Open Access Archivangelism

Counterproductive "Advice" to Elsevier

nospam@example.com (Stevan Harnad) — Wed, 16 May 2012 05:06:01 +0100

In my opinion, it is not helpful to the cause of OA or the needs of the research community to use this opportunity to advise Elsevier to make the following extremely counterproductive recommendation -- a recommendation that, like Elsevier's own ambivalent self-archiving policy, starts positively, but then switches to the extreme negative, taking away with one hand what it had seemed to be giving with the other:

On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 7:07 AM, Jan Velterop wrote on the Global Open Access List (GOAL):

"One step [for Elsevier] could be to promote self-archiving instead of reluctantly allowing it and then only under certain circumstances. But given that immediacy is obviously not considered the most important feature of OA by many of its advocates (vide many mandates), and immediacy is perhaps the most understandable of the publishers' fears, there is an opportunity for Elsevier to make all the journal material it publishes available with full open access, CC-BY, after a reasonable embargo of a year, maybe two years in less fast-moving disciplines."

First, Jan Velterop (JV) asks Elsevier to drop its ambivalence about Green OA self-archiving. So far, so good.

But second, Jan makes a factually incorrect claim: that immediate OA is so unimportant to researchers and OA advocates that this is an opportunity for Elsevier to change its current policy (which has been Green since 2004 -- meaning immediate, unembargoed OA self-archiving) -- back-pedalling instead to a "reasonable" embargo of a year or two (meaning no longer being Green, as now, on immediate, unembargoed Green Gratis OA self-archiving).

Third, as justification for this startling recommendation to Elsevier to back-pedal on its longstanding immediate-Green policy, Jan cites the fact that many mandates allow an embargo -- forgetting the fact that the reason OA embargoes have been allowed by those OA mandates is precisely because the 40% of publishers that are not yet Green (as 60% of publishers, including Elsevier since 2004, already are) still insist on an embargo as a condition for allowing self-archiving at all. In other words, the reason some mandates allow embargoes is not at all because all researchers and all mandates don't consider immediate, unembargoed OA to be important, but because of the non-Green publishers that don't yet allow immediate, unembargoed OA.

Fourth, Jan refers throughout this recommendation only to the Libre OA [Gratis OA plus CC-BY] from which he has been urging the OA community not to "lower the bar" to the Gratis OA [free online access to the author final draft] on which Elsevier has been Green since 2004, and about which OA advocates are here urging Elsevier to remove its recent self-serving and self-contradictory hedging clause about mandates.

Immediate, unembargoed OA may be less important for Libre OA than for Gratis OA, but what is at issue here is Gratis OA.

For the sake of both research progress and OA progress, I urge Jan to drop his conterproductive opposition to Green Gratis OA, just as I urge Elsevier to drop the self-contradictory hedging clause about Green Gratis OA in its author rights retention agreement.

Stevan Harnad

Elsevier requires institutions to seek Elsevier's agreement to require their authors to exercise their rights?

nospam@example.com (Stevan Harnad) — Mon, 14 May 2012 11:05:27 +0100

Elsevier Authors' Rights & Responsibilities

What rights do I retain as a journal author?
"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 website or server for scholarly purposes (but not in... institutional repositories with mandates for systematic postings unless there is a specificagreement with the publisher)..."

I am grateful to Elsevier's Director for Universal Access, Alicia Wise, for replying about Elsevier's author open access posting policy.

This makes it possible to focus very quickly and directly on the one specific point of contention, because as it stands, the current Elsevier policy is quite explicitly self-contradictory:

ALICIA WISE (AW): "Stevan Harnad has helpfully summarized Elseviers posting policy for accepted author manuscripts, but has left out a couple of really important elements.

"He is correct that all our authors can post voluntarily to their websites and institutional repositories. Posting is also fine where there is a requirement/mandate AND we have an agreement in place. We have a growing number of these agreements."

I am afraid this is not at all clear.

What does it mean to say that Elsevier has a different policy depending on whether an author is posting voluntarily or mandatorily?

An author who wishes to comply with an institutional posting mandate is posting voluntarily. An author who does not wish to comply with an institutional posting mandate refrains from posting, likewise voluntarily.

The Elsevier policy in question concerns the rights that reside with authors. Is Elsevier proposing that some author rights are based on mental criteria? But if an authors says, hand on heart, "I posted voluntarily" (even where posting is mandatory) is the author not to be believed?

(It is true that in criminal court a distinction is made between the voluntary and involuntary -- but the involuntary there refers to the unintended or accidental: Even in mandated posting, the posting is no accident!)

So it is quite transparent that the factor that Elsevier really has in mind here is not the author's voluntariness at all, but whether or not the author's institution has a mandatory posting policy - and whether that institutional mandate has or has not been "agreed" with Elsevier.

But then what sort of an author right is it, to post if your institution doesn't require you to post, but not to post if your institution requires you to post (except if some sort of "agreement" has been reached with Elsevier that allows the institution to require its researchers to exercise their rights)?

That does not sound like an author right at all. Rather, it sounds like an attempt by Elsevier to redefine the author right so as to prevent each author's institution from requiring the author to exercise it without Elsevier's agreement. By that token, it looks as if the author requires Elsevier's agreement to exercise the right that Elsevier has formally recognized to rest with the author.

(What sort of right would the right to free speech be if one lost that right whenever one was required -- say, by a court of law, or even just an institutional committee meeting -- to exercise it? -- And what does it mean that an author's institution is required by a publisher to seek an agreement from the publisher for its authors to exercise a right that the publisher has formally stated rests with the author?)

