It is a pity that Prof. Harnad is only interested in "default" and "sufficient" options, and not in the best options, or indeed the most appropriate options. While author's final post-refereed draft is sufficient and acceptable for open access and research purposes, it is not the best. The best is the published version (publisher's PDF if you will). At the very least, this is the authoritative version vis-à-vis page numbers for quoted extracts and the like. Also, it significantly expedites deposition to be able to use the publisher's PDF rather than having to generate your own, with all the complications that that may entail. In my view, the publishers who permit the use of their PDFs deserve to be applauded for their far-sightedness. Other publishers should be encouraged to do likewise. SHERPA therefore makes no apologies for having published our "good list" - http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/PDFandIR.html. (Some may concur with Prof. Harnad in regarding the Paid OA list - http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/PaidOA.html - as the "bad list", but I couldn't possibly comment.) As for where material may be deposited, Prof. Harnad states that permission to deposit in institutional repositories should be the default, implying that this would be sufficient. However, as before, institutional repositories alone are not the best option. Surely the best policy must be to be able to deposit in any open access repository - institutional and/or disciplinary. In any case, SHERPA/RoMEO has no choice but to reflect/quote the terminology for repository types used in the publishers' open access policies, CTAs, and related documentation. These are often wanting in clarity and are not always fully thought through. If the publishers do better, it follows that SHERPA/RoMEO's data will also improve. Regards <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
Peter Millington SHERPA Technical Development Officer Greenfield Medical Library, <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />University of Nottingham, Queen's Medical Centre, Nottingham, NG7 2UH, England ____________________________________________________________________________ From: American Scientist Open Access Forum [mailto:american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org] On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad Sent: 03 September 2008 16:16 To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Subject: Fwd: Publishers with Paid Options for Open Access On 3-Sep-08, at 8:57 AM, c.oppenh...@lboro.ac.uk wrote: > Stevan misunderstands the purpose of SHERPA/ROMEO. It is there to report > publishers' terms and conditions, to help authors decide where to place their > articles. To argue that it should not list those publishers that are not "green" > is akin to asking an abstracting service not to record those articles that the > editor happens not to agree with. > > Some funders, such as Wellcome, encourage the applicant for funding to > include the cost of paying a "gold" journal in their funding bid. If it is to perform > a useful information function, SHERPA/ROMEO has to reflect current reality, > not ideal future scenarios. I can only disagree (profoundly) with my comrade-at-arms, Charles Oppenheim, on this important strategic point! I certainly did not say that SHERPA/ROMEO should only list Green Publishers! It should list all publishers (and, more relevantly, all their individual journals). But along with the journals, SHERPA/ROMEO should only list and classify the journal policy details that are relevant to OA, OA mandates, and the growth of OA. Those four relevant journal policy details are these: (1) Does the journal endorse immediate OA self-archiving of the refereed postprint? If so, the journal is GREEN. (2) Does the journal endorse the immediate OA self-archiving of the unrefereed preprint only? If so, the journal is PALE-GREEN. (3) Is the journal neither GREEN nor PALE-GREEN? If so then the journal is GRAY. (4) If the journal is PALE-GREEN or GRAY, does it endorse OA self-archiving after an embargo? If so, how long? That's it. All the rest of the details that SHERPA/ROMEO is currently canonizing are irrelevant amplifications of noise that merely confuse instead of informing, clarifying and facilitating OA-relevant policy and decisions on the part of authors, institutions and funders. Amongst the irrelevant and confusing details that SHERPA/ROMEO is currently amplifying (and there are many!), there are two that might be worth retaining as a footnote, as long as it is made clear that they are not fundamental for policy or practice, but merely details for two special cases: (i) What version is endorsed for OA self-archiving: the author's final draft or the publisher's PDF? (ii) Where does the journal endorse self-archiving: the author's institutional repository and/or central repositories? The reason these details are inessential is that the default option in both cases is already known a priori: (i) Self-archiving the author's final draft is the default option. A publisher that endorses self-archiving the publisher's PDF also authorizes, a fortiori, the self-archiving of the author's final draft. (Pedants might have some fun thrashing this one back and forth, citing all sorts of formalisms and legalisms, but in the end, sense would prevail: Once the publisher has formally authorized making the published article OA, matters of author prior versions or author updates are all moot.) The default option of self-archiving the postprint is sufficient for OA, hence the PDF side-show is a needless distraction. (ii) Self-archiving in the author's institutional repository is the default option. A publisher that endorses self-archiving in a central repository also endorses, a fortiori, self-archiving in the author's own institutional repository. The default option of self-archiving in the institutional repository is sufficient for OA, hence the matter of central deposit is a needless distraction. (Where direct central deposit is mandated by a funder, this can and will be implemented by automatic ARROW-based export to central repositories, of either the metadata and full-text or merely the metadata and the link to the full-text.) Hence (i) and (ii) are minor details that need only be consulted by those who, for some reason, are particularly concerned about the PDF, or those who need to comply with a funder mandate that specifies central deposit. There is absolutely no call for SHERPA/ROMEO to advertise the price lists of GRAY publishers for paid OA! I can only repeat that that is grotesque. Let authors and funders who are foolish enough to squander their money on paying those publishers (instead of just relying on their tolerated embargo limits plus the Button) find out the prices for themselves. Harrumph! Stevan Harnad ________________________________ From: Stevan Harnad Sent: 03 September 2008 13:49 To: JISC-REPOSITORIES -- JISCMAIL.AC.UK Subject: Re: Publishers with Paid Options for Open Access On 3-Sep-08, at 6:57 AM, Jane H Smith, SHERPA, wrote: http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/PaidOA.html Where a publishers' standard policy does not allow an author to comply with their funding agency's mandate, paid open access options may enable an author to comply. On no account should any author comply with any mandate to provide Open Access (OA) by paying a (non-Green) publisher to do so. That would be a grotesque distortion of the purpose of both OA and OA mandates. It would also profoundly discourage funders and institutions from mandating OA, and authors from complying with OA mandates. If a journal is not one of the 63% of journals that are already Green on immediate OA self-archiving -- http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php -- then the right strategy for the author is to deposit the refereed final draft in their institutional repository anyway, immediately upon acceptance for publication. Access to that deposit can then be set as Closed Access instead of Open Access during the publisher embargo, if the author wishes. The repository's semi-automatic "email eprint request" Button can then provide all would-be users with almost-OA during the embargo: http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/274-guid.html Most OA mandates tolerate an embargo of 6-12 months. Once immediate deposit is universally mandated by 100% of funders and institutions, that will provide at least 63% immediate-OA plus at most 37% almost-OA, immediately, for a universal total of 100% immediate-OA plus almost-OA. Not long after OA mandates are adopted universally, the increasingly palpable benefits of the resultant OA to research, researchers, and the tax-paying public will ensure that the rest of the dominos will inevitably fall quite naturally of their own accord, yielding 100% immediate-OA. Both JISC and SHERPA have an outstanding record for supporting and promoting OA, worldwide. The OA movement and the global research community are greatly in their debt. However, JISC, and especially SHERPA, alas also have a history of amplifying arbitrary, irrelevant and even absurd details and noise associated with publisher policies and practices, instead of focusing on what makes sense and is essential to the understanding and progress of OA. I urge JISC and SHERPA to focus on what the research community needs to hear, understand and do in order to reach 100% OA as soon as possible -- not on advertising publisher options that are not only unnecessary but counterproductive to the growth of OA and OA mandates. Stevan Harnad American Scientist Open Access Forum http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.h tml This message has been checked for viruses but the contents of an attachment may still contain software viruses, which could damage your computer system: you are advised to perform your own checks. Email communications with the University of Nottingham may be monitored as permitted by UK legislation.