On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 6:22 AM, FrederickFriend <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Like David I agree with Stevan apart from his criticism of SHERPA-RoMEO.
>
> In one sense the Elsevier wording comes as no surprise, in that when many
> publishers have said that they allow "green" self-archiving it has always
> been with a sometimes unspoken "caveat" that they will review their policy
> if repository deposit happens on a large scale. The more recent element is
> the inclusion of "institutional repositories with mandates for systematic
> postings", which I assume to be Elsevier's response to the growing number of
> institutional mandates. I agree with Stevan that authors should not hold
> back from repository deposit if they do not know whether or not the wording
> applies to them. They should hold onto their rights as authors.
>
> Despite ambiguities around the words "mandates for systematic postings",
> Elsevier are more open than some other publishers about their wishes on
> repository deposit. There are rumours than another major publisher is taking
> action to block repository deposit without publicising the fact on
> SHERPA-RoMEO. I encourage all repository managers to share any information
> they have about how publisher policies are being applied in practice.
It will come as no surprise that I disagree -- profoundly -- with my
three friends David Prosser, Charles Oppenheim and Fred Friend, on the
precise practical question on which they are demurring, as if it were
rather an ethical or legal imperative (which it most decidedly is
not):
Here are, I think, are the relevant objective data:
(1) It has been possible for researchers to self-archive their
unrefereed and refereed drafts for at least two decades. Proof:
Computer scientists and physicists have been doing it successfully for
two decades.
(2) Despite this, over 85% of authors in fields other than computer
science and physics have *not* been self-archiving throughout the past
two decades, despite the demonstrations of its possibility,
feasibility and benefits, and despite the invention of a name to
describe the result ("open access," OA) and a movement to facilitate
it.
(3) In the past decade, 85% of researchers have continued to fail to
self-archive, despite the fact that the majority of journals -- and
virtually all the top journals -- have given their green light to
self-archive.
(4) One of the (many) reasons why researchers do not self-archive is
profound confusions, generating unfounded worries, about rights:
http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#10.Copyright
(5) The source of the confusions is partly in authors' own fuzzy
notions about copyright and consequences, compounded by conflicting
(and equally confused) advice and "expert judgments" from permissions
officers and lawyers who are mostly just opining themselves.
(6) The model on which most of the faulty advice is given to authors
is course-packs in which teachers distribute multiple paper copies of
the copyrighted work of *others* for teaching purposes: This has
nothing whatsoever to do with authors giving away their *own* work
online for research purposes.
(7) But for the majority of journals (including virtually all the top
journals) the above has been mooted by the fact that they have given
their authors the green light to give away their own work online for
research purposes.
(8) All that is needed in order to inform the author community about
which journals have given their authors the green light to give away
their own work online for research purposes is to specify WHICH
journals have given their green light to depositing WHAT, WHERE and
WHEN.
(9) WHICH means: specifying the journal.
(10) WHAT means: specifying what may be deposited: the only relevant
distinction here is whether the green light is for the unrefereed
draft ("PALE-GREEN") or the refereed draft ("GREEN"); the default for
GREEN is the author's final, revised, refereed, accepted draft;
anything beyond that (such as the publisher's proprietary PDF) is an
extra, and can be left to authors to ferret out for themselves, if
they so desire, by consulting the journal's policy details; the cause
of dispelling the unfounded worry about self-archiving itself is fully
served by indicating whether the journal is PALE-GREEN or GREEN.
Otherwise the journal is GRAY (meaning it does not give its green
light to self-archiving either the unrefereed or the refereed draft).
(11) WHERE, by default, means the author's institutional repository.
Just as some journals do not endorse self-archiving the publisher's
PDF, some do not endorse self-archiving institution-externally, in a
third-party repository. The distinction is vacuous, since an article
that is accessible free for all anywhere on the web is accessible free
for all everywhere on the web, and its metadata can be harvested by
innumerable central indices and search engines.
(12) WHEN is not vacuous, but a journal that does not give its green
light to self-archiving the author's final, revised, refereed,
accepted draft immediately upon publication is either just a
PALE-GREEN publisher or a GRAY publisher.
(13) So all that authors who are afraid to self-archive need to know
is whether their journal is GREEN, PALE-GREEN, or GRAY -- and, if the
latter two, the length of the embargo on the self-archiving of the
refereed draft.
(14) Instead, SHERPA-Romeo offers authors a needless profusion of
colour-codes (green, blue, yellow, white) accompanied by an endless,
confusing and completely unnecessary welter of conditions and
restrictions, no doubt a source of abiding interest to beleaguered
permissions librarians, accustomed only to puzzling over usage rights
for incoming third-party content rather than outgoing own-content --
and perhaps also to cataloguers accustomed to cataloguing all metadata
without having to ask themselves why -- but for authors merely a
reinforcement of the antecedent state of confusion and indecision that
has already kept 85% of them from self-archiving for two decades now:
the very confusion and indecision that a clear, relevant journal
self-archiving policy index was meant to dispel.
So, no, the purpose of a journal self-archiving policy index is *not*
to catalogue every nuance of every publisher's copyright policy: It is
only to inform authors whether or not their journal has given its
green light to self-archive the unrefereed or refereed draft of their
article, in their institutional repository, immediately upon
publication (and if not, when).
Whatever further verbiage the publisher may choose to append to this
basic information -- including hocus-pocus about the distinction
between an "institutional website" versus an "institutional
repository," "spontaneous self-archiving" versus "mandated
self-archiving," and authors' blue-eyed uncles -- can be left to
authors to look up if they wish. The journal self-archiving policy
index's work will be done having provided the PALE-GREEN/GREEN data
and the embargo-length.
And, no, all the faithful echoing of all the minutiae of each
publisher's copyright conditions -- apart from the essential ones
above -- is *not* the solemn ethical duty of a journal self-archiving
policy index to provide, come what may. Nor is it a legal, ethical or
scholarly failing to fail to echo it (let alone to keep warning
authors that even these hedged and hobbled conditions risk being
rescinded if they comply! )
http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#32.Poisoned
On the contrary, winnowing the substantive wheat from the irrelevant
and often incoherent chaff would provide an invaluable service to
authors who are undecided and uncertain about self-archiving -- in a
way that simply reproducing the whole mess certainly will not.
Perhaps we need two SHERPA/Romeos: one for authors who want to know
whether or not they have their journal's green light to provide OA by
self-archiving (Oa), and one for permissions librarians and others who
may be concerned to know every nuance of every journal's copyright
policy, for whatever reason (Ob). SHERPA/Romeo is trying to do both,
with the result that it is hardly doing Oa at all, perhaps even
undoing it.
One last observation (a conjecture): It may be that the reason why
SHERPA/Romeo has become so top-heavy on permission-librarian minutiae
is that at some institutions the "self"-archiving is not being done by
authors at all, but by librarians, on their behalf. If so, perhaps
this is a mixed blessing: It does spare the authors having to do a few
keystrokes, but at the cost of a great deal of OA's target content not
getting "self"-archived at all, because deposit is being decided by
third parties, according to third-party criteria, instead of what good
sense and good practice would dictate.
This is a moot point whilst self-archiving mandates are still rare:
Without a mandate, librarian intervention and mediation seems to be
the only way to eke out more OA content.
But proxy-archiving and imploring by librarians is not the scaleable,
sustainable solution for OA: green self-archiving mandates are. And
for mandates it's all the more important to dispel the pettifoggery
and get to the essentials: GREEN, PALE-GREEN and embargo length.
That's all.
Stevan Harnad
> -----Original Message----- From: David Prosser
> Sent: Thursday, January 06, 2011 10:30 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Rights Reductio Ad Absurdum
>
> Of course, I agree with almost everything Stevan says. The exception being
> the rather snide comments regarding SHERPA-RoMEO.
>
> RoMEO is not 'enshrining' or 'canonising' anything. It is reporting. And
> if an author signs a copyright agreement with Elsevier then they are are
> agreeing to the terms reported. We may all agree that these terms are ' (1)
> arbitrary, (2) incoherent, and (3) unenforceable', but it's not for RoMEO to
> make that call. It is a database of 'permissions that are normally given as
> part of each publisher's copyright transfer agreement' not 'permission that
> we think sensible leaving out the one's we don't like'. That may reduce its
> advocacy power and do nothing to dispel the confusion being created by
> publishers with arbitrary, incoherent, and (possibly) unenforceable clauses
> in their policies, but it does have the advantage of being honest.
