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