Re: OA Primer for the Perplexed
Stevan, you don't answer the point. I have several departments most of whose members do not *want* their articles published on open access, as stated directly to me. Your idea that they want it but are afraid to do it is in direct conflict with what they themselves state. (I'm not in a position to give you a list of their names! This would clearly not be in the interests of advocacy in my institution.) It may well be because they are uninformed, but nonetheless the truth is clearly that at present they do not *want* OA for these reasons, whether or not they are afraid of it. The distinction you make is absolutely fallacious and does not serve your analysis. I am clearly not alone in this experience as a repository manager. Let's not post fiction on the list, it is risible to suggest as you do that all academics are of one mind in any respect as regards OA, which is patently untrue. This said, I regret that there is no point addressing the rest of your email at all. As stated many times, I support Green OA entirely, constant alterations to the terminology notwithstanding. Talat -Original Message- From: American Scientist Open Access Forum [mailto:american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org] On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad Sent: 28 May 2008 21:10 To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Subject: Re: OA Primer for the Perplexed Talat Chaudhri wrote: The argument made by Stevan Harnad... is marred by the repeated assertion that all authors want OA1 (his term, i.e. what we have hitherto been asked to call Green OA self-archiving). (1) As announced on this list, there are two forms of OA, free access online, and free access plus re-use licenses of various kinds. The first is provisionally called OA1 and the second OA2. These are place-holders pending better terms to be proposed shortly. Green OA self-archiving can in principle provide either OA1 or OA2. (2) All authors [of peer-reviewed journal articles] want OA1 (i.e., all authors want their published articles freely accessible online) is true (and I challenge Talat to find an author who would *not* want his article freely accessible online). But what is also true is that most authors still think it is not *possible* to make their articles freely accessible online (for at least 34 reasons, each of them leading to Zeno's Paralysis, all of them groundless, and the most frequent ones being that authors think it would violate copyright, bypass peer review, or entail a lot of work on their part): http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/ So it is not hard at all to see that it is true of *all* peer-reviewed journal article authors (and definitely *not* not true of all book authors, software authors, music authors, video authors) that they want their work to be freely accessible to all would-be users, not just those who can afford the access tolls. It's also easy to see why: Because refereed journal-article authors write for research impact, not for royalty income. It is likewise not hard to see that even though all journal authors, without exception, would want their articles to be freely accessible online, most (85%) of them still don't *make* their articles em freely accessible online (by self-archiving them). That is precisely why Green OA self-archiving mandates by researchers' universities and funders are needed: To cure refereed journal article authors of the 34 unfounded phobias of Zeno's Paralysis: Harnad, S. (2006) Opening Access by Overcoming Zeno's Paralysis, in Jacobs, N., Eds. Open Access: Key Strategic, Technical and Economic Aspects, chapter 8. Chandos. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12094/ Zeno *wanted* to walk across the room too: He just (wrongly) believed he could not... The experience of a repository manager quickly shows that many academics do not want it, largely because they are afraid of what it may entail and very badly informed about the benefits to themselves and to their disciplines. You are stating the objective facts incorrectly: Most academics do not *do* it (self-archive). That is not evidence that they do not *want* their articles freely accessible. It is merely (as you note) evidence that they are informed and afraid. This in no way contradicts what I said (that these authors all want OA for their articles -- whereas other kinds of authors, of other kinds of work, do not all want OA). http://cogprints.org/1639/1/resolution.htm#1.1 In fact, when it is asserted that all authors want Green OA, in fact all that seems to be true is that all respondents to the studies cited in fact want it. No, it is much stronger than that. But Alma Swan's sizable international, interdisciplinary studies are pretty good evidence of it too (and so is the latest study, from Australia: Anthony Austin, Maree Heffernan, and Nikki David (2008) Academic authorship, publishing agreements and open access: Survey Results, a new report from the OAK Law Project.
