> (2) Insofar as OA (and Green OA self-archiving mandates) are > concerned, however, the relevant question is not whether books count > as the outputs of funded research. (OA is for the outputs of > research, whether or not the research is funded. And Green OA > self-archiving mandates apply to the research output of a > university's salaried academics, whether or not their research > receives external funding, just as the university's publish-or-perish > mandate applies to publications irrespective of they are the result > of external funding.)
Regarding OA for books, it seems to me that it is not a good approach to discuss dogmatically what OA or Green OA is or is not. You may call it OA or not, but books in many cases should be mandatorily made available on the Internet or have a mandatory license allowing reprographic copying (again, not relevant if this is to be called OA or we should have another name for it). Figures probably vary across countries and across scientific disciplines, but in a study we did in Brazil on a sample of over 2,000 books, we found out that among Brazilian scientific authors of books, 64% to 86% of them worked in public institutions in full-time jobs when the book was written, so their scientific book was a public funded research output (if we included public research funding for scientists in both public and private institutions, figures would be very close to 100%). Although we did not sample outside Brazil, I bet figures are similar all over Latin America. Authors might (and do) expect royalties revenues for their books, but they should not, as the book, specially in the Social Sciences, is sometimes the main research output of public funded science. And making books available either through the Internet or through free licenses is VERY relevant for scientific teaching in developing countries, where students frequently have no means to buy books and they are not available in enough quantities in the libraries (again in a study we did in Brazil, on 10 courses in the University of São Paulo - which is the best university in Brazil - to buy all books required for one semester would consume +80% of the whole monthly revenue of a student's family. Figures are certainly higher in less elitist schools). So most students either share books through the Internet or make xerox copies of them - and both practices are considered illegal by the book industry, because the scope of copyright limitations (fair use) is controversial. The lack of a mandate to make public funded scientific books available is one the main barriers to educational and scientific development in developing countries. I really think this should be taken into account when discussing a mandate for scientific books, even in developed countries, as the books produced in developed countries (many of them with public funding) are later used in developing countries (in Brazil 66% to 73% of books adopted in scientific teaching in the university comes from abroad - mostly from developed countries). Pablo Ortellado
