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Question: what is the norm? I believe the norm is that research papers are multi-authored, multi-institutional, and a statistically significant quantity of them are international (institutions in different countries.) Laudable as a focus on the UK is, is this not a narrow focus on a larger field? On 07/05/12 14:54, Stevan Harnad wrote: > The UK's continuing leadership and initiative in opening access to > research is wonderful and only to be applauded, supported and > encouraged. > > To help make the initiative focused and effective, I would suggest that > the following four questions should be given some thought. > > If "UK public access to UK publicly funded research" is to be the > guiding principle, and the two ways of providing it are either the > Green OA self-archiving of articles published for free in subscription > journals (GRNOA) or the publishing of articles in Gold OA journals > for a fee (GLDOA): > > 1. GLOBALISM. Is the objective really just UK public access to UK > research? Is the purpose of publishing research not to have it taken > up, built upon, used and applied in further research and applications > globally, and reciprocally, to the benefit of the public that funded the > research? (And aren't UK OA mandates likely to inspire complementary, > reciprocal OA mandates globally?) > > 2. RECIPROCITY. Does paying unilaterally for GLDOA for UK > research -- making UK research freely accessible globally, but > with the UK still having to pay subscriptions to access non-UK > research -- make sense? Is GRNOA, which does not entail double > payment, not more likely to inspire global reciprocity? And would > global GRNOA not lead to GLDOA thereafter anyway? > > 3. BOOKS. What about books resulting from UK publicly funded > research? Would it not be a better idea for the time being to merely > recommend rather than require that books be made OA, rather than > risk resistance from authors who are happy to give away their journal > articles but not their books? > > 4. DATA. What about authors who do not wish to make their research > data freely accessible to all immediately, having gathered it for the > purpose of analyzing and data-mining it themselves? Would it not be > a better idea for the time being to merely recommend rather than > require that data be made OA as soon as possible, rather than risk > resistance from authors who are happy to give away their journal articles > but not their data? > > Stevan Harnad > -- Ian Stuart. Developer: ORI, RJ-Broker, and OpenDepot.org Bibliographics and Multimedia Service Delivery team, EDINA, The University of Edinburgh. http://edina.ac.uk/ This email was sent via the University of Edinburgh. The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336.