Re: OA Primer for the Perplexed
All, The argument made by Stevan Harnad in the post below is marred by the repeated assertion that all authors want OA1 (his term, i.e. what we have hitherto been asked to call Green OA self-archiving). The experience of a repository manager quickly shows that many academics do not want it, largely because they are afraid of what it may entail and very badly informed about the benefits to themselves and to their disciplines. In fact, when it is asserted that all authors want Green OA, in fact all that seems to be true is that all respondents to the studies cited in fact want it. I have encountered whole departments that contained maybe only one member of staff who was favourable towards OA and otherwise showed ignorance of the issues. This is not their fault but ours for failing to accompany efforts towards mandates with the appropriate grass-roots advocacy. These mandates are necessary, I agree (as stated in the past). I wonder if Stevan can substantiate the comment that all authors want OA1 that I see repeated here, and reconcile that opinion to the statement that I have made about my own practical experience as a repository manager that it isn't in fact the case across all disciplines. I find it impossible to believe that my university is so exceptional! I might add that these are largely arts departments, at whom OA advocacy has never been primarily targeted. Quite rightly, they feel that they have been treated as an add-on to the needs of science disciplines in evolving new forms of academic publishing. This has been directly stated in print by a member of our English department (their English Association newsletter) - sadly and ironically I don't think an online version exists for me to give you the link. It makes a rather interesting, albeit local, case study. But perhaps Stevan will argue that this is just one unrepresentative case. If so, the lady doth protest too much. I'm sorry, by no means would I mean to wreck the party. Nonetheless, my above point entirely vitiates the article. In simple terms that I feel can be useful to those actually engaged in advancing Green OA, I feel that both parties in this argument correctly support different forms of OA, that advancing the cause of one in no way need undermine the other (these fears are a phantom and a paranoia in my view) and that very little of the debate below is of practical use in putting OA into practice. In fact, it took me a long time to read and digest while I could have been engaging in targeted advocacy aimed at departments and management in achieving both voluntary archiving in the meantime and mandates as soon as possible. If a post contains misinformation, as I submit above, how are we repository managers to make sense of the argument and make any use of it? I am certainly perplexed, as primed by Stevan's most recent post. Best regards, Talat - Dr Talat Chaudhri, Ymgynghorydd Cadwrfa / Repository Advisor Tîm Cynorthwywyr Pwnc ac E-Lyfrgell / Subject Support and E-Library Team Gwasanaethau Gwybodaeth / Information Services Prifysgol Aberystwyth / Aberystwyth University Llyfrgell Hugh Owen Library, Penglais, Aberystwyth, Ceredigion. SY23 3DZ E-bost / E-mail: t...@aber.ac.uk Ffôn / Tel (Hugh Owen): (62)2396 Ffôn / Tel (Llandinam): (62)8724 Ffacs / Fax: (01970) (62)2404 CADAIR: http://cadair.aber.ac.uk Cadwrfa ymchwil ar-lein Prifysgol Aberystwyth Aberystwyth University's online research repository Ymholiadau / Enquiries: cad...@aber.ac.uk From: American Scientist Open Access Forum [mailto:american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org] On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad Sent: 26 May 2008 01:57 To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Subject: OA Primer for the Perplexed OA Primer for the Perplexed SUMMARY: OA1 is Free Access and OA2 is Licensed Re-Use. Green OA self-archiving by authors,mandated by their universities or funders, can in principle provide OA1 or OA2, for either articles or data or both. However, it would be difficult, resisted by many authors, and probably unjust for universities to mandate Green OA1 for data or to mandate Green OA2 for either articles or data. (Funders are in a position to mandate more.) Researchers may not want to make their data either freely accessible/useable or re-usable, and they may not want to make their articles freely re-useable. However, all researchers, without exception, want their articles freely accessible/usable (OA1). This is the reason Green OA1 mandates are the highest priority. Authors all want Green OA1 and they report that they will comply, willingly (see Swan studies) and actually do comply (see Sale studies) with Green OA1 mandates from their universities and funders to self-archive their articles. Moreover, OA1 for articles prepares the way and is
Re: The cost of peer review and electronic distribution of scholarly journals
Let's be honest, though, Dr Gadagkar can only *sometimes* have his cake and eat it right now. Could be relatively good if he is a physicist but a complete wash-out if he is researching in arts or many social science subjects. Let's not kid ourselves, only a small proportion of very new research in certain limited disciplines is available OA right now. And his core point about Gold OA excluding the developing world is valid (and indeed retired, unemployed academics or those qualified but in other professions for whom central Gold OA fees may not be paid, even in the rare instances that a fund exists). Green OA does not need Gold OA and should never suggest it as a good idea. Whatever the other debates, though, we must be honest about how far OA has advanced. (I do find it annoying that I can't get to read the entire letter: rather ironic, given the subject!) Talat Chaudhri Repository Manager Aberystwyth University -Original Message- From: American Scientist Open Access Forum [mailto:american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org] On Behalf Of Ept Sent: 22 May 2008 15:04 To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Subject: Re: The cost of peer review and electronic distribution of scholarly journals Dr Gadagkar can have his cake and eat it right now. Barbara - Original Message - From: Stevan Harnad har...@ecs.soton.ac.uk To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Sent: Thursday, May 22, 2008 1:38 PM Subject: Re: The cost of peer review and electronic distribution of scholarly journals ** Apologies for Cross-Posting ** On Thu, 22 May 2008, N. Miradon wrote: The current issue of Nature has correspondence from Dr Raghavendra Gadagkar. The abstract of his letter (available at [1]) compares and contrasts 'publish for free and pay to read' with 'pay to publish and read for free'. To read the letter in full will cost you USD 18. N Miradon [1] http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7194/full/453450c.html Nature 453, 450 (22 May 2008) | doi:10.1038/453450c; Published online 21 May 2008 Here is the part you can read for free: Open-access more harm than good in developing world Raghavendra Gadagkar Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560012, India The traditional 'publish for free and pay to read' business model adopted by publishers of academic journals can lead to disparity in access to scholarly literature, exacerbated by rising journal costs and shrinking library budgets. However, although the 'pay to publish and read for free' business model of open-access publishing has helped to create a level playing field for readers, it does more harm than good in the developing world... It is easy to guess what else the letter says: That at the prices currently charged by those Gold OA publishers that charge for Gold OA publishing today, it is unaffordable to most researchers as well as to their institutions and funders in India and elsewhere in the Developing World. This is a valid concern, even in view of the usual reply (which is that many Gold OA journals do not charge a fee, and exceptions are made by those that do charge a fee, for those who cannot afford to pay it). The concern is that current Gold OA fees would not scale equitably if they became universal. However, the overall concern is misplaced. The implication is that whereas the user-access-denial arising from the the unaffordability of subscription fees (user-institution pays) is bad, the author-publication-denial arising from the unaffordability of Gold OA publishing fees (author-institution pays) would be worse. But this leaves out Green OA self-archiving, and the Green OA self-archiving mandates that are now growing worldwide. Not only does Green OA cost next to nothing to provide, but once it becomes universal, if it ever does go on to generate universal subscription cancellations too -- making the subscription model of publishing cost recovery unsustainable -- universal Green OA will also by the very same token generate the release of the annual user-institution cancellation fees to pay the costs of publishing on the Gold OA (author-institution pays) cost-recovery model. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/ 399w e152.htm The natural question to ask next is whether user-institution costs and author-institution costs will balance out, or will those institutions that used more research than they provided benefit and those institutions that provided more research than they used lose out? This would be a reasonable question to ask (and has been asked before) http://www.google.com/search?num=100hl=enq=+site%3Alistserver.sigmaxi. org+ amsci+%22net+provider%22btnG=Search -- except that it is a fundamental mistake to assume that the *costs* of publishing would
Re: some thoughts on a brave new world
Stevan, Gold OA isn't popular and, I suspect, never will be. Correct. But I think you are making a logical error on causality: It is Green OA that will eventually cause the downsizing and conversion to Gold OA and peer review alone, not vice versa. Hence you are mistaken both about practicality, probability and priority: Green OA must come first, and the only way to get universal Green OA before the heat death of the universe is for universities and funders to mandate it. On downsizing to Gold OA, I'm afraid that I agree with the original point in the article to which N. Miradon posted a link recently. The developing world doesn't want it. Neither, I submit, does anybody in the developed world want to pay for it. In terms of diverting currently subscription funds progressively to OA, any librarian such as myself will tell you that getting management agreement for what looks *to them* like a hypothetical new publishing model is going to be complex and very possibly unworkable, leaving only the few universities that have created funds for the purpose. None to my knowledge has agreed to allocate money on a yearly basis, as the costs are currently unknown. Why will Gold OA not catch on? Because it is unjust! Only those academics whose institutions can afford to pay will be able to publish, unlike the present situation where anybody can. As I am presently a librarian, not an academic, I would be very likely unable to publish in my field of research on the basis of these centrally allocated funds, like retired academics and those in the developing world. Nobody will want this model, quite simply. They don't want it now! You, instead, Talat, are imagining a direct conversion to peer-review only, administered by inter-university consortia; there is no plausible direct path from here to there. But there *is* a plausible direct path from here to universal Green OA. As I also said, there was no plausible path for print to electronic publishing, yet it happened. If people as well placed as yourself were advocating it, I am sure it might have a strong chance of catching on. But none of that is the slightest bit relevant to what we are discussing here, which is what the true costs of peer review are *to journals* today. The cost of a few emails, letters and phone calls, self-evidently. Good copy editing and page setting costs much more, and shouldn't be as underestimated as it is. If you mean disseminating the submissions to the referees, that is part of peer review costs; so is the (little) copy editing that is done and needed. I don't mean that, obviously. If you mean disseminating the published article to users, then that most definitely is *not* part of the cost of peer review. (It is one of the main costs of publishing of which IRs will *relieve* journals in the OA era.) Of course it isn't a cost of peer review! I repeat, relieving journals of costs also relieves them of profits, which they won't want. It's myopic, to use your word, to suggest that this won't cause problems fairly soon. I think you are referring to the fact that 62% of journals (including Springer and Elsevier) have given their Green light to author self-archiving of the refereed postprint immediately upon acceptance for publication, 29% only after an embargo delay period, or only for the preprint, and 9% don't endorse self-archiving at all? As I believe I said to you once before, a comment you brushed aside, this is currently the case *under licence* which they remain free to withdraw, if that should be in their interests. Don't fool yourself that they couldn't if need be. At present it doesn't serve publishers to do so, so they don't. This is no basis on which to plan. I happen to personally think it is probable that universal mandated OA will eventually generate cancellations, cost-cutting, downsizing to peer review only, and a conversion to Gold OA. I happen to believe that nobody wants Gold OA in the future, as they don't appear to want it now. accessible online for all potential users. That is what is optimal for science and scholarship. The Green OA mandates will assure that that happens. And publishers will adapt. Herein lies a point always ignored. Arts departments have not co-operated with the Green OA revolution, as has recently been brought home to me here by our English Department. This is because we haven't understood their needs and continue to talk only about the most recent cutting edge science departments. Arts subjects are much more concerned with what you dismiss as legacy literature, preservation, book publishing, without which OA means little to them. We have sought no answers for any of these areas and so have no solutions for these academics. We would be over a barrel because we currently hold so much OA material on licence from these very same publishers. Perhaps that is indeed their tactic, to develop a lever that they can use against us
Re: some thoughts on a brave new world (fwd)
online-age extension: Indeed, two international, interdisciplinary surveys by Alma Swan have found that over 95% of researchers themselves, in all disciplines and all countries, report that they would comply with self-archiving mandates by their universities and funders (81% *willingly*, 14% reluctantly and only 5% not at all). And Arthur Sale's studies of implemented mandates confirm these compliance rates. (See the references Swan and Sale references that have been posted in this Forum so many times now that I don't think there's any need for me to post them yet again!) Stevan Harnad -- Forwarded message -- List-Post: goal@eprints.org List-Post: goal@eprints.org Date: Thu, 22 May 2008 12:57:10 +0100 From: Talat Chaudhri [tac] tac -- aber.ac.uk To: Stevan Harnad harnad -- ecs.soton.ac.uk Subject: some thoughts on a brave new world [Stevan, please post on the list. Thanks, Talat] I note that we *do* currently have publish for free and read for free as far as the author/reader is concerned, though presently limited by authors and publishers (in that order, I think) in its scope, i.e. Green OA. Naturally the publishing industry doesn't want to downsize just to operating peer review, since this is often partly paid for in terms of the staff time in academic departments where the academic reviewers are based and otherwise is only really an administrative job. Not a lot of money to be made there, and really academics don't need publishers to do it except for the fact that publishers are usually the inheritors of the prestige journal name brands that everyone wants to be in (except for instance University Presses, which are a halfway house). To downsize really means to remove the profitable part of their business: turkeys and Christmas