Don't Make Deposit Timing Policy Conditional On Publisher Embargo Policies

On Mon, 16 Apr 2007, Alexander Borbély, University of Zurich, wrote in the American Scientist Open Access Forum:

I was astonished to read that depositing the final version of the manuscript is prohibited [for Blackwell's European Journal of Neuroscience]... Making available only the version originally submitted is not very useful if major modifications based on the referees' recommendation are made:

Blackwell Publishing PDF version of the Article

You may use the PDF in the following ways:

you may share print or electronic copies of the Article with colleagues;

you may use all or part of the Article and abstract, without revision or modification, in personal compilations or other publications of your own work;

you may use the Article within your employer's institution or company for educational or research purposes, including use in course packs.

Please note that you are not permitted to post the Blackwell Publishing PDF version of the Article online.

Self-Archiving of Author Manuscripts:

Submitted version: You may post the original manuscript of the Article, as submitted for publication in the Journal, on your own personal website, on your employer's website/repository and on free public servers in your subject area....

Accepted version: Twelve months after publication you may post the original manuscript of the Article, as originally submitted for publication in the Journal, and updated to include any amendments made after peer review, on your own personal website, on your employer's website/repository and on free public servers in your subject area..."

Are you familiar with these instructions and what is your opinion?

I am very familiar with these instructions. Blackwell's is a 12-month embargo publisher.

The solution is extremely simple: always deposit the postprint (i.e., the refereed, revised, accepted final draft) immediately upon acceptance for publication (definitely not 12 months later!) and set the access as "Closed Access" instead of "Open Access," if you wish, which means the metadata (author, title, journal, abstract) are openly accessible to anyone on the web immediately, but the full-text is not. In addition, as I wrote before, make sure to implement the "Fair Use" Button (in your university's repository, ZORA): EMAIL EPRINT REQUEST.

All searches will lead to the Closed Access Deposit, and that in turn has the Button, which will provide for all usage needs during the 1-year embargo, semi-automatically, almost immediately, via almost-OA.

Embargoes will all die (I promise!) a very quick death once all institutions mandate immediate deposit like this; but embargoes will win the day if institutions foolishly make the mandated deposit date contingent on the publisher embargo's say-so.

Several other points:

(1) Unlike Blackwell's journals, most journals (62%) already endorse immediate OA deposit.

(2) There is no reason whatsoever to hold out for the publisher's PDF: The author's postprint is just fine for all research purposes! The PDF is completely irrelevant, one way or the other.

(3) Although it must always be left as an individual judgment for the author to make in the case of each individual paper, it is also good scholarly practice, wherever possible, to also deposit, even earlier, the pre-refereeing preprint (especially if submitting to an embargo publisher): The repository will tag the preprint clearly as an unrefereed draft, with a prominent link to the refereed postprint (and from there to the "Fair Use" button); this will also allow search engines to pick up the full-text for full-text indexing in the case of a Closed Access deposit, leading to many more discoveries of both the preprint and the postprint.

I do not for one microsecond believe that any publisher's statement that "a corrected version of the preprint (i.e., the postprint) cannot be made OA immediately" has any legal validity; nor do I think such nonsense could ever be enforced, had it had any legal validity. But instead of wasting still more time to wait for people to at last realize this, and to set access to their immediately deposited postprints as OA immediately, the immediate-deposit/optional-access policy (plus the "Fair Use" button) are the best interim compromise solution.

Then nature can take its course. And meanwhile researcher access needs are taken care of, almost-immediately, through almost-OA, during any putative embargo period.

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum