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JISC-REPOSITORIES  January 2010

JISC-REPOSITORIES January 2010

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Subject:

Erasmus University Rector Proposes Green OA Deposit Mandate

From:

Stevan Harnad <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Stevan Harnad <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 12:57:17 -0500

Content-Type:

text/plain

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** Cross-Posted **

[See fully hyperlinked version: http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/688-guid.html 
  ]

Professor Henk Schmidt, Rector of Erasmus University, Rotterdam, in an  
interview http://bit.ly/8098go about Open Access conducted by Leo  
Waaijers, has announced that he proposes to adopt a Green Open Access  
self-archiving mandate for Erasmus University's Institutional  
Repository, RePub:

	HS: "I intend obliging our researchers to circulate their articles  
publicly, for example no more than six months after publication... if  
possible in collaboration with publishers via the 'Golden Road' and  
otherwise without the publishers via the 'Green Road'... [We] can’t  
just oblige researchers to publish in Open Access journals. It has not  
yet been established that there are enough prestigious Open Access  
journals, but – until there are – prescribing the 'Green Road' seems  
to me an excellent idea... even though it’s a bit of a problem that  
this will lead to two versions of the article being circulated."

This is excellent news, but let me dispel the misapprehension that it  
will entail even a "bit of a problem":

Professor Schmidt states, quite rightly, that since most journals are  
not Gold OA (and especially few of the top journals are Gold OA),  
universities (and funders) cannot achieve OA by obliging their authors  
to publish in Gold OA journals.

However, as Professor Schmidt notes, universities (and funders) can  
require (mandate) that their authors make their articles Green OA by  
depositing them in their institutional OA repositories (of which every  
Dutch university now has one) immediately upon publication -- allowing  
an embargo on setting access to the deposit for a maximal permissible  
interval (say, 6 months) for those journals that do not yet already  
endorse immediate OA. (63% of journals already do endorse immediate  
OA, and that includes virtually all the top journals. And 79  
institutions, 18 departments and 42 research funders worldwide already  
mandate Green OA).

All of this is extremely welcome, and spot-on. I would add only that  
the difference between the author's peer-reviewed, revised, and  
accepted final draft (the postprint) and the publisher's version-of- 
record (PDF) is negligible for active researchers (especially those  
for whom OA is really intended, namely, the many would-be users whose  
institutions cannot afford subscription access to the journal in which  
an article happens to be published); moreover, most researchers are  
already quite accustomed to receiving and using prepublication hard  
copies (and, lately, email versions) of final drafts rather than  
waiting for the journal to appear.

Professor Schmidt adds:

	HS: "It may well take a year before your article appears in a  
journal. But I do expect the time pressure to increase. In that case,  
circulating your work by uploading it to a repository could speed  
things up."

As noted, OA is not merely for the sake of earlier access during the  
publication lag (most journals now offer access to the online version  
immediately, and even to the author's final draft -- but to  
subscribers only). The primary motivation for OA is the need for  
access to journals to which the would-be user's institution cannot  
afford to subscribe.

	HS: "I don’t... upload [my articles to] the university’s  
repository... I had never even consulted the repository. I did try it  
once a few weeks ago and realised that none of my publications are in  
there. It was just too awkward, and I’ll now probably wait quite a  
long time before I try it again. I’m just too busy for this kind of  
experimentation. It really does need to be made a lot simpler... it  
would make a difference if it were... easy to deposit your PDF...  
Either that or somebody has to do it for you. [Our researchers] are of  
course used to registering the metadata in Metis. But it would make a  
difference if it were then easy to deposit your PDF..."

This passage is a bit ambiguous as to whether Professor Schmidt is  
referring here to (1) consulting the repository, in search of an  
article, as a user, or to (2) depositing one's own articles in the  
repository, as an author.

(1) Consultation: Institutional repositories (IRs) can be consulted  
directly (for institution-internal record-keeping, monitoring or  
showcasing purposes) but that is certainly not the primary purpose of  
either IRs or OA. The way most OA IR deposits are consulted by  
potential users is not by going to each individual IR to search! The  
IRs are OAI-compliant, hence interoperable, and hence they are  
harvested by central search services (such as OAIster, Base, Scirus,  
Scopus, PubMed, Citeseer, Celestial, and even Google Scholar) so they  
become jointly searchable by users as if they were all in one and the  
same global repository.