comes to mind. I'm not convinced by the whole concept that publishers shoulder the costs of peer review, which is a gross oversimplification and varies per discipline. They *do* however shoulder the costs of copy editing, which is quite another service entirely and should be distinguished. However, as Stevan remarks very often, the publishing industry is a service to academics, not vice versa. If horses are replaced by motorcars, horse breeders need to radically downsize their industry and won't be remotely happy about it. Unfortunately for them that is the accepted way things change in the marketplace. Clever horse breeders may find a new niche. It isn't much use arguing that we should stop people using motorcars. For OA the challenge is to persuade academics that repositories are as good compared to subscription journals as motorcars are to horses, or else make it inevitably so (via the mandate or some other means - but let's leave the discussion of means for the present). We have a free service that can potentially offer, by one means or another, whatever the traditional publishing industry can, if not more: inevitably better by virtue of freeing up our resources for other purposes and for better access to all. So who bears the costs if everything is free? Answer: academic departments, who already give their staff time for peer review. Who funds *them*? Universities, by whatever internal means of allocating funding they may have or develop in response to changing needs. Let's think back to the dawn of academic publishing. Effectively, publishers were only a little more than printers. They are a middle man who make their money from organising various parties and from copy-editing. I may note that the costs of type-setting have been effectively removed. Did the type setters complain when their technical skills handling hot metal were no longer required? Too right they did! Wouldn't you if it was your livelihood? All the same, in the real world it was nonetheless inevitable that change had to happen. The truth is that publishers are (and have always been) an umbrella business covering various different functions, but that is not to say that these functions can *necessarily* only be carried out by publishers. I would imagine that the future ought really to involve cross-university peer review bodies rather like those that have existed throughout the history of academic publishing: in my discipline, the Board of Celtic Studies of the former federal University of Wales comes to mind. I see only two minor blocks to this: (1) Many people actually prefer print journals. One practical reason that many people report is eye strain from reading long detailed documents on a screen. To illustrate, why are print books *still* so much more popular than e-books? And why do most people simple print out e-books and e-journals in order to read them. This is not an intractable problem (as solutions have already been found as described by individuals), and does provide some means for publishers to retain this additional printing and binding business, albeit downsized a great deal for a more limited old-fashioned market. (2) Currently, as mentioned, the prestige loci
Re: New Ranking of Central and Institutional Repositories
I imagine that this is precisely why the Computer Science department asked for the script to be written, to make sure that their pages will no longer be out of date. The knock-on effect is that other departments can get it too. I might add that it really isn't very hard to achieve, and is a useful additional service and incentive to deposit. The anecdotal evidence that you give about these sorts of departments' search methods is useful and interesting: thank you, Arthur. Our departments currently have full control over the format of their web pages, which I suspect will not change soon. I can't comment about EPrints, which may well not need any PHP (or other script). We use DSpace, which doesn't have a function to provide a bibliography that can be incorporated neatly into web pages as the department clearly wanted. In fact, you can simply use the link if you like, but will get a bibliography on a white background with no presentation or institutional/departmental identity. One doesn't have to be a programmer to paste one tiny tag like this in a web page: ?php include(http://cadair.aber.ac.uk/export/Surname,%20Firstname/Citations. html); ?[author] ?php include(http://cadair.aber.ac.uk/export/2160/19/Citations.html;); ?[dept or collection] You can try these with or without the PHP include, to show the difference (top one obviously needs an author's name). The form here would obviously need you to make a test page of HTML with formatting, but you imagine how it would work. Of course you could merely follow a link to the author's stuff in the repository, but that isn't a very friendly service with DSpace repositories in the present version. I just meant to describe a useful script. Our technical staff may well be happy for other DSpace repositories to use it, to whom I can direct any enquiries. I hope this helps someone. Talat -Original Message- From: Arthur Sale [mailto:a...