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*In response to Alma Swan's graphic demonstration<http://optimalscholarship.blogspot.com/2009/05/multiplying-mandates.html> (posted yesterday and partly reproduced below) of the accelerating growth rate of Green Open Access Self-Archiving Mandates<http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/> (now including NIH<http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?inst=National%20Institutes%20of%20Health%20%28NIH%29> , Harvard<http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?inst=Harvard%20University%3A%20Faculty%20of%20Arts%20and%20Sciences> , Stanford<http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?inst=Stanford%20University%3A%20School%20of%20Education> and MIT<http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?inst=Massachussetts%20Institute%20of%20Technology%20%28MIT%29>), Richard Poynder has posted some some very useful comments and questions<http://poynder.blogspot.com/2009_05_01_archive.html>. Below are some comments by way of reply:* <http://optimalscholarship.blogspot.com/2009/05/multiplying-mandates.html> *FIGURE: Accelerating Growth Rate in Worldwide Adoptions of Green Open Access Self-Archiving Mandates<http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/> (2002-2009, in half-year increments) by Research Funders, Institutions, and Departments/Faculties/Schools (Swan 2009<http://optimalscholarship.blogspot.com/2009/05/multiplying-mandates.html> )* ------------------------------ *(1)* The latest and fastest-growing kinds of Green Open Access Self-Archiving Mandates <http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/> are not only self-chosen by the researchers themselves, but they are department/faculty/school mandates, rather than full university-wide mandates. These are the "patchwork mandates<http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january07/sale/01sale.html>" that Arthur Sale already began recommending presciently back in 2007, in preference to waiting passively for university-wide consensus to be reached. (The option of opting out<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/364-guid.html> is only useful if it applies, not to the the deposit itself [of the refereed final draft, which should be deposited, without opt-out<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/494-guid.html>, immediately upon acceptance for publication], but to whether access to the deposit is immediately set as Open Access.) *(2)* Another recent progress report for Institutional Repositories, following Stirling<http://listserver.sigmaxi.org/sc/wa.exe?A2=ind09&L=american-scientist-open-access-forum&D=1&O=D&F=l&S=&P=44333>'s, is Aberystwyth<http://listserver.sigmaxi.org/sc/wa.exe?A2=ind09&L=american-scientist-open-access-forum&D=1&O=D&F=l&S=&P=45880>'s, which reached 2000 deposits in May. *(3)* Richard asks: *"Will the fact that many of the new mandates include opt-outs affect compliance rates? (Will that make them appear more voluntary than mandatory?)"* <http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11006/>According to Alma Swan's international surveys <http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11006/>, most authors report they would comply willingly with a self-archiving mandate. The problem is less with achieving compliance on adopted mandates than with *achieving consensus on the adoption of the mandate in the first place*. (Hence, again, Arthur Sale's sage advice to adopt "patchwork" department/faculty/school mandates, rather than waiting passively for consensus on the adoption of full university-wide mandates, is the right advice.) And the principal purpose of mandates themselves is to *reinforce*researchers' already-existing inclination to maximise access and usage for their give-away articles, not to *force* researchers to do something they don't already want to do. (Researchers need to be reassured that their departments or institutions or funders are indeed fully behind self-archiving, and indeed expect it of them; otherwise researchers remain in a state of "Zeno's Paralysis<http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12094/>" about self-archiving year upon year, because of countless groundless worries, such as copyright<http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#10.Copyright> , journal choice <http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#32.Poisoned>, and even how much time <http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10688/> self-archiving takes.) *(4)* Richard also asks: *"What is full compliance so far as a self-archiving mandate is concerned?"* Full compliance is of course 100% compliance, and the longer-standing mandates are climbing toward that, but their biggest boost will come not only from time, nor even from the increasingly palpable local benefits of OA self-archiving (in terms of enhanced research impact<http://opcit.eprints.org/oacitation-biblio.html>), but from the global growth of Green OA Self-Archiving Mandates that Alma has just graphically demonstrated<http://optimalscholarship.blogspot.com/2009/05/more-multiplying-mandates.html> . *(5)* *"What other questions should we be asking?"* We should be asking what university students and staff can do to accelerate and facilitate the adoption of mandates at their institution. (See "Waking OA’s “Slumbering Giant”: The University's Mandate To Mandate Open Access<http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/17298/> .") And the right way to judge the success of a mandate is not just by reporting the growth in an institution's yearly deposit rates, but by plotting the growth in deposit rate as a percentage of the institution's yearly output of research articles, for the articles actually published in that same year. *Stevan Harnad <http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/>* American Scientist Open Access Forum<http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html>