Richard This data is now somewhat old, but the message is still as valid and fresh as ever. I have two papers which show the difference between voluntary deposit with or without persuasion, and a mandate; and a second paper of what actually happened as the mandate university transitioned to its mandate.
Sale, AHJ (2006) Comparison of IR content policies in Australia. First Monday, 11 (4). http://eprints.utas.edu.au/264/ Sale, AHJ (2006) The acquisition of open access research articles. First Monday, 11 (10). http://eprints.utas.edu.au/388/ The key problem in doing this sort of research is not in seeing how full the repositories actually are, but having an independent measure of what the actual body of work produced was and so what is missing. Fortunately in Australia, we have this latter data in a public summary form. Arthur Sale University of Tasmania From: American Scientist Open Access Forum [mailto:american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org] On Behalf Of Richard Poynder Sent: Tuesday, 26 May 2009 7:35 PM To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Subject: Re: [AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM] The Accelerating Worldwide Adoption Rate for Green Open Access Self-Archiving Mandates Stevan's comments raise more questions I think: 1. Stevan says, "Full compliance is of course 100% compliance, and the longer-standing mandates are climbing toward that". On my blog Bill Hooker asks, "Where could I find data to show this?"(http://poynder.blogspot.com/2009/05/open-access-mandates-judging-success.ht ml#comments). I too would be interested to know if and where these data can be found. 2. Responding to my question about mandate opt-outs Stevan cites the results of Alma Swan's international surveys in which, "most authors report they would comply willingly with a self-archiving mandate." Can we be confident that voluntary departmental commitments to self-archive will attract the same compliance rates as a mandate requiring researchers, as a condition of their employment, to self-archive? (And thus can we be confident that Alma Swan's surveys answer my question?) Stevan says, "Researchers need to be reassured that their departments or institutions or funders are indeed fully behind self-archiving, and indeed expect it of them." Is that what's happening with some of the new voluntary mandates? For instance, the Gustavus Adolphus College Library Faculty recently published an OA pledge (http://gustavus.edu/academics/library/Pubs/OApledge.html). Amongst other things, the Library Faculty promise, "to make our own research freely available whenever possible by seeking publishers that have either adopted open access policies, publish contents online without restriction, and/or allow authors to self-archive their publications on the web." It adds, "Librarians may submit their work to a publication that does not follow open access principles and will not allow self archiving only if it is clearly the best or only option for publication; however, librarians will actively seek out publishers that allow them to make their research available freely online and, when necessary, will negotiate with publishers to improve publication agreements." On ACRLog, the Chair of the Gustavus Adolphus Library Department Barbara Fister says, "we haven't had the time or money to start up an institutional repository. We also, quite frankly, don't have a terribly sophisticated grasp of all the OA arguments, the copyright issues, and the color choices. (Green? Gold? What about mauve?) We've also very, very busy trying to wrap up a big project, working with departments to make enough cuts that we can balance our budget next year - without scuttling our commitment to undergraduate research." (http://acrlog.org/2009/05/17/how-were-walking-the-oa-walk/). How relevant are Alma Swan's findings when predicting the likely outcome of such a pledge, or indeed many of the other recent departmental commitments to OA, many of which include opt-outs? Nine years ago the founders of Public Library of Science organised an open letter to publishers. As a result 34,000 researchers from 180 countries made a pledge not to submit papers to any journal that refused to make the articles it published "available through online public libraries of science such as PubMed Central" 6 months after publication. Only a handful of publishers complied, but researchers ignored their own pledge and carried on publishing in those journals. Richard Poynder From: American Scientist Open Access Forum [mailto:american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org] On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad Sent: 23 May 2009 20:25 To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Subject: The Accelerating Worldwide Adoption Rate for Green Open Access Self-Archiving Mandates In response to Alma Swan's graphic demonstration (posted yesterday and partly reproduced below) of the accelerating growth rate of Green Open Access Self-Archiving Mandates (now including NIH, Harvard, Stanfordand MIT), Richard Poynder has posted some some very useful comments and questions. Below are some comments by way of reply: [almamandgrowth.png] FIGURE: Accelerating Growth Rate in Worldwide Adoptions of Green Open Access Self-Archiving Mandates (2002-2009, in half-year increments) by Research Funders, Institutions, and Departments/Faculties/Schools (Swan 2009) ____________________________________________________________________________ (1) The latest and fastest-growing kinds of Green Open Access Self-Archiving Mandates are not only self-chosen by the researchers themselves, but they are department/faculty/school mandates, rather than full university-wide mandates. These are the "patchwork mandates" that Arthur Sale already began recommending presciently back in 2007, in preference to waiting passively for university-wide consensus to be reached. (The option of opting out is only useful if it applies, not to the the deposit itself [of the refereed final draft, which should be deposited, without opt-out, immediately upon acceptance for publication], but to whether access to the deposit is immediately set as Open Access.) (2) Another recent progress report for Institutional Repositories, following Stirling's, is Aberystwyth's, which reached 2000 deposits in May. (3) Richard asks: "Will the fact that many of the new mandates include opt-outs affect compliance rates? (Will that make them appear more voluntary than mandatory?)" [comply1.jpg] According to Alma Swan's international surveys, most authors report they would comply willingly with a self-archiving mandate. The problem is less with achieving compliance on adopted mandates than with achieving consensus on the adoption of the mandate in the first place. (Hence, again, Arthur Sale's sage advice to adopt "patchwork" department/faculty/school mandates, rather than waiting passively for consensus on the adoption of full university-wide mandates, is the right advice.) And the principal purpose of mandates themselves is to reinforceresearchers' already-existing inclination to maximise access and usage for their give-away articles, not to force researchers to do something they don't already want to do. (Researchers need to be reassured that their departments or institutions or funders are indeed fully behind self-archiving, and indeed expect it of them; otherwise researchers remain in a state of "Zeno's Paralysis" about self-archiving year upon year, because of countless groundless worries, such as copyright, journal choice, and even how much time self-archiving takes.) (4) Richard also asks: "What is full compliance so far as a self-archiving mandate is concerned?" Full compliance is of course 100% compliance, and the longer-standing mandates are climbing toward that, but their biggest boost will come not only from time, nor even from the increasingly palpable local benefits of OA self-archiving (in terms of enhanced research impact), but from the global growth of Green OA Self-Archiving Mandates that Alma has just graphically demonstrated. (5) "What other questions should we be asking?" We should be asking what university students and staff can do to accelerate and facilitate the adoption of mandates at their institution. (See "Waking OA's "Slumbering Giant": The University's Mandate To Mandate Open Access.") And the right way to judge the success of a mandate is not just by reporting the growth in an institution's yearly deposit rates, but by plotting the growth in deposit rate as a percentage of the institution's yearly output of research articles, for the articles actually published in that same year. Stevan Harnad American Scientist Open Access Forum