AW:
"An overview of our funding body agreements can be read here. These agreements, for example, mean that we post to UKPMC for authors who receive funding from a number of funding agencies including the Wellcome Trust. We deposit manuscripts into PMC for NIH-funded authors."

We are talking here very specifically about authors posting in their own institutional repositories, not about institution-external deposit or proxy deposit by publishers.

AW:
"Posting in the arXiv is fine too."

Is it? So if institutions mandate depositing in Arxiv rather than institutionally, that would be fine too? (Some mandates already specify that as an option.) Or would Elsevier authors lose their right to exercise their right to post in Arxiv if their institutions mandated it...?

AW:
"We are also piloting open access agreements with a growing number of institutions, including posting in institutional repositories."

The point under discussion is Elsevier authors' right to exercise the right that Elsevier has formally stated rests with the author -- to post their accepted author manuscripts institutionally. What kind of further agreement is needed from the author's institution with Elsevier in order that the author should have the right to exercise a right that Elsevier has formally stated rests with the author?

Again, Elsevier's target here is very obviously not author rights at all. Rather, the clause in question is an attempt to influence institutions' own policies, with their own research output, by trying to redefine the author's right to post an article online free for all as being somehow contingent on institutional research posting policy, and hence requiring Elsevier's agreement.

It would seem to me that institutions would do well to refrain from making any agreement with Elsevier (or even entering into discussion with Elsevier) about institutional policy -- other than what price they are willing to pay for what journals (even if Elsevier reps attempt to make a quid-pro-quo deal).

And it would seem to me that Elsevier authors should go ahead and post their accepted author manuscripts in their institutional repositories, voluntarily, exercising the right that Elsevier has formally recognized as resting with the author alone since 2004, and ignore any new clause that contains double-talk trying to make a link between the author's right to exercise that author right and the policy of the author's institution on whether or not the author should exercise that right.

AW:
"It is already clear that one size does not fit all institutions, and we are keen to continue learning, listening, and partnering."

I am not sure what this means. Accepted author manuscripts (of journal articles, from all institutions, in all disciplines) fit into all institutional repositories. That's all that's at issue here. No institution differences; no discipline differences.

AW:
"Our access policies can be read in full [here] (health warning: they are written for those who really enjoy detail) and weve been working on a more friendly and succinct summary too (but this is still a work in "

Fortunately, only two details matter (and they can be made explicit without any danger to one's health!):

1. Does Elsevier formally recognize that "all [Elsevier] authors can post [their accepted author manuscripts] voluntarily to their websites and institutional repositories" (quoting from Alicia Wise here)?

According to Elsevier formal policy since 2004, the answer is yes.

2. What about the "not if it is mandatory" clause?

That clause seems to be pure FUD and I strongly urge Elsevier -- for the sake of its public image, which is right now at an all-time low -- to drop that clause rather than digging itself deeper by trying to justify it.

The goal of the strategy is transparent:
"We wish to appear to be supportive of open access, formally encoding in our author agreements our authors' right to post their accepted author manuscripts to their institution's open access repository -- but [to ensure that publication remains sustainable,' we wish to prevent institutions from requiring their authors to exercise that right unless they make a side-deal with us."
Not a commendable publisher strategy, at a time when the worldwide pressure for open access is mounting ever higher, and subscriptions are still paying the cost of publication, in full, and handsomely.

If there is eventually to be a transition to hybrid or Gold OA publishing, let that transition occur without trying to hold hostage the authors' right to provide Green OA to their author accepted manuscripts by posting them free for all in their institutional repositories, exercising the right that Elsevier has formally agreed rests with the author.

Stevan Harnad

How Elsevier Can Improve Its Public Image

nospam@example.com (Stevan Harnad) — Sun, 13 May 2012 16:07:53 +0100

Along with the majority of refereed journal publishers today, Elsevier is a "Green" publisher, meaning Elsevier has formally endorsed immediate (unembargoed) institutional Green OA self-archiving by its authors ever since 27 May 2004.

Recently, however, a new clause has been added to "Authors' Rights and Responsibilities," the document in which Elsevier formally recognizes its authors' right to make their final, peer-reviewed drafts Open Access immediately upon publication (no embargo) by posting them on their institutional website (Green Gratis OA). The new clause is:

"but not in institutional repositories with mandates for systematic postings."

The distinction between an institutional website and an institutional repository is bogus.

The distinction between nonmandatory posting (allowed) and mandatory posting (not allowed) is arbitrary nonsense. ("You retain the right to post if you wish but not if you must!")

The "systematic" criterion is also nonsense. (Systematic posting would be the institutional posting of all the articles in the journal; but any single institution only contributes a tiny, arbitrary fraction of the articles in any journal, just as any single author does; so the mandating institution is not a 3rd-party "free-rider" on the journal's content: its researchers are simply making their own articles OA, by posting them on their institutional website, exactly as described.)

This "systematic" clause is hence pure FUD, designed to scare or bully or confuse institutions into not mandating posting, and to scare or bully or confuse authors into not complying with their institutional mandates. (There are also rumours that in confidential licensing negotiations with institutions, Elsevier has been trying to link bigger and better pricing deals to the institution's agreeing not to adopt a Green OA mandate.)

Elsevier's public image is so bad today that rescinding its Green light to self-archive after almost a decade of mounting demand for OA is hardly a very attractive or viable option.

And double-talk, smoke-screens and FUD are even less attractive or viable.

