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On 1-Dec-08, at 5:55 AM, leo waaijers wrote (in SPARC-OAForum: > Dear Stevan, > > Most authors do not self-archive their publications spontaneously. > So they must be mandated. But, apart from a few, the mandators do > not mandate the authors. In a world according to you they themselves > must be supermandated. And so on. This approach only works if > somewhere in the mandating hierarchy there is an enlightened echelon > that is able and willing to start the mandating cascade. > Leo, you are quite right that in order to induce authors to provide Green OA, their institutions and funders must be induced to mandate that they provide Green OA (keystrokes). Authors can be mandated by their institutions and funders, but institutions and funders cannot be mandated (except possibly by their governments and tax-payers), so how to persuade them to mandate the keystrokes? The means that I (and others) have been using to persuade institutions and funders to mandate that authors provide OA have been these: (1) Benefits of Providing OA: Gather empirical evidence to demonstrate the benefits of OA to the author, institution, and funder, as well as to research progress and to tax-paying society (increased accessibility, downloads, uptake, citations, hence increased research impact, productivity, and progress, increased visibility and showcasing for institutions, richer and more valid research performance evaluation for research assessors, enhanced and more visible metrics of research impact -- and its rewards -- for authors, etc.). (2) Means of Providing OA: Provide free software for making deposit quick, easy, reliable, functional, and cheap, for authors as well as their institutions. Provide OA metrics to monitor, measure and reward OA and OA-generated research impact. (3) Evidence that Mandating (and Only Mandating) Works: Gather empirical data to demonstrate that (a) most authors (> 80%) will deposit willingly if it is mandated by their institutions and/or funders, but they will not deposit if it is not mandated (< 15%) (Alma Swan's studies); and that (b) most authors (> 80%) actually do what they say they would do (deposit if it is mandated [> 80%] and don't deposit if it is not mandated [< 15%] even if they are given incentives and assistance [< 30%] (Arthur Sale's Studies). (4) Information about OA: Information and evidence about the means and the benefits of providing OA has to be widely and relentlessly provided, in conferences, publications, emails, discussion lists, and blogs. At the same time, misunderstanding and misinformation have to be unflaggingly corrected (over and over and over!) There are already 58 institutional and funder Green OA mandates adopted and at least 11 proposed and under consideration. So these efforts are not entirely falling on deaf ears (although I agree that 58 out of perhaps 10,000 research institutions [plus funders] worldwide -- or even the top 4000 -- is still a sign of some hearing impairment! But the signs are that audition is improving...) > To create such a cascade one needs water (i.e. arguments) and a > steep rocky slope (i.e. good conditions). The pro OA arguments do > not seem to be the problem. In all my discussions over the last > decade authors, managers and librarians alike agreed that the future > should be OA also thanks to you, our driving OA archevangelist. > But alas it is not agreement that we need, but mandates (and keystrokes)! And now, not in some indeterminate future. > So, it must be the conditions that are lacking. This awareness > brought me to the writing of an article about these failing > conditions. Only if we are able to create better conditions mandates > will emerge and be successful on a broad scale. A fortiori, this > will make mandates superfluous. > I am one of the many admirers of your splendid efforts and success in the Netherlands, with SURF/Dare, "Cream of Science," and much else. But I am afraid I don't see how the three recommendations made in the Ariadne article will make mandates emerge (nor how they make mandates superfluous). On the contrary, I see the challenge of making the three recommendations prevail to be far, far greater than the challenge of getting mandates to be adopted. Let me explain: > Recommendation 1: Transferring the copyright in a publication has > become a relic of the past; nowadays a “licence to publish” is > sufficient. The author retains the copyrights. Institutions should > make the use of such a licence part of their institutional policy. Persuading authors to retain copyright is a far bigger task than just persuading them to deposit (keystrokes): It makes them worry about what happens if their publisher does not agree to copyright retention, and then their article fails to be published in their journal of choice. Doing the c. 6-minutes-worth of keystrokes that it takes to deposit an article -- even if authors can't be bothered to do those keystrokes until/unless it is mandated -- is at least a sure thing, and that's the end of it. In contrast, it is not at all clear how long copyright retention negotiations will take