On Tue, 9 Oct 2007, Albanese, Andrew (Library Journal) wrote: > Hello Stevan: just writing to see if you have any thoughts on the > UKPMC statement on re-use...seems a little unnecessary to me. Stating > the obvious? Rather than say "copyright still applies," would it > not have been more useful to issues guidelines on, say, how to craft a > copyright clause that facilitates open access? Do these broad statements > help anyone? > http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTX041316.html
Yes, Andrew, I too think the UKPMC re-use statement is unnecessary and stating the obvious. (Even advice on amending copyright clauses to facilitate Green OA self-archiving is not necessary as a precondition for self-archiving, or for mandating self-archiving, although it is a good idea to try to amend copyright where feasible and desired -- hence good advice is always welcome.) (1) To begin with, the UKPMC statement is about paid Gold OA, and (for reasons I have adduced many times before) I believe that -- except for those researchers and funders who are so well off that money is no object -- paying for Gold OA at this time is unnecessary and a waste of money (until and unless most or all of the institutional money that is currently being spent on subscriptions is released to pay for Gold OA). http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/399w e152.htm (2) Successfully establishing a credible, high-quality fleet of paid Gold OA journals was definitely useful to demonstrate the principle of paid Gold OA as a feasible one (especially under the current financially straitened circumstance, with most of the potential Gold OA funds still tied up in subscriptions); but that does not change the fact that Gold OA is far from being either the fastest or surest way to scale up to 100% OA today. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13309/ (3) The fastest and surest way to scale up to 100% OA today is for authors to self-archive their articles (Green OA) in their own Institutional Repositories [IRs] (not in Central Repositories [CRs] like PubMed Central: CRs should harvest from IRs) -- and for their institutions and funders to mandate that they do so. http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/136-guid.html (4) Green OA self-archiving does not require the description or assertion of any new "re-use rights": All the requisite uses already come with the Green OA territory itself (i.e., the full text being made freely accessible to all on the web). http://listserver.sigmaxi.org/sc/wa.exe?A2=ind06&L=american-scientist-open-a ccess-forum&F=l&P=102378 So this is a lot of fuss and fanfare about nothing: paid Gold OA, and direct deposit in 3rd-party CRs like UKPMC. Not what the research community urgently needs today, nor what will get us there. Stevan Harnad AMERICAN SCIENTIST OPEN ACCESS FORUM: http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.h tml http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/ UNIVERSITIES and RESEARCH FUNDERS: If you have adopted or plan to adopt a policy of providing Open Access to your own research article output, please describe your policy at: http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/71-guid.html http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/136-guid.html OPEN-ACCESS-PROVISION POLICY: BOAI-1 ("Green"): Publish your article in a suitable toll-access journal http://romeo.eprints.org/ OR BOAI-2 ("Gold"): Publish your article in an open-access journal if/when a suitable one exists. http://www.doaj.org/ AND in BOTH cases self-archive a supplementary version of your article in your own institutional repository. http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/ http://archives.eprints.org/ http://openaccess.eprints.org/