It will hence very helpful in helping researchers to provide -- and their institutions and funders to mandate -- Open Access if Elsevier drops its "you may if you wish but not if you must" clause.

It will also help to improve Elsevier's public image.

Stevan Harnad

Elsevier's query re: "positive things from publishers that should be encouraged, celebrated, recognized"

nospam@example.com (Stevan Harnad) — Sat, 12 May 2012 00:07:00 +0100

Alice Wise (Elsevier, Director of Universal Access, Elsevier) asked, on the Global Open Access List (GOAL):

"[W]hat positive things are established scholarly publishers doing to facilitate the various visions for open access and future scholarly communications that should be encouraged, celebrated, recognized?"

Remedios Melero replied, on GOAL:

RM: I would recommend the following change in one clause of the What rights do I retain as a journal author? stated in Elsevier's portal, which says:
"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 website 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. Click here for further information)"
RM: By this one:
"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, institutional website, subject-oriented or centralized repositories or institutional repositories or server for scholarly purposes, incorporating the complete citation and with a link to the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) of the article"
RM: I think this could be something to be encouraged, celebrated and recognized.

That would be fine. Or even this simpler one would be fine:

"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, institutional website or institutional repositories or server for scholarly purposes, incorporating the complete citation and with a link to the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) of the article"

The metadata and link can be harvested from the institutional repositories by institution-external repositories or search services, and the shameful, cynical, self-serving and incoherent clause about "mandates for systematic postings" ("you may post if you wish but not if you must"), which attempts to take it all back, is dropped.

That clause -- added when Elsevier realized that Green Gratis OA mandates were catching on -- is a paradigmatic example of the publisher FUD and double-talk that has no legal sense or force, but scares authors (and their management).

Dropping it would be a great cause for encouragement, celebration and recognition, and would put Elsevier irreversibly on the side of the angels (regarding OA).

Stevan Harnad

Open Access: Gratis and Libre

nospam@example.com (Stevan Harnad) — Thu, 03 May 2012 19:11:49 +0100

Mike Taylor writes (on Nature Blog):

"BOAI intended OA to mean much more than just the freedom to read an article online, and the term is used in this stronger sense by most of the people writing about open access today.... Thats not to say that gratis OA is not a good thing. Of course, it is. But..."

The original BOAI statement -- drafted online collectively by the original BOAI 2001 attendees, but authored mostly by Peter Suber -- was something new that we were improvising as we went along. It became clear, as subsequent years went by, that practical developments since 2001 necessitated some rethinking, revising and updating.

The revised, refined definition was formulated in 2008.

I might add that I have been working toward (what we eventually dubbed) "OA" since the early 1990's, and for me the first and foremost goal had always been (and still is) immediate, permanent, toll-free online access to 100% of peer-reviewed journal articles, i.e., "Gratis OA". I also have to note that we did not have 100% Gratis OA in 1994, when I made my "Subversive Proposal" for providing it, and we still do not have 100% Gratis OA today, almost two decades later, even though it is fully within reach. We are only at about 20%, except where it is mandated, in which case it jumps to 60% and then climbs steadily toward 100% (if the mandate is effectively formulated and implemented!).

Now, to ask for Libre OA (Gratis OA plus some re-use rights, not yet fully agreed upon) today is to ask for more than Gratis OA at a time when authors are not even providing Gratis OA (except if mandated). Libre OA also brings with it numerous unresolved complications, among them the fact that although all authors want users to have free access to their papers (even though they don't bother -- or dare -- to provide it unless mandated), not all authors want to grant users further re-use rights,; nor is it agreed yet what those further re-use rights should be. In addition, publishers, the majority of whom have given their green light to Gratis OA, are far from agreeing to Libre OA.

Yes, further re-use rights are important, and desirable, in many (not all) cases. But they are even harder to agree on and provide than Gratis OA, and we have not yet even managed to mandate that in anywhere sufficient numbers. And access itself -- "mere" access -- is not just important, but essential, and urgent, for all peer-reviewed research.

Yet 100% Gratis OA is fully within reach (and has been for years): All institutions and funders need do is grasp it, by mandating it.

Instead, we have been over-reaching for years now -- for Libre OA, for Gold OA, for copyright reform, for publishing reform, for peer review reform -- and not even getting what is already fully within reach.

So I appreciate your point, Mike, that getting much more than Gratis Green OA would be better than getting just Gratis Green OA.

But I also think that it's time to stop letting the best get in the way of the better: Let's forget about Libre and Gold OA until we have managed to mandate Green Gratis OA universally.

After that, all the other good things we seek will come into reach, and will come to pass.

But not if we keep trying, like Stephen Leacock's horseman, to ride off in all directions, while we just keep getting next to nowhere

Nature News Blog on OA, UK and Jimmy Wales

nospam@example.com (Stevan Harnad) — Thu, 03 May 2012 16:35:43 +0100

I would like to answer some questions and clarify some points in Richard Van Noorden's Nature newsblog posting (NN):

"[T]he [RCUK] agencies which fund UK scientists [have] required [researchers] to make their research papers free [online] since 2006; but now theyre going to enforce it"

The UK has indeed led the world in mandating Open Access (OA). The UK is the first country in which all the national research funding agencies have formally required OA. (Before its funder mandates, the UK was also where the world's first OA mandate was adopted within a University, in 2002.)

But adopting an OA mandate is not enough. The real challenge is in formulating and implementing the mandate in a way that ensures compliance. That is where attention is focused right now.

