On 25/03/2010 21:36, "Arthur Sale" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hugh
>
> I am ten years retired, but I am not as stupid as to not think that Open
> Access is a very desirable goal. I'm still active in research and supervise
> PhD candidates. And as a previous Pro Vice-Chancellor I am fully aware of
> the theory of change.
(I am sorry to say that I read the negations as suggesting that people who
do not think that Open Access is a very desirable goal are stupid. I'm not
sure this is the best way to put an argument.)
>
> We are not waiting for those who don't comply with orthodoxy to retire, but
> rather for the "scientific revolution" a la Kuhn to become the orthodoxy.
> Recalcitrant academics are irritants, nothing more. Their influence dwindles
> and they are ignored. This is exactly what happened with Galileo, modern
> chemistry, plate tectonics, demise of paper encyclopedias, etc. Regrettably,
> whatever you think of universities as places of independent research and
> rational thinkers, there are some people who simply cannot handle having
> been wrong. Universities are places which are made up of more-or-less
> typical people, who react like more-or-less typical people.
>
> In respect of Australian statistics, unfortunately the situation is harder
> to analyse now because most of the records in repositories are now stubs (no
> full text) thanks to the ERA. Sorry you could not find that paper easily. My
> research is all OA since about 1990. You can find my papers easily at
> http://eprints.utas.edu.au/view/authors/Sale,_AHJ.html. Not all are about
> OA. You should be interested also in http://eprints.utas.edu.au/388/. It
> shows what happens when a mandate is installed.
Thank you very much, very helpful.
I think they show that a mandate is at least crucial, if not actually a sine
qua non, to achieve Open Access.
Looking at http://eprints.utas.edu.au/388/
I am trying to drill into the statistics in Table 1 and having some
difficulty.
For Southampton, maybe Les can help about how those %ages were calculated
(if he happens to notice this message!)?
For QUT, I wonder if the (Australian ViceChancellors Committee, 2006)
listings were based on ARROW; if so, the best I can find out about ARROW is
that it harvests primarily from Australian sources.
http://eprints.utas.edu.au/264/1/Comparison_of_content_policies_in_Australia
.pdf
http://www.avcc.edu.au/documents/publications/stats/HERDCTimeSeriesData1992-
2003.xls
It is not clear to me where the statistics for the spreadsheet come from.
If indeed the harvesting is primarily Australian resources, then it would be
missing professional bodies in the US, for example.
This is all part of me trying to understand whether what might be called the
compliance rate is in fact a "miniscule" problem.
I do understand that these are not easy things to investigate, and really
appreciate seeing your papers, and the time you are spending interacting
with me.
>
> BTW, the only enforcement that our departmental mandate ever got was me
> wandering into someone's office and asking when they were going to deposit
> that paper they just published. Fewer than 10% of the production, but very
> distinctly a light touch (not even being a Head of School but a retired
> Professor). Most of the staff were eager once the notion was endorsed as a
> School policy and needed no enforcement.
>
> Best wishes
>
> Arthur
>
> PS I am taking your question about advice for transitional people seriously,
> and wring a mini-paper for them.
Thanks, I have seen it.
Best
Hugh
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Hugh Glaser [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Friday, 26 March 2010 6:39 AM
> To: Arthur Sale; [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Guide for the Perplexed (about how to inspire institutions to
> adopt Green OA self-archiving mandates)
>
> Thanks Arthur,
> I am trying to compose a more general response to the discussion so far, but
> in the meantime I have a few detailed comments interspersed.
>
> On 23/03/2010 21:38, "Arthur Sale" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Hugh
>
> Let me reply interspersed. Best wishes
>
> Arthur Sale
> University of Tasmania
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Hugh Glaser [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Tuesday, 23 March 2010 11:57 PM
> To: Arthur Sale; [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Guide for the Perplexed (about how to inspire institutions to
> adopt Green OA self-archiving mandates)
>
> Thanks Arthur.
> I actually know quite a lot of academics who are delinquent in one or more
> of the things that they are mandated to do, or only do the minimum they can
> get away with without being hassled.
> That is sort of the point here.
> I am not saying mandates are bad.
> Mandates are great, if you want to put get stuff into your repository.
>
> But once you have the mandate, the work is not finished.
> Compliance must be tackled, and simply telling academics there is a mandate
> is not the only way of improving it. Carrots of the right taste are good, as
> well as sticks.
>
> I half-agree. The work is not finished. But compliance can be a light touch
> rather than heavy-handed, and the examples I know have used the light touch
> very effectively. For example a phone call or an email to the Head of
> Department listing the academics and/or the publications who have not
> deposited in the last year. The idea is to get deposition to become part of
> the normal academic workload, not set up a deposit police force. Produce
> reports on compliance by department tabled at Faculty and Senate meetings.
