On Fri, 30 Nov 2007, Talat Chaudhri [tac] wrote: > [A] reason why it might be that student theses are mandated sooner > than staff research [is] the general fear of the employer about > possible trade union action based on copyright issues relating to > academic research
Talat, this is the canard that institutional OA activists like you should set as your highest priority target for debunking! I think that it is an even bigger obstacle to the adoption of Green OA self-archiving mandates than the (equally groundless) worry that staff would resent or fail to comply with a mandate. There is a simple, legal, decisive, and universal solution to all copyright-related worries: Do not mandate OA. Mandate *deposit*, and leave the decision as to whether to set access to the deposit as Open Access or Closed Access (only the bibliographic metadata accessible) up to the author. This is the Immediate-Deposit/Optional-Access (ID/OA) mandate, and it is the default mandate that all OA activists should be aiming for (unless, of course, they can get an even stronger one without any opposition or delay). Nature, and human nature, will take care of the rest. The Immediate-Deposit/Optional Access (ID/OA) Mandate: Rationale and Model http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/71-guid.html Optimizing OA Self-Archiving Mandates: What? Where? When? Why? How? http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/136-guid.html How the Immediate-Deposit/Optional-Access Mandate + the "Fair Use" Button Work http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/274-guid.html 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/