Sharing some replies to (frequently asked) questions:
On 2011-10-27, at 7:59 AM, Sonja Haerkoenen (U. Cardiff) wrote:
> ...thank you for your participation in our event... also for your responses to my queries, which came in very useful in the after-event discussions. The people who attended were all very engaged and interested in the area, so I am very happy to report back that it all went very well and was well received!
> I have attached Ben Ryan's slides (from the EPSRC) in case you want to see his presentation. We will link to your vimeo slides from our post-event news page which will go live shortly.
Thanks for your message. I'll happily renounce the cake reward if
Cardiff mandates ID/OA!
Thanks for sending Ben's slides about RCUK and the forthcoming
Willetts study group.
If I had been present I would have made the following comments:
RCUK has made a splendid, historic contribution by leading the world's
funding councils, in mandating OA.
But it is now time to optimize the RCUK mandates, so they provide the
best possible model for the rest of the world to emulate. This just
requires a few small changes in the fine-tuning of the mandates, but
the result will be far more OA, as well as far wider emulation of the
RCUK example:
(1) OA Embargoes: It is fine to allow an embargo period for OA, in
compliance with publisher policies, but the deposit date itself should
not be subject to embargo but immediate: RCUK should upgrade to ID/OA,
which means deposit of the final refereed draft immediately upon
acceptance for publication. That way the embargo only applies to the
date on which the deposit is made OA, but all papers must be
immediately deposited, no exceptions or waivers. The majority of
journals (>60%) already endorse immediate OA (including virtually all
the top journals in each field);,and for the remaining 40% "Almost-OA"
can be provided immediately by the author with the help of the
Institutional Repository's "email eprint request" Button, which allows
individual users to request a single copy of the paper for research
purposes via a semi-automatic email, with which the author can comply
with one click.
(2) Locus of Deposit: The designated locus of deposit should be the
researcher's institutional repository (IR), not institution-extermal
central repositories. Virtually all UK universities now have IRs and
there is the OpenDEPOT for the few who don't have one yet. Deposits
can then be harvested automatically to any further central
repositories (such as UK PubMed Central). This also encourages and
reinforces ID/OA mandates of their own by universities and research
institutions, which are the universal roviders of all research, funded
and unfunded, in all fields. Otherwise funder OA mandates and
institutional mandates are in needless and counterproductive
competition with one another, obliging researchers -- who are already
sluggish about depositing (that's why mandates are needed) -- to
deposit in multiple repositories, institution-external repositories.
With convergent, collaborative mandates for institutional deposit,
institutions will be an invaluable help to funders in monitoring and
ensuring compliance.
(3) Primacy and Priority to Green OA Self-Archiving: Perhaps the most
important point is that the present EPSRC policy, although it mentions
both green OA self-archiving and gold OA publishing, is almost 100%
preoccupied with gold OA publishing, and how to publish and license
it. This is a great practical and strategic mistake. Green OA
self-archiving (ID/OA mandates) needs to come first. It does not
require extra funding, it provides 100% OA (starting with 60%
immediate OA and 40% "Almost-OA), it can be mandated immediately, it
has the greatest benefit/cost ratio, and it will eventually lead to
gold OA at far lower prices, while also releasing the funds (currently
locked into subscriptions) to pay for it.
I've appended the relevant references at the end of this message.
> I've got a few questions / comments that I can foresee will be asked and so I wonder if you could give me some pointers as to what to respond to these?
Sure, with pleasure. (These same questions always come up at all talks
about green OA and green OA mandates.)
> - some academics are worried that using post-prints instead of publishers' pdfs will lose them citations of the actual article, as people will cite the repository version instead
Answer is very simple, best understood in 5 parts:
1. What one cites, always, is the published version.
2. One does not cite the draft one happens to have accessed. (If I
receive a xerox copy, I don't cite the copy in hand, I cite the
published work.)
3. What people usually mean with this question is either "How do I
QUOTE passages if I do not have the page information?" The answer is
that you quote the passage and provide the section heading and
paragraph number instead.
4. The other thing people mean with this question is: "What if there
are differences between the refereed final draft and the published
version." The answer is that the final draft is the refereed, accepted
version, so the only possible discrepancies are minor copy-editing.
5. The right way to understand what is really at issue is this: As a
reader, when my institution has no subscription access to the journal
that publishes a paper I need, would I have no access access at all,
if I cannot access the publisher's PDF, or would I rather have access
to the refereed final draft? (The universal answer, of course, is that
the final refereed draft is infinitely preferable to no access at
all.) Same answer from the author's point of view: For users whose
institutions cannot afford subscription access to the journal in which
your paper is published, would you rather they have no access at all,
or access to your final refereed draft. (The universal answer, of
course, is that the final refereed draft is infinitely preferable to
no access at all.)
http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#2.Authentication
http://www..eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#23.Version
> - post-prints won't have the correct pagination, so citing becomes difficult / confusing between versions
See 3 above.
> - at Cardiff we foresee individual authors to be checking copyright before uploading items - is that your understanding as well or do you tend to think that there should be a central unit that checks copyright for any items submitted to a repository?
Much better, faster, more straightforward to let authors check about
copyrights and embargoes. The University merely mandates deposit of
the refereed final draft, immediately upon acceptance for publication
(and -- very important -- designates deposit as the sole method for
submitting refereed articles for institutional performance review). It
is merely recommended strongly, but not required, to set access to the
immediate-deposit as immediate-OA. If the author wishes to comply with
a publisher's embargo on OA, they can set access as closed access
instead of open access.
But make sure the repository has the semi-automatic "email eprint
request" button to allow the author to provide "Almost-OA" during any
embargo.
> - some disciplines publish a lot as books or book chapters - how does that fit in with a University mandate?