> No doubt you can think of other measures which employ the light touch.
>
> It is hard for me to see a phone call to the HoD as a light touch, from the
> point of view of the researcher who then gets the subsequent contact from
> the HoD.
>
> Of course 80% full beats 15% full hands-down!
>
> By the way, I see people talking about mandates working or repositories
> being full.
> One of the things I noticed when we built rkbexplorer.com(*) was that when I
> looked at ECS at Southampton, which had had a mandate for many years, there
> were significant numbers of papers that had been published by members of
> staff that were not in ECS ePrints.
> I keep meaning to write a utility that will identify them, but haven't found
> the time yet.
> Is there research that identifies the proportion of an institution's
> publications that do not get deposited for a steady state mandate?
> If so, does it manage to relate the different compliance rates to the way
> the policy is presented?
>
> Not that I know of. It would depend quite strongly on the style of the
> mandate and the things we discussed earlier. There will always be a small
> number or recalcitrant academics, and we will have to wait for them to
> retire. One of the other problems is that there are not enough consistent
> mandates yet to study.
> So I guess we just wait until the people who choose to enter the profession
> are compliant with the prevailing orthodoxy, and everything will be fine -
> not my idea of a University.
> I guess it is exactly people like me that you are wanting to get rid of, and
> I guess that it is this sort of thing that got me to retire - you have
> achieved one of your objectives!
>
> BTW in Australia we know exactly what is published every year for each
> university, because the Australian Government requires us to collect the
> citations and report them. The scheme is audited too, and is probably with a
> percent or so of being fully accurate. Analysis of repository fullness tends
> to be easy.
> Thanks - finally tracked through your links from the Patchwork Mandate to
> the sort of thing I was looking for:
> http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1324/
> 1244
>
> Best
> Hugh
>
> I also see people (on this list and elsewhere) asking for help in convincing
> people to deposit. The response is frequently to say that the mandate is the
> whole answer. I find that disappointing. Perhaps if a more inclusive
> approach was taken, the mandate uptake and compliance would not be quite as
> painful.
>
> I am sorry to say that mandates are the whole answer, except as I said as a
> route to soften up the institution and get a mandate adopted. I have written
> often on what can be done, mostly alas for conferences. However, for those
> looking for guidance on what they should do, may I recommend my paper on the
> Patchwork Mandate strategy http://eprints.utas.edu.au/410/ and
> http://dx.doi.org/10.1045/january2007-sale? It fits neatly into that space
> of using persuasion effectively in order to achieve and institution-wide
> mandate. Target your areas, rather than using a scattergun approach. Get
> each area to commit to depositing (a "mandate"). Identify a champion who
> will leverage your effort and continue it to stop backsliding. Show benefits
> to users like usage statistics, citation counts, etc.
>
> There was a time I was the person in charge of the ECS Southampton
> repository, so please don't think I am against mandates. But I think it does
> mean I am aware of some of the problems.
>
> Best
> Hugh
>
> (*)rkbexplorer.com is a system that harvests many sources of publications,
> including oai archives, dblp, acm, citeseer (some with older data), and
> gives a unified view of an individual's research activity.
>
> On 23/03/2010 04:37, "Arthur Sale" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Perhaps I can add something to this discussion. The reason we know that
>> mandates are the only way to get repositories full is simple- it works and
>> nothing else does.
>>
>> Long experience over many years has consistently proven that persuading
>> academics to deposit their papers is a Sisyphean task. A few academics
> stay
>> persuaded, but the persuasion for most wears off after a while, and the
>> persuaded academics drop out. The balance seems to be around 15%, maybe
>> slightly higher like 20% where the benefits are more obvious. Neither
> level
>> is satisfying and no-one has found any good argument for persuasion as a
>> strategy, except as a route to a mandate.
>>
>> Let's not get hung up about mandates. Academics are mandated all the time.
>> Indeed it is an intrinsic part of what it means to be an academic. They
> are
>> required to turn up to scheduled lectures. They are required to set exam
>> papers, and even worse to mark them. Most academics are required to
> undergo
>> performance management evaluation, or to go through promotion procedures
> to
>> proceed in rank. Academics are required not to molest their students or
> show
>> personal preferences. When things like the RAE/REF are contemplated,
>> academics are required to take part. Academics are also required to
> publish
>> their research. Academics happily mandate that their students must submit
>> assignments on time, and turn up to exams. I could keep going on for quite
> a
>> long time...
>>
>> The only immediate solution in this transitional time is deposit mandates.
>> Once mandates are universal, they become the community norm but a mandate
>> nonetheless.
>>
>> Arthur Sale
>> University of Tasmania
>> Australia
>
>
>
>
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