Richard
I think there is an interesting subtext here. Institutions with mandates, since they are more aware of the issues, often specify the ID/OA mandate and have a better knowledge of copyright. Therefore one would suspect that at the present time they would honour publisher embargoes and not show as OA documents that they hold in the repository as restricted. They may or may not implement the Request-a-copy button. One therefore has to be careful in deciding what 60% compliance means. It may mean 100% compliance. Does it mean that the remaining 40% were not deposited, or that most were deposited but not made OA? I note that some institutions in Australia have started using their repositories to fulfil their obligations to the Australian Government to report all research meeting refereeing criteria. This means that all research articles will have their metadata in the repository (otherwise the university loses funding big time), but not all will have a document to back them up, whether restricted or OA. As Stevan says, it is difficult to know how researcher-imposed mandates will fare. Perhaps Heads of Faculties or Schools or Departments or their administrators will encourage/follow-up. We will see. I wish them well and hope someone monitors them. Arthur From: American Scientist Open Access Forum [mailto:american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org] On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad Sent: Wednesday, 27 May 2009 12:06 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 On 26-May-09, at 5:35 AM, Richard Poynder wrote: 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. Here's some data for the four oldest mandates, Minho, CERN, QUT and Southampton ECS, up to 2006 (data from Yassine Gargouri at UQAM; if you can't see the figure in this message, it's also Figure 1 here.). Presumably these rates are even better now, in 2009. (These are known to be underestimates for at least CERN and Southampton. Perhaps Eloy Rodrigues and Tom Cochrane have recent updates for Minho and QUT.) [IMAGE] 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?) We can't assume it, but my guess is they'll grow at least as fast. 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? Too early to tell, but obviously they've managed to self-adopt them without the need of higher-level reassurance! 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/). Well, you may be right that the GA "mandate" by librarians was more wishful thinking than an informed decision, based on the above passage (so maybe it was just wishful thinking to include it in ROARMAP). Let's see how it goes in the next few months. Even as gestures, the library "patchwork mandates" may help as inducements for more emulations by other patchworkers and institutions... 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? You are right to be uncertain about "mandates" with opt-outs. But lots of the earlier mandates included hedges (sometimes, I suspect, just to please their legal advisors, who mostly don't know mandates from maniocs!). And Harvard (hence soon also its many emulators) has been responsive to feedback, and in its FAQ has effectively upgraded its mandate to include an immediate-deposit clause with no opt-out. But Richard, let's not forget that none of the 83 mandates adopted to date is perfect, in that none says that all refereed final drafts must be immediately made OA upon acceptance for publication: They either allow opt-outs, or they allow embargoes, or they hedge with "where possible" or "where consistent with copyright" or (in what I think is the optimal compromise) immediate-deposit but allowing the option of setting access to the deposit as Closed Access during any alllowable embargo. I have lost a lot of sleep over the overall slowness to adopt mandates at all; but I am serenely confident that once mandates do prevail widely (as it was always inevitable that they would), nature will take its course, and they will all turn into immediate OA mandates. Far rather a flawed mandate now, than no mandate at all! 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. Now that is completely different, I think. Those 34,000 researchers were threatening to boycott publishers if the publishers did not provide (Gold) OA. It was obvious (not only to me but to the publishers) that the boycott threat was just bluff, as the researchers would have no choice but to keep publishing with their publishers if the publishers did not comply (and they didn't, so they did). It was not in the hands of those researchers to provide Gold OA publishing. But that was also their silliness and short-sightedness at the time, for it was within those researchers' hands to provide Green OA -- but it never even occurred to them! This was probably one of the earliest manifestations of Gold Fever clouding the vision and judgment of those who were seeking OA. (See the "keystroke koan.") But there is no counterpart to any of this with self-imposed Green OA mandates: Now it really is in the researchers' own hands to provide the OA they seek: no second party to have to bully or bluff. And no sacrifice called for (as there definitely would have been, if the 34,000 had followed through on their bluff, and not published their findings at all as of the appointed deadline!). So I'd rest easy about that. And also about the imperfections in today's first wave of mandates. There's no need to over-reach (neither for perfect mandates, nor for "libre" OA, nor for CC licenses, nor for Gold OA): all of the rest and more will come naturally with the territory, as Green OA mandates become universal. Stevan Harnad From: American Scientist Open Access Forum [mailto:american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org] On Behalf OfStevan 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 [ Part 2, Image/PNG 81KB. ] [ Unable to print this part. ]