in each case, nor whether they will succeed in each case. Moreover, just as authors are not doing the deposit keystrokes except if mandated, they are not doing the copyright retention negotiations either: Do you really think it would be easier to mandate doing copyright retention than to mandate deposit? (Harvard has adopted a kind of a copyright-retention mandate, though it has an opt-out, so it is not clear whether it is quite a mandate -- nor is it clear how well it will succeed, either in terms of compliance or in terms of negotiation [nor whether it is even thinkable for universities with authors that have less clout with their publishers than Harvard's]. But there is a simple way to have the best of both worlds by upgrading the Harvard copyright-retention mandate with opt-out into a deposit mandate without opt-out that is certain to succeed, and generalizable to all universities -- the Harvards as well as the Have-Nots. To require successful copyright renegotiation as a precondition for providing OA and for mandating OA, however, would be needlessly and arbitrarily to raise the goal-post far higher than it need be -- and already is for persuading institutions and funders to mandate deposit at all.) Upgrade Harvard's Opt-Out Copyright Retention Mandate: Add a No-Opt- Out Deposit Clause http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/364-guid.html > Recommendation 2: The classic impact factor for a journal is not a > good yardstick for the prestige of an author. Modern digital > technology makes it possible to tailor the measurement system to the > author. Institutions should, when assessing scientists and scholars, > switch to this type of measurement and should also promote its > further development. This is certainly true, but how does using these potential new impact metrics generate OA or OA mandates, or make OA mandates superfluous? On the contrary, it is OA (and whatever successfully generates OA) that will generate these new metrics (which will, among other things, in turn serve to increase research impact, as well as making it more readily measurable and rewardable)! Brody, T., Carr, L., Gingras, Y., Hajjem, C., Harnad, S. and Swan, A. (2007) Incentivizing the Open Access Research Web: Publication- Archiving, Data-Archiving and Scientometrics. CTWatch Quarterly 3(3). http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14418/ Harnad, S. (2007) Open Access Scientometrics and the UK Research Assessment Exercise. In Proceedings of 11th Annual Meeting of the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics 11(1), pp. 27-33, Madrid, Spain. Torres-Salinas, D. and Moed, H. F., Eds. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13804/ Harnad, S. (2008) Validating Research Performance Metrics Against Peer Rankings. Ethics in Science and Environmental Politics 8 (11) doi: 10.3354/esep00088 The Use And Misuse Of Bibliometric Indices In Evaluating Scholarly Performance http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15619/ > Recommendation 3: The traditional subscription model for circulating > publications is needlessly complex and expensive. Switching to Open > Access, however, requires co-ordination that goes beyond the level > of individual institutions. Supra-institutional organisations, for > example the European University Association, should take the > necessary initiative. The European University Association has already taken the initiative to recommend that its 791 member universities in 46 countries should all mandate Green OA self-archiving! Now the individual universities need to be persuaded to follow that recommendation. The European Heads of Research Councils have made the same recommendation to their member research councils. (I am optimistic, because, for example, 6 of the 7 RCUK research funding councils have so far already followed the first of these recommendations -- from the UK Parliamentary Select Committee on Science and Technology. And the 28 universities that have already mandates show that institutional mandates are at last gathering momentum too. But if it is already considerably harder to mandate author copyright- retention than it is to mandate author self-archiving in their institutional repositories (Green OA), it is surely yet another order of magnitude harder to mandate "Switching to Open Access" from the "traditional subscription model." If author's are likely to resist having to renegotiate copyright with their journal of choice at the risk of not getting published in their journal of choice, just in order to provide OA, they are even more likely to resist having to publish in a Gold OA journal instead of in their journal of choice, just in order to provide OA. And journal publishers are likely to resist anyone trying to dictate their economic model to them. (Moreover, this goes beyond the bounds of what is within the university community's mandate to mandate!) So mandating Green OA is still the fastest, surest, and simplest way to reach universal OA. Let us hope that the "enlightened echelon" of the institutional hierarchy will now set in motion the long overdue "mandating cascade." Best