@ozemail.com.au] Sent: 15 February 2008 21:42 To: Talat Chaudhri [tac] Subject: RE: Re: New Ranking of Central and Institutional Repositories The practice of academics putting their publications on their institutional web pages is widespread and common in computer science and some branches of engineering. It is so common as to be unremarkable. I have no statistics on this that I can lay my hands on, but it is said that a common search strategy for computer scientists is to go to the author's website and see what else they have written, rather than using a search engine such as Google, citation searches, etc which are used as fall-back positions. The papers I have read also suggest that the publication lists on many of these web pages are up to three years out of date. It is now increasingly common in Australian universities to encourage these institutional web pages to replace the publication list by a simple link to the institutional repository. No php is needed - just a normal hyperlink. In earlier days in my University this was a coded search on the repository for the author for example http://eprints.utas.edu.au/cgi/search/advanced?screen=Public%3A%3AEPrint Sear ch_fulltext__merge=ALL_fulltext_=title_merge=ALLtitle=creators_name _mer ge=ALLcreators_name=Sale%2C+Arthurabstract_merge=ALLabstract=keyword s_me rge=ALLkeywords=subjects_merge=ALLcollections_merge=ALLdepartment_me rge= ALLdepartment=editors_name_merge=ALLeditors_name=refereed=EITHERpub lica tion_merge=ALLpublication=date=satisfyall=ALLorder=-date%2Fcreators_ name %2Ftitle_action_search=Search. Now, every user has a generated page for themselves which is free from the problems of disambiguating closely similar names, so the link is to that page, eg http://eprints.utas.edu.au/view/authors/Sale,_Arthur.html. Please also note that in my university as in many others, the [corporate] entry page for every academic is based on a standard template, which is populated from a database. (Subsequent non-standardized pages can be added, but they aren't part of the corporate system.) Once we have our proposed full mandate in place, it is likely that this template will be altered to require a link such as the above. Arthur Sale University of Tasmania -Original Message- From: Talat Chaudhri [tac] [mailto:t...@aber.ac.uk] Sent: Thursday, 14 February 2008 11:31 PM To: a...@ozemail.com.au Cc: Stevan Harnad Subject: RE: Re: New Ranking of Central and Institutional Repositories [Stevan, please post this for me. Thanks very much.] Hi Arthur, Mark, We comment partly on the basis of what exists now, rather than what could be in place, I think. A colleague of mine has written a script that automatically includes author's bibliographies in their personal or departmental web pages, just by using a link in a PHP (or other) server include in an HTML tag. This saves them lots of work and encourages deposit. Let's suppose that every academic did this (as I suspect they don't, even if able). Could we anticipate that academics might
Re: One year since conference on Scientific Publishing in the European Research Area
I am happy for my name and address to be added. (I'd have replied off-list, but do not see your email address and don't have it to hand.) I hope that, if others reply in the same way, this will suffice. Regards, Talat Dr Talat Chaudhri, Ymgynghorydd Cadwrfa / Repository Advisor Tîm Cynorthwywyr Pwnc ac E-Lyfrgell / Subject Support and E-Library Team Gwasanaethau Gwybodaeth / Information Services Prifysgol Aberystwyth / Aberystwyth University Llyfrgell Hugh Owen Library, Penglais, Aberystwyth, Ceredigion. SY23 3DZ E-bost / E-mail: t...@aber.ac.uk Ffôn / Tel (Hugh Owen): (62)2396 Ffôn / Tel (Llandinam): (62)8724 Ffacs / Fax: (01970) (62)2404 CADAIR: http://cadair.aber.ac.uk Cadwrfa ymchwil ar-lein Prifysgol Aberystwyth Aberystwyth University's online research repository Ymholiadau / Enquiries: cad...@aber.ac.uk -Original Message- From: American Scientist Open Access Forum [mailto:american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org] On Behalf Of N. Miradon Sent: 07 February 2008 07:55 To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Subject: One year since conference on Scientific Publishing in the European Research Area On 15 fev 2008 it will be just a year since the European Commission's conference on Scientific Publishing in the European Research Area. I would like to suggest an Anniversary Letter to the European Commissioners Mme Reading and M. Potocnik. The letter should come from one address, but it would be better if there were more than one signature. Is there any way which this Forum could host such an effort? First draft pasted in below. References [1] - [6] included just for completeness - not appropriate in the final letter. Your corrections and suggestions welcomed N Miradon DRAFT Mme Viviane Reding Ph. D. Commissioner for Information Society and Media European Commission B-1049 Bruxelles Belgique M. Janez Potocnik Ph.D. Commissioner for Science and Research European Commission B-1049 Bruxelles Belgique Dear Mme Reding, Dear M. Potocnik, It is just one year since your conference on Scientific Publishing in the European Research Area - Access, Dissemination, and Preservation in the Digital Age. (15-16 February 2007)[1] We have followed the various developments in scientific publishing since that conference. We would like to take this opportunity to thank you and your staff for the Communication on Scientific information in the digital age [2], for the public consultation on the Study on the economic and technical evolution of the scientific publication markets in Europe [3], and for the research projects in this domain which you support, such as DRIVER [4]. We note with particular interest that your colleagues in the European Research Council have recently decided that all peer-reviewed publications from the research projects which they fund should be deposited on publication into an appropriate research repository ... and subsequently made Open Access within 6 months of publication.