Book chapter deposit should be mandated and linked to performance
review, just as for articles, but, again, if authors elect to make it
Closed Access, make sure the button is available for the author to
semi-automatically send single eprints to requesters.
The deposit of entire books should be recommended, but not necessarily
required. See my presentation: *Do not over-reach, by mandating OA for
material to which the author does not wish to provide OA.* The only
exception-free target content is refereed journal articles, all
written only for usage and impact, not for royalty income from sales.
(Eventually, of course, Green ID/OA mandates will lead to the
well-deserved death of publisher embargoes for articles, and the
growth and palpable benefits of Green OA will inspire authors to
provide OA to more and more of their work, including books. But to
insist now would be counter-productive, and would elicit author
resistance, rightly.)
> - the "request copy via email" system: is that legal? I haven't been able to get an answer from our central copyright team on that...
Of course authors sending reprints (whether print, photocopy or
electronic) of their own writings, as single copies, to requesters,
for research purposes, is and always has been legal:
Sale, A., Couture, M., Rodrigues, E., Carr, L. and Harnad, S. (2012)
Open Access Mandates and the "Fair Dealing" Button. In: Dynamic Fair
Dealing: Creating Canadian Culture Online (Rosemary J. Coombe & Darren
Wershler, Eds.) http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac..uk/18511/
ABSTRACT: 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.
Harnad, S. (2007) The Green Road to Open Access: A Leveraged
Transition. In: The Culture of Periodicals from the Perspective of the
Electronic Age, pp. 99-105, L'Harmattan.
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac..uk/15753/
ABSTRACT: What the research community needs, urgently, is free online
access (Open Access, OA) to its own peer-reviewed research output.
Researchers can provide that in two ways: by publishing their articles
in OA journals (Gold OA) or by continuing to publish in non-OA
journals and self-archiving their final peer-reviewed drafts in their
own OA Institutional Repositories (Green OA). OA self-archiving, once
it is mandated by research institutions and funders, can reliably
generate 100% Green OA. Gold OA requires journals to convert to OA
publishing (which is not in the hands of the research community) and
it also requires the funds to cover the Gold OA publication costs.
With 100% Green OA, the research community's access and impact
problems are already solved. If and when 100% Green OA should cause
significant cancellation pressure (no one knows whether or when that
will happen, because OA Green grows anarchically, article by article,
not journal by journal) then the cancellation pressure will cause
cost-cutting, downsizing and eventually a leveraged transition to OA
(Gold) publishing on the part of journals. As subscription revenues
shrink, institutional windfall savings from cancellations grow. If and
when journal subscriptions become unsustainable, per-article
publishing costs will be low enough, and institutional savings will be
high enough to cover them, because publishing will have downsized to
just peer-review service provision alone, offloading text-generation
onto authors and access-provision and archiving onto the global
network of OA Institutional Repositories. Green OA will have leveraged
a transition to Gold OA.
Harnad, S. (2010) Gold Open Access Publishing Must Not Be Allowed to
Retard the Progress of Green Open Access Self-Archiving. Logos: The
Journal of the World Book Community, 21 (3-4). pp. 86-93.
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/21818/
ABSTRACT: Universal Open Access (OA) is fully within the reach of the
global research community: Research institutions and funders need
merely mandate (green) OA self-archiving of the final, refereed drafts
of all journal articles immediately upon acceptance for publication.
The money to pay for gold OA publishing will only become available if
universal green OA eventually makes subscriptions unsustainable.
Paying for gold OA pre-emptively today, without first having mandated
green OA not only squanders scarce money, but it delays the attainment
of universal OA.
Harnad, S. (2010) The Immediate Practical Implication of the Houghton
Report: Provide Green Open Access Now. Prometheus, 28 (1). pp. 55-59.
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac..uk/18514/
ABSTRACT: Among the many important implications of Houghton et al’s
(2009) timely and illuminating JISC analysis of the costs and benefits
of providing free online access (“Open Access,” OA) to peer-reviewed
scholarly and scientific journal articles one stands out as
particularly compelling: It would yield a forty-fold benefit/cost
ratio if the world’s peer-reviewed research were all self-archived by
its authors so as to make it OA. There are many assumptions and
estimates underlying Houghton et al’s modelling and analyses, but they
are for the most part very reasonable and even conservative. This
makes their strongest practical implication particularly striking: The
40-fold benefit/cost ratio of providing Green OA is an order of
magnitude greater than all the other potential combinations of
alternatives to the status quo analyzed and compared by Houghton et
al. This outcome is all the more significant in light of the fact that
self-archiving already rests entirely in the hands of the research
community (researchers, their institutions and their funders), whereas
OA publishing depends on the publishing community. Perhaps most
remarkable is the fact that this outcome emerged from studies that
approached the problem primarily from the standpoint of the economics
of publication rather than the economics of research.
Harnad, S. (2008) Waking OA’s “Slumbering Giant”: The University's
Mandate To Mandate Open Access. New Review of Information Networking,
14 (1). pp. 51-68. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac..uk/17298/
ABSTRACT: Universities (the universal research-providers) as well as
research funders (public and private) are beginning to make it part of
their mandates to ensure not only that researchers conduct and publish
peer-reviewed research (“publish or perish”), but that they also make
it available online, free for all. This is called Open Access (OA),
and it maximizes the uptake, impact and progress of research by making
it accessible to all potential users worldwide, not just those whose
universities can afford to subscribe to the journal in which it is
published. Researchers can provide OA to their published journal
articles by self-archiving them in their own university’s online
repository. Students and junior faculty – the next generation of
research providers and consumers -- are in a position to help
accelerate the adoption of OA self-archiving mandates by their
universities, ushering in the era of universal OA.
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