wishes, Stevan Harnad > Stevan Harnad wrote: > >> >> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- >> Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2008 10:32:17 -0500 >> From: Stevan Harnad <[log in to unmask]> >> To: [log in to unmask] >> Subject: Re: JISC/SIRIS "Subject and Institutional Repositories >> Interactions Study" >> >> On 30-Nov-08, at 9:08 AM, Neil Jacobs (JISC) wrote: >> >>> Thanks Stevan, >>> You're right, of course, the report does not cover policies. The >>> brief for >>> the work was to look for practical ways that subject/funder and >>> institutional repositories can work together within the >>> constraints of the >>> current policies of their host organisations. There are >>> discussions to be >>> had at the policy level, but we felt that there were also >>> practical things >>> to be done now, without waiting for that. >> >> Hi Neil, >> >> I was referring to the JISC report's recommendations, which mention >> a number >> of things, but not how to get the repositories filled (despite >> noting the >> problem that they are empty). >> >> It seems to me that the practical problems of what to do with -- >> and how to >> work together with -- empty repositories are trumped by the practical >> problem of how to get the repositories *filled*. >> >> Moreover, the solution to the practical problem of how the >> repositories >> (both institutional and subject/funder) can work together is by no >> means >> independent of the practical problem of how to get them filled -- >> including >> the all-important question of the *locus of direct deposit*: >> >> The crucial question (for both policy and practice) is whether direct >> deposit is to be divergent and competitive (as it is now, being >> sometimes >> institutional and sometimes central) or convergent and synergistic >> (as it >> can and ought to be), by systematically mandating convergent >> institutional >> deposit, reinforced by both institutional and funder mandates, >> followed by >> central harvesting -- rather than divergent, competing mandates >> requiring >> deposits willy-nilly, resulting in confusion, understandable >> resistance to >> divergent or double deposit, and, most important, the failure to >> capitalize >> on funder mandates so as to reinforce institutional mandates. >> >> Institutions, after all, are the producers of *all *refereed research >> output, in all subjects, and whether funded or unfunded. Get all the >> institutions to provide OA to all their own refereed research >> output, and >> you have 100% OA (and all the central harvests from it that you >> like). >> >> As it stands, however, funder and institutional mandates are pulling >> researchers needlessly in divergent directions. And (many) funder >> mandates >> in particular, instead of adding their full weight behind the drive >> to get >> all refereed research to be made OA, are thinking, parochially, >> only of >> their own funded fiefdom, by arbitrarily insisting on direct >> deposit in >> central repositories that could easily harvest instead from the >> institutional repositories, if convergent institutional deposit were >> mandated by all -- with the bonus that all research, and all >> institutions, >> would be targeted by all mandates. >> >> It is not too late to fix this. It is still early days. There is no >> need to >> take the status quo for granted, especially given that most >> repositories are >> still empty. >> >> I hope the reply will not be the usual (1) "*What about researchers >> whose >> institutions still don't have IRs?*": Let those author's deposit >> provisionally in DEPOT for now, from which they can be automatically >> exported to their IRs as soon as they are created, using the SWORD >> protocol. >> With all mandates converging systematically on IRs, you can be sure >> that >> this will greatly facilitate and accelerate both IR creation and IR >> deposit >> mandate adoption. But with just unfocussed attempts to accommodate >> to the >> recent, random, and unreflecting status quo, all that is guaranteed >> is to >> perpetuate it. >> >> Nor is the right reply (2) "*Since all repositories, institutional >> and >> subject/funder, are OAI-interoperable, it doesn't matter where >> authors >> deposit!*" Yes, they are interoperable, and yes, it would not >> matter where >> authors deposited -- if they were indeed all depositing in one or >> the other. >> But most authors are not depositing, and that is the point. >> Moreover, most >> institutions are not mandating deposit at all yet and that is the >> other >> point. Funder mandates can help induce institutions -- the universal >> research providers -- to create IRs and adopt institutional deposit >> mandates >> if the funder mandates are convergent on IR deposit. But funder >> mandates >> have the opposite effect if they instead insist on central deposit. >> So the >> fact that both types of repository are interoperable is beside the >> point. >> >> Une puce à l'oreille (not to be confused with a gadfly), >> >> Stevan Harnad >> >> >> Neil >> >> Stevan Harnad wrote: >> >> The /JISC/SIRIS "Report of the Subject and Institutional Repositories >> Interactions Study"/ < >> http://ie-repository.jisc.ac.uk/259/1/siris-report- >> nov-2008.pdf>(November >> 2008) "/was commissioned by JISC to produce a set of practical >> recommendations for steps that can be taken to improve the >> interactions >> between institutional and subject repositories in the UK/" but it >> fails to >> make clear the single most important reason why Institutional >> Repositories' >> "/desired 'critical mass' of content is far from having been >> achieved/." >> >> >> The following has been repeatedly demonstrated (1) in cross-national, >> cross-disciplinary surveys (by Alma Swan < >> http://www.keyperspectives.co.uk/openaccessarchive/index.html>, >> uncited in >> the report) on what authors /state/ that they will and won't do and >> (2) in >> outcome studies (by Arthur Sale < >> http://eprints.utas.edu.au/view/authors/Sale,_AHJ.html>, likewise >> uncited in >> the report) on what authors /actually do/, confirming the survey >> findings: >> >> >> *Most authors will not deposit until and unless their universities >> >> and/or their funders make deposit mandatory >> >> <http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/>. But if and when >> >> deposit is made mandatory, over 80% will deposit, and deposit >> >> willingly. (A further 15% will deposit reluctantly, and 5% will >> >> not comply with the mandate at all.) In contrast, the spontaneous >> >> (unmandated) deposit rate is and remains at about 15%, for years >> >> now (and adding incentives and assistance but no mandate only >> >> raises this deposit rate to about 30%).* >> >> >> The JISC/SIRIS report merely states: "/Whether deposit of content is >> mandatory is a decision that will be made by each institution/," >> but it does >> not even list the necessity of mandating deposit as one of its >> recommendations, even though it is the crucial determinant of >> whether or not >> the institutional repository ever manages to attract its target >> content. >> >> Nor does the JISC/SIRIS report indicate how institutional and funder >> mandates reinforce one another < >> http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/369-guid.html>, >> nor how to >> make both mandates and locus of deposit systematically convergent and >> complementary (deposit institutionally, harvest centrally < >> http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/136-guid.html>) >> rather >> than divergent and competitive -- though surely that is the essence >> of >> "/Subject and Institutional Repositories Interactions/." >> >> >> There are now 58 deposit mandates already adopted worldwide (28 from >> universties/faculties, including Southampton < >> http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?inst=University%20of%20Southampton%20School%20of%20Electronics%20and%20Computer%20Science >> >, >> Glasgow < >> http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?inst=University%20of%20Glasgow >> >, >> Liège < >> http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?inst=Universit%C3%A9%20de%20Li%C3%A8ge >> >, >> Harvard < >> http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?inst=Harvard%20University%20Faculty%20of%20Arts%20and%20Sciences >> > >> and Stanford < >> http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?inst=Stanford%20University%20School%20of%20Education >> >, >> and 30 from funders, including 6/7 Research Councils UK < >> http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/research/outputs/access/default.htm>, European >> Research Council < >> http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?inst=European%20Research%20Council%20%28ERC%29 >> >and >> the US National Institutes of Health < >> http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?inst=National%20Institutes%20of%20Health%20%28NIH%29 >> >) >> plus at least 11 known mandate proposals pending (including a >> unanimous >> recommendation from the European Universities Association < >> http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?inst=European%20University%20Association%20%28EUA%29 >> > >> council, for its 791 member universities in 46 countries, plus a >> recommendation to the European Commission from the European Heads of >> Research Councils < >> http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?inst=European%20Research%20Advisory%20Board%20%28EURAB%29 >>> ). >> >> >> It is clear now that mandated OA self-archiving is the way that the >> world >> will reach universal OA at long last. Who will lead and who will >> follow will >> depend on who grasps this, at long last, and takes the initiative. >> Otherwise, there's not much point in giving or taking advice on the >> interactions of empty repositories... >> >> >> Swan, A., Needham, P., Probets, S., Muir, A., Oppenheim, C., >> >> O'Brien, A., Hardy, R., Rowland, F. and Brown, S. >> >> (2005) Developing a model for e-prints and open access journal >> >> content in UK further and higher education >> >> <http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11000/>. /Learned Publishing/, 18 >> >> (1). pp. 25-40. >> >> >> >> *Stevan Harnad <http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/>* >> >>