On 2011-11-06, at 1:28 PM, Jean-Claude Guédon wrote:
The primary target information of the OA movement is refereed
research results in whatever form, articles, books, etc. They are
written for research uptake, and even though some research
monographs may entail symbolic royalties, they are not published for
this reason. As a result, they should not be distinguished from the
rest, especially because they constitute the dominant symbolic
currency of the humanities and the social sciences. The OA movement
also deals with the humanities and the social sciences.
A distinction can and must be made between what authors want to give away free
for all and what they do not want to give away free for all.
Underlying this is the all-important underlying distinction between what
institutions and funders can mandate (require) to be made OA and what they
cannot.
Books are always welcome as OA, of course, but only articles can be mandated to
be made OA because they are the only ones that are, without exception, written
by their authors solely for research uptake, usage and impact, not for royalty
revenue.
It is a great strategic mistake to conflate the exception-free subset with the
exception-ridden supraset,
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The situation is not so rosily green (!!!) in the humanities and
social sciences, and it is far worse in the case of monographs.
For monographs, see above.
Among the 60% of all journals that are already green on immediate green OA
self-archiving by their authors, the only systematic discipline difference I
know of for sure is chemistry, because of the ACS's regressive policy. All the
large international, multidisciplinary green publishers (CUP, Elsevier, John
Wiley, Kluwer, Springer) include social science and humanities (SSH) journals
among their titles.Â
Is there evidence that among all SSH journals the proportion of green journals
differs significantly from 60%? (This may be true for some national journals and
non-English-language journals; I do not know, although one hears the reverse:
that national and non-English language journals have a higher, not a lower
proportion of gold journals (which are, a fortiori, also green), and even gold
journals that do not charge pay-to-publish fees.)
In any case, this matter is irrelevant for mandates, because what can be
universally mandated, without exception, in all fields, is immediate deposit in
the author's institutional repository, whether or not the journal is green
(i.e., whether or not it endorses making deposits OA immediately, or instead
insists on a Closed Access embargo period of various -- sometimes infinite --
length).
In principle, one could also mandate deposit of all monographs too, allowing the
option of Closed Access, exactly as with non-green journal articles -- and I
personally think this would be a wonderful idea.Â
But, practically speaking, considering all the misunderstandings that abound,
slowing the adoption even of journal-article mandates, I would again recommend
accomplishing the latter first, without inviting trouble and opposition by
over-reaching for books too. (They will all come once we have at long last had
the sense to do the doable, which is to mandate green for all articles, first.)
This is important to avoid discriminating against the humanities and
the social sciences, once again.
There is no discrimination against SSH! Authors are free to self-archive their
books too. But it is their articles that they *must* self-archive.
[Regarding mandating the deposit of the author's refereed,
corrected, accepted final draft is the refereed journal article]...
I agree with this, but must point out, once more, that the
humanities and social sciences do not limit themselves to citing
articles; they also quote from these articles, and this requires
page numbers. if the version made accessible in a repository is not
paginated in the same way as the final, publisher's version, it can
be read and cited, but not quoted in the usual manner. This
situation creates obstacles to researchers.Â
Please, please let us not air this all again! What is at issue is which version
is within immediate reach, with minimal publisher constraints, and that version
is the author's final draft. That is the one for which deposit can and must be
mandated. And that is the one that means the difference between night and day
for those who wish to access, read, cite *and quote* it, if otherwise their
institutions cannot afford subscription access to the publisher's version of
record at all.
Yes, the absence of the pagination is a slight scholarly inconvenience. But what
is the size of this inconvenience, compared to no access at all? And the locus
of a quoted passage can be indicated in a perfectly rigorous, effective and
scholarly way by citing the section name and paragraph number in place of the
page number. (It's even more specific!)
And what is the point? Since far more publishers are green on immediate OA for
the author's final draft than for the publisher's paginated version of record,
why are we talking about the need of page numbers to quote from the publisher's
version of record when most institutions have not yet even mandated the
self-archiving the author's final draft?
Why even mention the unreachable "more," when we have not even bothered to grasp
the vast benefits of the "less" that is fully within reach?
It is more like the difference between night and early dawn. The
"night and day" result happens when only citing is needed. In cases
where quoting is also needed, it is more difficult to achieve (hence
the dawn, rather the day). In poorer countries, I suspect it is
close to being impossible.
Jean-Claude, I cannot see the point that is being made here. But I think it has
been made, and answered, so many times in this Forum that there is nothing new
to be learned.
Yes, I myself keep repeating the mandating point too, but that is something that
is practically feasible, and has been for some time. The idea is to get people
to at least do that, at long last, rather than to continue dwelling on how it
falls short of the ideal...
I agree with all of this, but I must point out that in some
countries, including the US, the "email eprint request" must be
designed very carefully so as not to run afoul of copyright
legislation. An automatic sending of the article by the repository
simultaneously with the sending of the email request to the author,
even though the author may have given a blanket release on his
article, may be assimilated to illegal publishing in some
jurisdictions, especially if the author has signer all of her rights
away to a publisher. The best way is to have a letter go to the
author and have the author send directly the article to the person
requesting. This will protect the repository from possible
litigations.
The latter, not the former, is precisely how the Button works. The IR does not
send out copies automatically. What it does is relay eprint requests from
would-be users (paste  name and email in a box and click once) to the author,
who receives an email requesting the eprint and can authorize the emailing with
one click.
Sale, A., Couture, M., Rodrigues, E., Carr, L. and Harnad, S. (2012)Â Open
Access
Mandates and the "Fair Dealing" Button. In:Â Dynamic Fair Dealing: Creating
Canadian Culture Online (Rosemary J. Coombe & Darren Wershler,
Eds.)Â http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/18511/
ABSTRACT:Â We describe the "Fair Dealing Button," a feature designed for authors
who have deposited their papers in an Open Access Institutional Repository but
have deposited them as "Closed Access" (meaning only the metadata are visible
and retrievable, not the full eprint) rather than Open Access. The Button allows
individual users to request and authors to provide a single eprint via
semi-automated email. The purpose of the Button is to tide over research usage
needs during any publisher embargo on Open Access and, more importantly, to make
it possible for institutions to adopt the "Immediate-Deposit/Optional-Access"
Mandate, without exceptions or opt-outs, instead of a mandate that allows
delayed deposit or deposit waivers, depending on publisher permissions or
embargoes (or no mandate at all). This is only "Almost-Open Access," but in
facilitating exception-free immediate-deposit mandates it will accelerate the
advent of universal Open Access.
Amitiés,
Stevan