"[W]ill research papers be instantly open, or will publishers get to impose a delay?[S]ome [publishers] let authors put up a free copy of the published manuscript after an embargo period. This is known as green open access RCUK open-access policies currently permit this embargo, with a six-month delay."

There are two ways to provide OA:

Green OA is provided by publishing in any suitable peer-reviewed journal, and then making the paper OA by self-archiving it in the author's institutional OA repository (or an institutional-external repository).

Gold OA is provided by publishing in an OA journal that makes the paper OA.

The majority of journals (over 60%, including the top journals in most fields) endorse the author providing immediate (unembargoed) Green OA.

A minority of journals (less than 40%) embargo Green OA. To accommodate this, some mandates have allowed an OA embargo of 6 months (or longer). To fulfill would-be users' immediate research needs during the embargo, however, institutional repositories have a semi-automatic "email eprint request" Button: The user can request an eprint with a click and the author can comply with a click.

"[T]he recommendation will be for a mixed green-gold model ultimately we will see a transition to gold so the real question is how long this will take."

Among the implementation problems of some of the OA mandates today is precisely this mixture of Green and Gold. Only Green OA can be mandated. (Authors cannot be forced to choose a journal based on the journal's cost-recovery model rather than its quality and suitability.) Funds (if available) can be offered to pay the Gold OA publishing fee, if there is a suitable Gold OA journal in which the author wishes to publish; but Green OA self-archiving needs to be mandated first, cost-free.

My own view is that it is a mistake to press too hard for Gold OA now, while subscriptions are still paying the costs of publication, the top journals are not Gold OA, the price of Gold OA is still high, and Green OA mandates (cost-free) are still too few. Once Green OA mandates by funders and institutions have made OA universal, the resulting availability of Green OA to everything will drive the transition to Gold OA publishing, at a much lower price, as well as releasing the subscription funds to pay for it.

"British universities could end up paying twice once to make their research open access, and again for subscriptions to the journals that they will still need to buy, because those journals will contain 94% non-British, non-open-access, research."

This is precisely why the mixed Green/Gold model is not a good idea. The press should be for Green OA self-archiving mandates by research funders and institutions worldwide. The transition to Gold OA will then take place naturally of its own accord -- and meanwhile the world will already have 100% OA.

"[T]he UK could challenge the US for global leadership on open access."

It's the other way 'round! The UK is in the lead, but if the US passes the FRPAA, then the US will have taken over the UK's lead.

"Just being able to read a free PDF isnt actually open access."

Yes it is. Gratis OA means free online access and Libre OA means free online access plus certain re-use rights. Just as Green OA has to come before Gold OA, Gratis OA has to come before Libre OA. The barriers are much lower. (All the OA mandates are for Gratis OA.)

"[R]esearchers and institutions would be forced to comply with open access. mak[ing] open access a requirement for future grants asking institutions to sign a statement that papers published under its grants are compliant with its open access policy; and if not hold back a final instalment of the grant funding."

And the most important implementation detail of all: All mandates (funder and institutional) should be convergent and collaborative rather than divergent and competitive:

(1) Both funders and institutions should require author self-archiving in the author's institutional repository (not in an institutional-external central repository). Central repositories can then harvest from the institutional repository, authors only have to deposit once, institutions can monitor and ensure compliance with funder OA mandates and they will also be motivated to adopt OA mandates of their own, for all of their research output, funded and unfunded, in all discipline.

(2) Both funders and institutions should require immediate deposit (not just after an allowable embargo period).

(3) The deposit mandate should be fulfilled by the mandatee (the author), not by publishers (3rd parties who have an interest in delaying OA and are not bound by the mandate). This will also make the monitoring of compliance much easier and more effective.

"What Wales will add here is not clear Some celebrity involvement is to be welcomed."

OA means Open Access to peer-reviewed research. Wikipedia is not peer-reviewed research and indeed it is rather negative on expertise and answerability. So Wales has a lot to learn. But if he does learn what needs to be done to make Green OA mandates effective, he may be able to see to the adoption of the implementation details that are needed, if he has David Willetts' confidence

On Open Access Broth and Cooks

nospam@example.com (Stevan Harnad) — Wed, 02 May 2012 13:51:53 +0100

The UK government has engaged Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia to help make UK tax-payer-funded research available online for all.

Open Access to peer-reviewed research (OA) is an important, timely and even urgent goal, and the UK's commitment to providing OA is extremely welcome and commendable. But turning to Jimmy Wales to help make it happen makes almost as little sense as turning to Rupert Murdoch.

Wikipedia is based on the antithesis of peer review. Asking JW to help make sure peer-reviewed research is available to all is like asking McDonalds to help the UK Food Standards Agency make sure that wholesome food is available to all.

The way to make all taxpayer-funded academic research in Britain available online to all is already known: Make it a mandatory condition of funding that the fundees make it available online to all (OA).

Britain (RCUK) has already gone a long way toward trying to mnadate just that -- a much longer way than any other country so far. But there are still some crucial implementational details that need tweaking in order to make those mandates work:

1. The requirement has to be to deposit in the fundee's institutional repository (rather than an institution-external repository).

2. The deposit itself must be made immediately upon acceptance for publication (rather than only after a publisher embargo period).

That way the fundee's institution will be empowered to monitor and ensure compliance with the funder mandate. In addition, when there is an allowable publisher embargo on making the immediate-deposit OA immediately, the institution's email-eprint-request Button can tide over immediate research usage needs during the embargo on an automated, accelerated individual-request basis. Institutional deposit will also motivate institutions to mandate OA for all of their research output, not just the RCUK-funded portion.

