mandate)

Institution's/Department's OA Eprint Archives

Institution's/Department's OA Self-Archiving Policy

Effective July 2009, all researchers supported in whole or in part through the NCIC are required to make their published results of NCIC supported work publicly available. Researchers are encouraged to make their work publicly available as soon as possible, but must do so no later than six months after the final publication date.

The Brisbane Declaration on Open Access at last puts some real practical policy content and substance into the Budapest/Bethesda/Berlin series, along the lines of the UK Select Committee Recommendation and Berlin 3. Please read what the Archivangelist of the Antipodes, Arthur Sale, one if its main architects, has to say about the Brisbane Declaration. If this is implemented planet-wide, we have universal Open Access within a year.

Stevan Harnad

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From: Arthur Sale
Date: Wed, Oct 8, 2008 at 9:16 PM
Subject: Re: Brisbane declaration on Open Access
To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM

...May I tease out a few strands of the Brisbane Declaration for readers of the list, as a person who was at the OAR Conference in Brisbane.

1. The Declaration was adopted on the voices at the Conference, revised in line with comments, and then participants were asked to put their names to it post-conference. It represents an overwhelming consensus of the active members of the repository community in Australia.

2. The Conference wanted a succinct statement that could be used to explain to senior university administrators, ministers, and the public as to what Australia should do about making its research accessible. It is not a policy, as it does not mention any of the exceptions and legalisms that are inevitably needed in a formal policy.

3. The Conference wanted to support the two Australian Ministers with responsibility for Innovation, Science and Health in their moves to make open access mandatory for all Australian-funded research.

4. Note in passing that the Declaration is not restricted to peer-reviewed articles, but looks forward to sharing of research data and knowledge (in the humanities and arts).

5. At the same time, it was widely recognized that publishers' pdfs ("Versions of Record") were not the preferred version of an article to hold in a repository, primarily because a pdf is a print-based concept which loses a lot of convenience and information for harvesting, but also in recognition of the formatting work of journal editors (which should never change the essence of an article). The Declaration explicitly make it clear that it is the final draft ("Accepted Manuscript") which is preferred. The "Version of Record" remains the citable object.

6. The Declaration also endorses author self-archiving of the final draft at the time of acceptance, implying the ID/OA policy (Immediate Deposit, OA when possible).

While the Brisbane Declaration is aimed squarely at Australian research, I believe that it offers a model for other countries. It does not talk in pieties, but in terms of action. It is capable of implementation in one year throughout Australia. Point 1 is written so as to include citizens from anywhere in the world, in the hope of reciprocity. The only important thing missing is a timescale, and that's because we believe Australia stands at a cusp.

What are the chances of a matching declaration in other countries?

Arthur Sale
University of Tasmania

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Following the conference on Open Access and Research held in September in Australia, and hosted by Queensland University of Technology, the following statement was developed and has the endorsement of over sixty participants.

Brisbane Declaration

Preamble: The participants recognise Open Access as a strategic enabling activity, on which research and inquiry will rely at international, national, university, group and individual levels.

Strategies: Therefore the participants resolve the following as a summary of the basic strategies that Australia must adopt:

1. Every citizen should have free open access to publicly funded research, data and knowledge.

2. Every Australian university should have access to a digital repository to store its research outputs for this purpose.

3. As a minimum, this repository should contain all materials reported in the Higher Education Research Data Collection (HERDC).

4. The deposit of materials should take place as soon as possible, and in the case of published research articles should be of the author's final draft at the time of acceptance so as to maximize open access to the material.

Brisbane, September, 2008