[5] This seems to us an excellent policy option for scientific publishing under FP7 and in the European Research Area. It would thus achieve the original objectives of last year's conference [6] We would therefore like to ask you - is there any reason why the same requirement should not henceforth be included in all future FP7 grant agreements? Yours sincerely [1] http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/index.cfm?fuseaction=public.topicid=550lang=1CFID=11447469CFTOKEN=880b7960e13fde61-F2A86B39-BB33-8379-69AF32AD03B78623 [2] http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/document_library/pdf_06/communication-022007_en.pdf http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/document_library/pdf_06/communication-022007_fr.pdf http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/document_library/pdf_06/communication-022007_de.pdf [3] http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/index.cfm?fuseaction=public.topicid=360lang=1CFID=11447469CFTOKEN=880b7960e13fde61-F2A86B39-BB33-8379-69AF32AD03B78623 [4] http://www.driver-support.eu/multi/news.php [5] http://erc.europa.eu/pdf/ScC_Guidelines_Open_Access_revised_Dec07_FINAL.pdf [6] http://listserver.sigmaxi.org/sc/wa.exe?A2=ind07L=american-scientist-open-access-forumD=1O=DF=lS=P=1813
Re: OA in Europe suffers a setback
Hi Arthur, I am glad that you did not intend what came across as a slight to those engaging in grass-roots advocacy where their institutions are still relying on the voluntarist approach and have not yet achieved a mandate. As I have said, even though I don't dispute that voluntarism fails to fill repositories, it does form an important part of the initial development of a repository - and it is important for yourselves as advocates nearer to the political end of OA, with established repositories youselves, to cast your minds back to how things used to be when you were in this situation: the majority of repositories are not yet so well established, as you know. I take this approach because the case studies and content that have already arisen from my engagement with academics volunteering to archive their work form a major part of the resources that I can use to convince the departments and management to support a mandate, as well as to raise awareness amongst other academics before the event, essentially to get them on side whether or not they are in practice too fundamentally lazy to actually archive their papers without a prior mandate in place. I am not, as you put it, fooling myself into thinking that I can get compliance through voluntarism, but this is where we must start. I have absolutely no choice in this matter, of course. I must lay the groundwork on which a future mandate can work. Without such groundwork, as I maintain, no mandate would be able to work in practice. In essence, we need the first 15-20% before the rest is within our reach. Thank you for the useful information about the Patchwork Mandate, which I will look at with great interest. Another reason why it might be that student theses are mandated sooner than staff research (apart from the general fear of the employer about possible trade union action based on copyright issues relating to academic research) is highlighted by the experience of the average cataloguing librarian: the paper copies are expensive and time-consuming to process, so it is an obvious cost advantage to both students and libraries to work towards dispensing with them. With regard to your last point, that you seek to promote realism rather than discourage repository managers on this list, this is very welcome indeed to hear. I am very grateful for the information, as I have no doubt other repository managers are too. If you bear in mind the needs of those managing embryonic repositories, please consider more often the path as well as the goal, then perhaps no more of these unnecessary disagreements will arise between us. With best wishes, Talat
Re: OA in Europe suffers a setback
Hi Steve, Thanks for your kind remarks. We are fortunate in that the repository came about as an experimental project in the IT section of our converged library/IT department but was then capitalised upon by a forward thinking IS director, and it appears that our luck is holding with two pro VCs who so far have seemed to show great interest in OA. This seems thus far to be giving the levers that, as you say, some lack. I am the one managing the repository, but my superiors in the library are supportive and allow me possibly the most significant role in forming policy. I'm sure other models also work with equal success. I just hope that our progress thus far will translate into a mandate at some point. In general you are quite right to say that the gap, in terms of both understanding and policy agenda, between us and the senior managers needs to be bridged. I feel that it is part of my job to make those connections, but it may not be the same for every repository manager or administrator, as some institutions have a much less devolved structure than ours. The institutional mandate is the affirmation of the *institutional* repository. Well, considering that there are certain costs involved, and the success of individual repositories varies, I can understand why some senior managers take a cautious approach, especially as copyright risk is also involved. Perhaps seeing it from their point of view may help us bridge the gap. I'd be interested to hear how other repository projects came about and about the structure by which they are managed, to compare with our experience. I hope this response is a useful synopsis of ours. Thanks, Talat