>
> David
On 2011-01-06, at 6:05 AM, CHARLES OPPENHEIM wrote:
> I totally agree with David's point. I would compare it to a Yellow Pages Telephone
> Directory - it faithfully reports what it is aware of, and makes no judgement about
> the quality of the service provided. It is still incredibly useful as a resource, but it
> is up to authors to decide who they wish to publish with, not Romeo.
> Charles
> Professor Charles Oppenheim
>
> On 6 Jan 2011, at 03:00, Stevan Harnad wrote:
>
>> ** Cross-posted **
>>
>> The following query came up on the UKCORR mailing list:
>>
>>> I was surprised to read the paragraph below under author's rights
>>> (http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authorsview.authors/copyright##rights)
>>>
>>>> "the right to post a revised personal version of the text of the
>>>> final journal article (to reflect changes made in the peer review
>>>> process) on your personal or institutional web site or server for
>>>> scholarly purposes, incorporating the complete citation and with a
>>>> link to the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) of the article (but not
>>>> in subject-oriented or centralized repositories or institutional
>>>> repositories with mandates for systematic postings unless there is
>>>> a specific agreement with the publisher- see
>>>> http://www.elsevier.com/fundingbody agreements for further
>>>> information]);"
>>
>> You can't blame Elsevier's Perplexed Permissions Personnel for trying:
>> After all, if researchers -- clueless and cowed about copyright --
>> have already lost nearly two decades of research access and impact for
>> no reason at all, making it clear that only if/(when they are required
>> (mandated) by their institutions and funders will they dare to do what
>> is manifestly in their own best interests and already fully within
>> their reach, then it's only natural that those who perceive their own
>> interests to be in conflict with those of research and researchers
>> will attempt to see whether they cannot capitalize on researchers'
>> guileless gullibility, yet again.
>>
>> In three words, the above "restrictions" on the green light to make
>> author's final drafts OA are (1) arbitrary, (2) incoherent, and (3)
>> unenforceable. They are the rough equivalent of saying: You have "the
>> right to post a revised personal version of the text of the final
>> journal article (to reflect changes made in the peer review process)
>> on your personal or institutional web site or server for scholarly
>> purposes -- but not if you are required to do so by your institution
>> or funder."
>>
>> They might as well have added "or if you have a blue-eyed uncle who
>> prefers tea to toast on alternate Tuesdays."
>>
>> My own inclination is to say that if researchers prove to be stupid
>> enough to fall for that, then they deserve everything that is coming
>> to them (or rather, withheld from them).
>>
>> But even I, seasoned cynic that the last 20 years have made me, don't
>> believe that researchers are quite that stupid -- though I wouldn't
>> put it past SHERPA/Romeo to go ahead and solemnly enshrine this latest
>> bit of double-talk in one of its slavish lists of "General Conditions"
>> on a publisher's otherwise "green" self-archiving policy, thereby
>> helpfully furnishing an effective pseudo-official megaphone for every
>> such piece of optimistic gibberish, no matter how absurd.
>>
>> My advice to authors (if, unlike what the sensible computer scientists
>> and physicists have been doing all along -- namely, self-archiving
>> without first seeking anyone's blessing for two decades -- they only
>> durst self-archive if their publishers have first given them their
>> green light to do so) is that they take their publishers at their word
>> when they do give them their green light to do so, and ignore any
>> SHERPA/Romeo tommy-rot they may try to append to that green light to
>> make it seem as if there is any rational line that can be drawn
>> between "yes, you may make your refereed final draft OA" and "no, you
>> may not make your refereed final draft OA."
>>
>> For those who are interested in knowing what is actually happening,
>> worldwide, insofar as OA self-archiving is concerned, I recommend
>> reading Peter Suber's stirring 2010 Summary of real progress rather
>> than the sort of pseudo-legalistic smoke-screening periodically
>> emitted by Permissions Department Pundits (whether or not not they are
>> canonized by SHERPA-Romeo):
>> http://www.earlham.edu/%7Epeters/fos/newsletter/01-02-11.htm#2010
>>
>> Dixit,
>>
>> Your Weary and Wizened Archivangelist
>
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