On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 1:43 PM, Klaus Graf<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>> From: Michael White  michael.white -- stir.ac.uk
>>
>> ... I think/hope that as academics get more accustomed to using this
>> facility, response rates will improve (and possibly already are).
>
> I do not think that using the request button is a valid OA strategy.
> My own experience was that I received few response when requesting an
> article. The St. Gallen IR manager said that requesters can obtain
> much more positive results when mailing to the scholar directly.

(1) Michael White reported that the response rates for the request
button are about 50% fulfillment, 5% refusal and 45% no response.

(2) He also said that some of the no-responses may have been (2a)
elapsed email addresses, (2b) temporary absence, (2c) embargoed
theses, and (2d) author unfamiliarity with purpose and use of the
email eprint request Button.

(3) He also noted that the response rates may well improve with time.
(I would add that that's virtually certain: It is still exceedingly
early days for the Button, and time -- as well as the growing clamor
for access [and impact] -- is on the Button's side.)

(4) It is harder to imagine why and how the long and complicated
alternative procedure -- of a user discovering an article that has not
been deposited by the author, finding the author's email address, and
sending him an email eprint request, to which the author must respond
by sending an email and attaching the eprint -- would "obtain much
more positive results" than the author depositing the article in his
IR, once, and letting the IR's Button send the email requests for the
requesters to the author with no need for look-up, and only one click
needed from the author to fulfill the request.

(5) The email eprint request Button does not provide OA; it only
provides "Almost OA." But that's infinitely better than no OA. And the
Button (and the Immediate-Deposit/Optional-Access -- ID/OA -- Mandate,
for which the Button was designed) make it possible for institutions
and funders to adopt Green OA mandates that neither need to allow
exemptions from immediate deposit nor do they need to allow publishers
to dictate whether or when the deposit is made.
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/71-guid.html

(If publishers have a say, it is only about whether and when the
deposit is made OA, not about whether or when the deposit is made at
all. Since 63% of journals are already Green on immediate OA, the
ID/OA Button means that institution or funder can reach
uncontroversial consensus on 100% deposit, yielding at least 63%
immediate OA and 37% Almost-OA, whereas the alternative is not
arriving at a consensus on mandating OA at all, or adopting a weaker
mandate that only provides OA after an embargo period, or only at the
publisher's behest, or allows author opt-out. And the most important
thing is not only that the ID/OA provides more access and is easier to
agree to adopt, but it will also quite naturally drive embargoes into
their well-deserved graves, as the mandates and their resulting OA --
and the demand for it -- grow.)
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/494-guid.html

> The Oppenheim/Harnad "preprint &
> corrigenda" strategy "of tiding over a publisher's OA embargo: Make the
> unrefereed preprint OA before submitting to the journal, and if upon
> acceptance the journal seeks to embargo OA to the refereed postprint,
> instead update the OA preprint with a corrigenda file.
> http://bit.ly/vi3JQ " is a valid OA strategy because the eprint is PUBLIC.

What makes a strategy "valid" is that it works, increasing access,
Open Access, and Open Access mandates.

Both the "preprint&corrigenda" strategy and the "ID/OA-mandate&Button"
strategy can increase access, OA, and OA mandates, but the
ID/OA-mandate&Button strategy is universal: it scales up to cover all
of OA's target content, whereas the preprint&corrigenda strategy is
not universal, for it does not and cannot cover those disciplines (and
individual authors) that have good (and bad) reasons not to want to
make their unrefereed preprints public.

> If an article is published then the author hasn't any right under OA
> aspects to choose which requester has enough "dignity" to receive an
> eprint. I cannot accept the arbitrariness of such a decision under OA
> circumstances.

Relax. The reason neophyte self-archivers are not fulfilling Button
requests is because they are either not getting them or don't yet
understand them, not because they are making value judgments about who
does and does not merit the privilege of accessing their work!

They'll learn: If necessary, they'll learn under the pressure of the
impact-weighting of publications in performance evaluation. But my
hunch is that they already know they want the user-access and
user-impact (from the eager way they do vanity searches in the
biobliography of every work they pick up in their research field, to
check whether their own work has been cited). So all they really need
to learn now is how the Button works, and why.
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/274-guid.html

Stevan Harnad

>On November 22, 2008 Arthur Sale wrote in this list:
>
> "For example if you had asked for a thesis, the following could have happened:
>
> a.  The research might have a totally banned commercial reason for
> non-disclosure (I have just had a PhD student graduate, and the
> company that sponsors him insists on a two year total embargo so they
> can exploit the research. This is not peer reviewed and published
> research.
>
> b.  You might be asking during the exam period / summer holidays (you
> will know your northern summer is 6 months out of sync with ours,
> ditto academic year).
>
> c.  The graduate may have left the University and the email address on
> record might be defunct.
>
> ·         Fourthly, the author may still be ignorant or worried about
> their rights under Australian copyright law (unfounded, but real)."
>
> If I need an eprint NOW I cannot wait until the Australian summer is over.
>
> My recents findings on Zurich's ZORA
> http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/5815961/ are supporting evidence for
> the following:
>
> (1) Scholars generally prefer to deposit publisher's PDF even the
> closed access is therefore permanent.
>
> (2) If the rate of permanent closed access items in an IR is high the
> probability that after years an author's mail adress is still working
> is low.
>
> For German law there is very strong evidence that the request button
> is clear not lawful. (It's another question if a publisher can or will
> enforce the interdiction. Most IR managers are fearful men - it would
> be enough if a publisher would send a polite mail as expression of his
> discontent with the request button and on the next day the IR manager
> will deactivate the button ...)
>
> If depositing needs a few keystrokes and only few scholars are
> depositing without mandate - why should they react spontaneously on a
> eprint request via button?
>
> Nobody says that ILL is an OA strategy but it is doing more and better
> for the research communication than this unfortunate button.
>
> Klaus Graf
>