Re: OA in Europe suffers a setback
Absolutely right. Mandates are all very well, whether within universities or nationally, but they are worthless unless they are complied with. Penalties for non-compliance are effectively impossible. I heard someone at UKCoRR compare the situation to speeding fines lately. Do these stop people from driving at 40mph in a 30mph zone? No. In fact, the fact that the law is unenforceable, penalties not withstanding, tends to bring any law or mandate into disrepute. Two things will make OA work: (1) active and continuous advocacy; (2) mandates from funding bodies, with future funding conditional on compliance. However, we have already encountered academics under such financially dependent mandates who did not realise this, and without advocacy on our part would apparently have been penalised in future. All this simply shows that the carrot is always more effective than the stick. This should be obvious to anyone who has been involved in education. You can, as the saying goes, take a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. Brussels will have to deal with OA when the time is ripe. Cheers, Talat
Re: OA in Europe suffers a setback
Hi, To be clear, we will seek a university mandate in Aberystwyth, but expect that compliance will only follow if backed up by adequate and ongoing advocacy. I have also seen this morning a report of only 4% of mandates succeeding, so I feel that I am receiving rather mixed messages on this. I am not sure that lobbying parliaments to force funding bodies to comply is the best first step, since, as you pointed out yourself, funding bodies are increasingly going in this direction themselves (in Britain, anyway), so it is clear that developing a voluntary code works to this extent. However, despite the six out of seven funding bodies requiring green OA, we do not yet see substantial compliance from academics as a result. We now need a growth in awareness amongst the authors, as well as among the funders. In short, inclusivity and rewards tend to breed co-operation, whereas mere legal directives are generally less well received. So the mandate from Brussels might not actually have changed the immediate situation much, except perhaps in terms of publicity. I take the point that not all research is funded, as I come from an arts background myself, where it is less frequently so. Here the need for advocacy is even stronger, as we have no carrot to offer except web hits. On the other hand, we can hope, as you point out, that the new metrics system will offer a greater carrot, if it lives up to expectations and if it takes OA archiving properly into account. How this system will work has been left to some extent deliberately unclear. I feel that the position of OA repositories is not yet strong enough to deliver our message adequately to legislators, which may be the reason why the initiative in the EU Parliament failed. As very few repository managers are full time, often engaged in other library or IT work, professional representation remains weak. At a recent UKCoRR meeting, only three members (where roughly half the total members were present) were full-time, including myself. In answer to the reply made by Prof. Charles Oppenheim, I reiterate my case study of a member of staff here being unaware that the funding body for his research required OA archiving, in which he would have failed because he did not read the agreement and therefore risked losing further grants. Clearly funding bodies can't penalise the vast number of academics in his position at the outset without engaging in some publicity and advocacy themselves in the beginning. They can usefully give the impression that they will do so, however, as it may in any event advance the cause of OA. To summarise, we are all approaching the issue from much the same point of view, but it is jumping the gun to think we can find a simple legal solution out of the box without doing the necessary work in talking to our audience first. Yes, something useful could have been done in Brussels, possibly. However, not enough ground work has been done, so I reiterate that the time is *not* in fact ripe as suggested. Most repositories are embryonic, without proper policy or software frameworks, some with almost no content on which to build. We need to act in our own universities by going out and speaking to the academic staff, not spend increasing amounts of time discussing the niceties of the matter here, fiddling while Rome burns. If some of you wish to spend your time lobbying parliaments instead, there is room for all kinds of contributions. However, we cannot expect everybody to do so, without any kind of professional representation. In the meantime, for my own small part, I will go back to advocacy, and handling the latest submissions in my repository, which on a collective basis, between us all, will exponentially drive the growth of OA repositories. As you say, Stevan, it is a matter of making sure that the keystrokes are actually made. Best wishes, Talat