But these are all implementational details that could be fixed by just updating the language of the RCUK mandates -- making it explicit that research that is not institutionally deposited immediately loses its funding. Each institution's research grant support office, already so solicitous about complying with all conditions on applying for, receiving and retaining grants will equally assiduously see to it that institutional fundees understand and comply.

But JW does not know any of this. And if he did, he would be no better able to implement it than anyone else. It's the implementation that's needed, to make the broth edible and available to all -- not more cooks (and especially not from McDonalds' kitchens)!

Open Access Priorities: Peer Access and Public Access

nospam@example.com (Stevan Harnad) — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 23:48:22 +0100

The claim is often made that researchers (peers) have as much access to peer-reviewed research publications as they need -- that if there is any need for further access at all, it is not the peers who need it, but the general public.

1. Functionally, it doesn't matter whether open access (OA) is provided for peers or for public, because OA means that everyone gets access.

2. Strategically, however, it does matter, because currently OA is not being provided in anywhere near sufficient numbers spontaneously by researchers (peers).

3. This means that policies (mandates) from peers' institutions and funders are needed to induce peers to provide OA to their publications.

4. This means that credible and valid reasons must be found for peers' institutions and funders to mandate providing OA.

5. For some fields of research -- especially health-relevant research -- public access is a strong reason for public funders to mandate providing public access.

6. But that still leaves all the rest of research, in all disciplines, funded and unfunded.

7. Most research is technical, intended to be used and applied by peer researchers in building further research and applications -- to the benefit of the general public.

8. But most peer-reviewed research reports themselves are neither understandable nor of direct interest to the general public as reading matter.

9. Hence, for most research, "public access to publicly funded research," is not reason enough for providing OA, nor for mandating that OA be provided.

10. The evidence that the primary intended users of peer-reviewed research -- researchers -- do not have anywhere near enough access is two-fold:

11. For many years, the ARL published statistics on the journal subscription/license access of US research universities:

12. The small fraction of all peer-reviewed journals that any university can afford to access via subscriptions/licenses has since become even smaller, despite the "Big Deals":

13. The latest evidence comes from the university that can afford the largest fraction of journals: Harvard University

14. Researchers' careers and funding as well as research progress depend on the accessibility, uptake and impact of the research output.

15. Open Access maximizes accessibility and enhances uptake and impact.

16. Hence peer access, rather than just public access, is the reason (all) researchers (funded and unfunded, in all disciplines) should provide OA -- and the reason their institutions and funders should mandate that they provide OA.

Stevan Harnad
Enabling Open Scholarship

Postscript:

The list of recommendations I made was strategic. The objective was to maximize OA deposits and maximize OA deposit mandates.

The issue is not about how many members of the general public might wish to read how many peer-reviewed journal articles.

The issue is strategic: What provides a viable, credible, persuasive reason for researchers to provide OA and for institutions and funders to mandate providing OA in all fields of research, funded and unfunded, in all disciplines.

My point was that providing access for the the general public is a viable, credible, persuasive reason for providing and mandating OA in some fields (notably health- related research, but there may be other fields as well) -- but it is not a viable, credible, persuasive reason for providing OA in all fields, nor for all research.

It is not difficult to find anecdotal evidence of nonspecialist interest in specialized research; one's own interests often go beyond one's own area of expertise.

But that is user-based reasoning, whereas providing OA and mandating OA require reasons that are viable, credible and persuasive to providers of research -- and not some providers, sometimes, but all providers, for all research.

The only reason for providing OA to research that is valid, credible and persuasive for all research and researchers is in order to ensure that it is accessible to all of its intended users -- primarily peers -- and not just to those whose institutions can afford to subscribe to the journal in which it was published.

The issue is strategic. It is a great mistake to construe giving priority to reasons for providing peer access over reasons for providing public access as somehow implying that public access should be denied: Public access automatically comes with the territory with OA. So public access denial is not the issue.

The strategic issue is whether researchers (and their institutions and funders) are more likely to be induced to provide and mandate OA by the argument that the public wants and needs access or by the argument that peers want and need access.

Peer access provides research progress and impact. It is an appeal to researchers' self-interest to stress the beneficial effects of OA on the uptake and impact of their research.

Most researchers of course also have a secret yearning that their research should appeal not only to their peers, but to the general public. But they also know that that is probably just wishful thinking in most cases. And in any case, public access does not have the direct affect on their careers, funding, and research progress that peer access has.

So it is not that the enhancement of public access should not be listed among the reasons for providing OA. It is just that it should not be promoted as the first, foremost, or universal reason for providing OA, because it is not: for many or most researchers, that argument simply will not work.

Ditto for the argument that researchers need to provide OA because journal subscriptions cost too much. The eventual solution to the journal affordability crisis will probably also come from providing and mandating OA. But, like public access, journal affordability is not a sufficiently compelling or universal rationale for providing OA.

The public access rationale for providing OA appeals to politicians and voters. Good. Use it in order to help get OA mandate legistlation adopted by research funders. But the rationale is much less convincing to researchers (peers) themselves, and their institutions.

The journal affordability rationale for providing OA appeals to librarians and institutions, but it is much less convincing to researchers (peers).

In contrast, providing OA in order to maximize research progress and impact, by maximizing researcher (peer) uptake, usage, applications and citations -- if backed up by evidence -- is the way to convince all researchers, funded and unfunded, in all disciplines, that it is in their own best interests to provide OA to their research.

