With apologies for blasting lists yet again with my opinions - I'd like to correct a potential misinterpretation of my submission on the question of embargoes as soon as possible. Thanks very much to friends who pointed out the strong potential for mis-reading. I'll be preparing a revised submission, but wanted to share this right away for the benefit of others working on their own submissions.
Corrected statement on maximum embargoes. On maximum embargoes: an industry norm of free back issues to scholarly society journals about a year after publication appears to be emerging. For this reason, I recommend that a year's embargo be considered as the absolute maximum across the disciplines. The current 6-month embargo in STM should be retained, and all advice to publishers should clearly indicate that the practice of allowing embargoes is to facilitate a transition to full open access, and that the eventual goal is to gradually reduce and then eliminate embargoes. Embargoes are a concession to existing publishers; the public has a right to access the results of publicly funded research with no delay. (added Jan. 17, 2013). best, Heather Morrison On 2013-01-16, at 10:21 PM, Heather Morrison wrote: > My response is posted here: > http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.ca/2013/01/uk-house-of-lords-short-enquiry-into.html > > Highlights > > The long-term leadership of the UK and the House of Lords in open > access is acknowledged and applauded. It is recommended that > researchers always be required to deposit work in UK based > repositories, even when publishing work in open access venues, to > ensure that UK funded research never becomes unavailable or > unaffordable to people in the UK. > > My research delves into mapping open access with the Creative Commons > licenses, finding that, despite superficial similarities, the CC > licenses are useful tools but no CC license is synonymous with open > access and each license element has both useful and negative > implications for scholarship. For example, allowing derivatives and > commercial uses to anyone downstream will not always be compatible > with research ethics requirements. A participant in a weight loss > study giving permission to use a photo for a scholarly journal cannot > be assumed to have granted permission for anyone to use this photo in > a commercial advertisement. I recommend replacing the requirement that > funded articles use the CC-BY license with a statement that when RCUK > funds for open access publishing are used, there should be no > restrictions placed on educational or research uses of the works. > > As an open access advocate, I recommend against block funding for open > access article processing fees, as this will interfere with the > market, raising prices that will result in loss of support for this > approach outside the UK, disadvantaging the very publishers who think > that this approach will benefit them. Instead, I recommend that the UK > follow the policies of the U.S. National Institutes of Health and > Canada’s Canadian Institutes of Health Research in allowing > researchers to use their research grants to pay open access article > processing fees. > > I suggest providing some funding to provide infrastructure and support > and/or subsidies to assist scholarly society publishers, a common > practice at university libraries throughout North America, and I > further recommend that the UK set aside some seed funding to fund the > future, that is, the next generation of scholarly communication, > overlay journals built on institutional repositories, an area where > the UK is well positioned to play a leadership role. > > Finally, I present some data of relevance to the question of maximum > permissible embargoes before works can be made open access. It can be > argued that a new norm of scholarly journals providing free back > issues on a voluntary basis, typically within a year of publication, > has emerged in the past ten years. This is such a widespread and > growing practice that the lack of evidence of harm to these journals > is in itself evidence that a one-year’s embargo causes no harm to > journals relying on subscriptions, even when all articles in the > journal are made freely available. Therefore I suggest that it would > be quite appropriate to set a maximum embargo of no more than one year > regardless of discipline. Thank you very much for the opportunity to > participate in this consultation. > > best, > > Heather Morrison, PhD > Freedom for scholarship in the internet age > https://theses.lib.sfu.ca/thesis/etd7530 > _______________________________________________ > GOAL mailing list > GOAL@eprints.org > http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