(2) Deposit: To find out how quick and easy deposit really is, one  
must actually have deposited an article in an IR. It is certainly as  
simple as depositing the metadata in Metis -- moreover, software can  
easily import/export directly from one to the other (Metis to IR or IR  
to Metis), automatically. So the (few) keystrokes only ever need to be  
done once.

Carr, L. and Harnad, S. (2005) "Keystroke Economy: A Study of the Time  
and Effort Involved in Self-Archiving."

(It's fine to have the keystrokes done by proxy -- by an assistant, a  
student, a librarian -- if an institution wishes, but it is not clear  
that there is even the need to do so: Do researchers need proxies to  
deposit in Metis? It's virtually the same thing.)

Nor is the publisher's PDF needed. The author's final draft is what  
needs to be deposited, and the author has that at his fingertips as  
soon as a final draft is accepted for publication (i.e., when no more  
revisions are required).

Metadata are metadata, and the same metadata are needed for OA IR  
deposit as for Metis (author, title, date, journal, etc.)  
registration. The publisher's PDF is both unnecessary and undesirable  
(because it has more access restrictions than the author's refereed.  
accepted final draft.)

Moreover, the most successful university deposit mandates (such as the  
mandate at University of Liège) have combined the functions of the OA  
IR and (their equivalent of) Metis: The form that the deposit mandate  
takes is that it is in the IR that the researcher must deposit for  
performance review!

Here is how the Rector of U Liege, Professor Bernard Rentier, worded  
the Liège mandate:

-- deposit in ORBi will be mandatory as soon as the article is  
accepted by the journal

-- starting October 1st, 2009, only those references introduced in  
ORBi will be taken into consideration as the official list of  
publications accompanying any curriculum vitae for all evaluation  
procedures 'in house' (designations, promotions, grant applications,  
etc.) 

-- Wherever publisher agreement conditions are fulfilled, the author  
will authorize setting access to the deposit as open access 

-- For closed access deposits, the institutional repository will have  
an EMAIL EPRINT REQUEST BUTTON which allows the author to fulfill  
individual eprint requests. 

In response to the question "If uploading material to a repository  
were actually made a lot simpler, would they all do it, or would  
something else have to happen?" Professor Schmidt replied:

	HS: "I think it will be necessary to impose an obligation so as to  
get them used to it. But if it were really simple and it took only a  
single action to upload the publication to the repository and register  
it in Metis for the annual report, then they’d come on board."

This reply is spot-on, on all counts: Researchers will not deposit  
unless it is mandated, but if it is mandated, they will indeed deposit  
(95%), and the vast majority will do so willingly (81%).

What Professor Schmidt may not have realized is that deposit is  
already easy, just a few minutes worth of keystrokes, and virtually  
identical to the keystrokes for registering in Metis. So all that  
needs to be done is to mandate deposit in the Erasmus IR, as the  
prerequisite for performance evaluation, and automatically export the  
metadata from the IR to Metis!

All universities considering the adoption of a Green Open Access  
mandate are urges to join EOS (Enabling Open Scholarship). The  
chairman of the EOS Board is Professor Bernard Rentier (Rector of the  
University of Liège), and the Coordinator is Dr. Alma Swan (of  
Southampton and Key Perspectives Inc). These are the two most far- 
sighted and dynamic leaders in the international OA mandate movement,  
and with their help university IRs and mandates will be the most  
effective they can be:

-- EnablingOpenScholarship (EOS) is an organisation for universities  
and research institutions worldwide. The organisation is both an  
information service and a forum for raising and discussing issues  
around the mission of modern universities and research institutions,  
particularly with regard to the creation, dissemination and  
preservation of research findings

-- The aim of EOS is to further the opening up of scholarship and  
research that we are now seeing through the growing open access, open  
education, open science and open innovation movements.

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum

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