Stevan Harnad

Why PMC & UKPMC Should Harvest From Institutional Repositories

nospam@example.com (Stevan Harnad) — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 12:20:42 +0100

PubMed & PubMed Central are wonderful resources, but not nearly as resourceful or wonderful as they easily could be.

(1) PMC & UKPMC should of course be harvesting or linking institutional repository (IR) versions of papers, not just PMC/UKPMC-deposited and publisher-hosted papers.

(2) Funders should be mandating IR deposit and PMC harvesting rather than direct PMC/UKPMC deposit. By thus making funder mandates and institutional mandates convergent and collaborative instead of divergent and competitive, this will motivate and facilitate adoption and compliance with institutional mandates: institutions are the universal providers of all research output, funded and unfunded.

(3) IRs should mandate immediate deposit irrespective of publisher OA policy: If authors wish to honor publisher OA embargoes, they can set access to the deposit as Closed Access during the embargo and rely on providing almost-OA via the IR's email eprint request button

(4) Funder mandates should require deposit by the fundee -- the one bound by the mandate -- rather than by the publisher, who is not bound by the mandate, and indeed in conflict of interest with it.

(5) Publishers (partly to protect from rival publisher free-loading, partly to discourage funder mandates, and partly out of simple misunderstanding of network capability) are much more likely to endorse immediate institutional self-archiving than institution-external deposit. This is yet another reason funders should mandate institutional deposit and metadata harvesting instead of direct institution-external deposit.

Alma Swan: UNESCO Open Access Policy Guidelines

nospam@example.com (Stevan Harnad) — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 13:49:40 +0100

Policy Guidelines FOR THE DEVELOPMENT AND PROMOTION OF OPEN ACCESS by Alma Swan

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Communication and Information Sector

EXCERPTS: ...Policies can require green Open Access by self-archiving but to preserve authors freedom to publish where they choose policies should only encourage gold Open Access through publication in Open Access journals... Evidence has unequivocally demonstrated that to have real effect policies must be mandatory, whether institutional or funder policies.... Evidence shows that researchers are quite happy to be mandated to act in this way... The optimum arrangement, one that accommodates the needs of all stakeholders, and has the potential to collect the greatest amount of Open Access content, is for a network of institutional repositories to be the primary locus for deposit and for centralised, subject-specific collections to be created by harvesting the required content from that network of distributed repositories...

Why "Public Access" vs. "Research Access" Matters

nospam@example.com (Stevan Harnad) — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 17:06:39 +0100

Practically speaking, public access (i.e., free online access to research, for everyone) includes researcher access (free online access to research for researchers).

Moreover, free online access to research, for everyone, includes both public access and researcher access.

So what difference does it make what you call it?

The answer is subtle, but important:

The goal of providing "public access to publicly funded research" has a great deal of appeal (rightly) to both tax-paying voters and to politicians.

So promoting open access as "public access" is a very powerful and effective way to motivate and promote the adoption of open access self-archiving mandates by public research funders such as NIH and the many other federal funders in the US that would be covered by the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA).

That's fine for publicly funded research.

But not all research -- nor even most research -- is publicly funded.

All research worldwide, however, whether funded or unfunded, originates from institutions: The universal providers of research are the world's universities and research institutes.

To motivate institutions to adopt open access self-archiving mandates for all of their research output requires giving them and their researchers a credible, valid reason for doing so.

And for institutions and their researchers, "public access to publicly funded research" is not a credible, valid reason for providing open access to their research output:

Institutions and their researchers know full well that apart from a few scientific and scholarly research areas (notably, health-related research), most of their research output is of no interest to the public (and often inaccessible technically, even if accessible electronically).

Institutions and their researchers need a credible and valid reason for providing open access to their research output.

And that credible and valid reason is so as to provided access for all of the intended users of their research -- researchers themselves -- rather than just those who are at an institution that can afford to subscribe to the journal in which it was published.

Subtle, but important.

It has become obvious that the >75% of researchers who have not been providing open access to their research for over two decades now -- despite the fact that the Web has made it both possible and easy for them to do so -- will not do so until and unless it is mandated. That's why mandates matter.

The rationale for the mandate, however, has to be credible and valid for all research and all researchers. "Public access to publicly funded research" is not.

But "maximize researcher access to maximize research uptake and impact" is.

And it has the added virtue of not only maximizing research usage, applications and progress -- to the benefit of the public -- but public access to publicly funded research also comes with the territory, as an added benefit.

So Mike Rossner (interviewed by Richard Poynder) is quite right that the two are functionally equivalent.

It is just that they are not strategically equivalent -- if the objective is to convince institutions and their researchers that it is in their interest to mandate and provide open access.

Hopeful Ad Hoc Critiques of OA Study After OA Study: Will Wishful Thinking Ever Wane?

nospam@example.com (Stevan Harnad) — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 20:00:11 +0000

Comment on Elsevier Editors' Update by Henk Moed:
"Does Open Access publishing increase citation rates? Studies conducted in this area have not yet adequately controlled for various kinds of sampling bias."

No study based on sampling and statistical significance-testing has the force of an unassailable mathematical proof.

But how many studies showing that OA articles are downloaded and cited more have to be published before the ad hoc critiques (many funded and promoted by an industry not altogether disinterested in the outcome!) and the special pleading tire of the chase?

There are a lot more studies to try to explain away here.

Most of them just keep finding the same thing...

(By the way, on another stubborn truth that keeps bouncing back despite untiring efforts to say it isn't so: Not only is OA research indeed downloaded and cited more -- as common sense would expect, since it accessible free for all, rather than just to those whose institutions can afford a subscription -- but requiring (mandating) OA self-archiving does indeed increase OA self-archiving. Where on earth did Henk get the idea that some institutions' self-archiving "did not increase when their OA regime was transformed from non-mandatory into mandatory"? Or is Henk just referring to the "mandates" that state that "You must self-archive -- but only if and when your publisher says you may, and not if your publisher says 'you may if you may but you may not if you must'"...? Incredulous? See here and weep (for the credulous -- or chuckle for the sensible)...)

My friend Henk Moed (whose work I admire and whose scientific integrity I am in no way calling into question!) has replied to my query:
"Where on earth did Henk get the idea that some institutions' self-archiving 'did not increase when their OA regime was transformed from non-mandatory into mandatory'?"
Henk wrote to tell me that he got the idea from our own paper! (Gargouri et al 2010, Figure 1)

The figure shows the self-archiving rates from 2002-2006 for four mandated repositories, compared to the unmandated baseline self-archiving rate of about 20% per year. The four mandated repositories all have a self-archiving rate of about 60% for each of the six years.

Now where Henk got the idea that the mandates may not increase self-archiving was from the fact that the date on which the mandate was adopted differed for the four repositories, the earliest mandate being in 2002, the latest in 2004. So he inferred from the fact that the 2002-2006 rates were flat in all cases, that some, at least, of the mandates did not increase self-archiving.

There are two important details that Henk did not take into account:

(1) The date is the date the articles were published, not the date they were self-archived.

(2) When a mandate is adopted, the self-archiving is not just done for articles published on or after the mandate: it is also done retroactively, for articles published before the mandate, especially for recent years.

So the reason the self-archiving rates are flat is retroactive self-archiving. A clue is already there in Figure 1, because both the post-mandate self-archiving rates and the pre-mandate self-archiving rates are about three times the baseline (unmandated) rates (60% vs 20%).

(The baseline rate was derived from comparing the percentage of the articles that our robot found freely accessible on the web for the reference sample of articles in each of the publication years for the four mandated institutions with the percentage the robot found for articles published in the same journals and years, but from other institutions.)

The practice of retroactive self-archiving in the mandated repositories was confirmed in a later study that we will soon report, comparing the self-archiving rate for the same publishing years (from 2002 onward) as sampled by our robot several years later: The percentage for each year continued to grow years after adoption of the mandate.

One important thing to note, however, is that our estimate of the self-archiving rate for mandated institutions was actually an underestimate: We know the rates were higher than 60%, but we used the noisier and less reliable robot method rather than counting what was in the repository directly, in order to make the estimates comparable with the robot's estimate for the unmandated self-archiving rate. (The unmandated papers were not even necessarily self-archived in the author's instituitional repository: many were on their authors' personal or lab websites.)

Estimating the True Costs of Gold Open Access Publishing

nospam@example.com (Stevan Harnad) — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 13:11:59 +0000

Many estimates have been made of the true costs of Gold Open Access (OA) publishing (e.g., by Claudio Aspesi, in the discussion of Richard Poynder's recent article), but the estimates are rather arbitrary and unrealistic if the other causal factors that could raise or lower them are not taken into account.

The two most important causal factors are (1) Green OA and (2) institutions' subscription budgets.

Institutions cannot cancel essential journals if their contents are not otherwise accessible to their users.

If Green OA is universally mandated, then authors' final, peer-reviewed drafts of all journal articles are deposited in institutional repositories and freely accessible to all users whose institutions cannot afford subscriptions to the journals in which they appeared.

This makes it possible for institutions to cancel subscriptions, eventually making the subscription model unsustainable as the means of covering the costs of publication.

Subscription cancelations force journals to cut inessential costs.

With the refereed final drafts of all articles accessible to all through Green OA, journals no longer need to (1) provide the print edition, (2) provide the online edition or (3) provide access or archiving: The distributed network of Green OA repositories provides all that is needed. The rest are all obsolete products and services in the universally mandated Green OA era.

When the costs of (1), (2), and (3) are unbundled from publication products and services made obsolete by universal Green OA, the only essential cost remaining is that of implementing peer review.

Peers review for free, so the cost of peer review is just the cost of managing the peer review process, including the editorial expertise and judgment in choosing referees, adjudicating referee reports, and adjudicating revised drafts.

If peer review is provided as a "no fault" service to the author's institution, per submitted draft, regardless of whether the outcome is rejection, revision, or acceptance, the cost of rejected articles can be unbundled from the cost of accepted articles; this not only lowers and distributes the cost of peer review, but it removes the risk of lowered peer review standards and over-acceptance for the sake of making more money through Gold OA.

This much lower cost of post-Green OA no-fault Gold OA -- my guess is that it would be between $200 and $500 per submitted draft -- would not only be incomparably more affordable than today's pre-Green OA fees for Gold OA, but the money to pay for it would be available, many times over, from a fraction of institutions' permanent annual windfall subscription savings released by the cancelations made possible by universally mandated Green OA.

The only essential element for having Gold OA at this much more realistic and affordable price is one cost-free act on the part of the universal providers of all research output: Institutional Green OA mandates (reinforced by research funder Green OA mandates).

Without taking these costs and causal factors into account, estimates of the costs of OA are arbitrary and the wait for universal OA will continue to be long.

Harnad, S. (2007) The Green Road to Open Access: A Leveraged Transition. In: Anna Gacs. The Culture of Periodicals from the Perspective of the Electronic Age. L'Harmattan. 99-106.

Harnad, S. (2010) No-Fault Peer Review Charges: The Price of Selectivity Need Not Be Access Denied or Delayed. D-Lib Magazine 16 (7/8).

Harnad, S. (2010) The Immediate Practical Implication of the Houghton Report: Provide Green Open Access Now. Prometheus 28 (1). pp. 55-59.

Harnad, S. (2011) Open Access to Research: Changing Researcher Behavior Through University and Funder Mandates. JEDEM Journal of Democracy and Open Government 3 (1): 33-41.

Recommendations on RCUK OA Draft Policy

nospam@example.com (Stevan Harnad) — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 17:30:51 +0000

Research Councils UK are seeking public comments on their draft new OA policy.

Please send any comments to communications@rcuk.ac.uk and use "Open Access Feedback" in the subject line.

Here are my own comments and recommendations to RCUK:

1. It is excellent that RCUK is reducing the allowable embargo period (to 6 months for most research councils).

2. A license that formally allows more re-use rights (e.g., "Libre OA", CC-BY) is desirable, but it asks for more than just free online access ("Gratis OA") at a time when we are still far from having free online access. It thereby puts more constraints on authors, demands more of publishers, and those added constraints make it harder for that vast majority of institutions and funders who have not yet managed to reach consensus on adopting a Green OA self-archiving mandate of their own.

I accordingly recommend to RCUK that "Lbre OA" be strongly encouraged, but that only "Gratis OA" (which automatically includes linking, downloading, local print-off, local storage, local data-mining, search-engine harvesting and search) be required.

This makes it easier and more probable that universities and research institutions will be able to follow suit, adopting complementary Green OA mandates of their own, for all of their research output, whether or not RCUK-funded. It will also make it easier and more probable that other research funders will adopt similar institution-friendly mandates.

Once mandatory Gratis OA prevails, it will not be long before it is upgraded to Libre OA. But first things first. Do not let the best get in the way of the good, of which there is still so very little.

3. The designated locus of deposit should be the fundee's own institutional repository, not an institution-external central repository. Central repositories and search engines can then harvest the metadata from the institutional repository for search or re-display.

The reason for this is again that there are more publisher restrictions on institution-external deposit than on institutional deposit, and at this time when there is still so little OA and so few OA mandates, it will make it easier and more probable that universities and research institutions will be able to follow suit, adopting complementary Green OA mandates of their own, for all of their research output, whether or not RCUK-funded, if their researchers do not need to do multiple institution-external deposits or to face needless extra publisher restrictions. http://bit.ly/DepLoc

4. The optimal Green OA Mandate is ID/OA -- Immediate Deposit, Optional Access -- is identical to the RCUK Mandate in every respect except that it stipulates that the deposit itself must be done immediately upon acceptance for publication, rather than only after the allowable embargo period has expired.

This means that users will see the metadata immediately, and can already make automated eprint requests to the author for single copies for research purposes during the embargo.

5. Repository deposit should be officially stipulated as the sole mechanism for submitting publications for research assessment as well as for submitting publication lists for RCUK research proposals.

Gargouri, Y., Hajjem, C., Lariviere, V., Gingras, Y., Brody, T., Carr, L. and Harnad, S. (2010) Self-Selected or Mandated, Open Access Increases Citation Impact for Higher Quality Research. PLOS ONE 5 (10) e13636

Harnad, S. (2009) Open Access Scientometrics and the UK Research Assessment Exercise. Scientometrics 79 (1)

______ (2011) Open Access to Research: Changing Researcher Behavior Through University and Funder Mandates. JEDEM Journal of Democracy and Open Government 3 (1): 33-41.

Sale, A., Couture, M., Rodrigues, E., Carr, L. and Harnad, S. (2012) Open Access Mandates and the "Fair Dealing" Button. In: Dynamic Fair Dealing: Creating Canadian Culture Online (Rosemary J. Coombe & Darren Wershler, Eds.)

Green OA, Grown Seed By Seed: Not OZ's Lag But UK's Lead

nospam@example.com (Stevan Harnad) — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 14:57:54 +0000

Re: Richard Poynder: Open Access, brick by brick. Open and Shut? Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Let universities and research funders follow the UK's lead, not Australia's lag (apart from QUT!): Forget about Gold OA publishing for now and mandate the researcher keystrokes that would have given us 100% [Green] OA 20 years ago, had they only been done, unmandated, 20 years ago.

The reward will not only be 100% [Green] OA at long last, putting an end to 20 years of needlessly lost research impact globally, but Gold OA at a fair price soon thereafter.

(Apart from desperate and appallingly maladroit (and doomed) lobbying efforts with governments (and closed-door bargaining efforts with customers) to try to deter or delay Green OA mandates, Elsevier has nothing to do with it, one way or the other: Providing OA is entirely -- repeat: entirely -- in the research community's hands (at their fingertips), once they awaken from their insouciant slumber and realize at last that it is -- and has been all along.

Harnad, S. (2008) Waking OAs Slumbering Giant: The University's Mandate To Mandate Open Access. New Review of Information Networking 14(1): 51 - 68

Harnad, S. (2009) The PostGutenberg Open Access Journal. In: Cope, B. & Phillips, A (Eds.) The Future of the Academic Journal. Chandos.

Harnad, S. (2010) Gold Open Access Publishing Must Not Be Allowed to Retard the Progress of Green Open Access Self-Archiving. Logos: The Journal of the World Book Community. 21(3-4): 86-93