Re: Mandating OA: Don't Let the Best Be the Enemy of the Good
On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 7:13 PM, Klaus Graf wrote: Read carefully http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/4851871/ and don't ignore that, although I am not a lawyer, I am a copyright expert in German law. If the authors (and users) of the half million articles deposited in Arxiv since 1991 had sought, believed and followed copyright experts' advice in 1991, we would have 507,712 fewer OA articles today (including 79,284 of them from Germany). I have given enough legal arguments at http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/5193609/ I didn't read from you any substantial legal argument rejecting my conclusions based on my knowledge of German copyright law. The legal arguments are refuted by ongoing practice. (As Dr. Johnson would say: "I refute it thus" [stroking the keys].) The button wasn't tested by ROMEO. You are manipulating the facts. If the success rate of the button is poor you cannot say that the rest of 37 % will be reached by the button. (I misunderstood you when you wrote: "my few tests make it clear that it is realistic not to speak of 37 % but let us say of 10 %."I thought you were contesting the Romeo data on the 63%/37% split among Green OA journals: But if you meant the success rate for the Button, as I said, the deposit and mandate rate is simply far too small today -- and authors are still far too uninformed about the button -- to allow any credible estimate of the success rate of the button once we approach universal IDOA mandating and hence universal Green OA.) Stevan Harnad
Re: Mandating OA: Don't Let the Best Be the Enemy of the Good
2008/12/2 Stevan Harnad :
> Digital documents that are made freely accessible on the web can be
> accessed, read on-screen, downloaded, stored, printed-off, and data-crunched
> by any individual user. (They can also be harvested by harvesters like
> google.) That is all the use that researchers need, and that is all the use
> that ("Gratis") OA need provide.
No, researchers also need libre OA. As I have shown according German
law it is not possible for all researchers to data-crunch digital
documents.
> For the remaining
> 37%, the author has the option of depositing in Closed Access and letting
> users rely on the "email eprint request" button during any publisher
> embargo.
As I have shown the button is in Germany illegal, and my few tests
make it clear that it is realistic not to speak of 37 % but let us say
of 10 %. THE BUTTON DOESN'T WORK IN THIS WAY. He technically works but
that's all.
Klaus Graf
Re: Mandating OA: Don't Let the Best Be the Enemy of the Good
On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 1:29 PM, Klaus Graf wrote: 2008/12/2 Stevan Harnad : As I have shown according German law it is not possible for all researchers to data-crunch digital documents. Until you show how and why any German researcher cannot do exactly the same thing I can do with any peer-reviewed journal article I find on the web, I am afraid you have not shown anything at all. As I have shown the button is in Germany illegal No, I'm afraid you have not *shown* that the (email eprint request) button is illegal in Germany. You have merely *said* that it is. and my few tests make it clear that it is realistic not to speak of 37 % but let us say of 10 %. The 63%/37% figure comes from the 10,198 journals indexed by Romeo (and this includes most of the top international journals). It is not clear what sample your "few tests" are based on. THE BUTTON DOESN'T WORK IN THIS WAY. He technically works but that's all. IN WHAT WAY does the (email eprint request) button not work? Where implemented, it allows the user to instantly request an eprint and allows the author to instantly provide one. There are as yet few implementations of the button, and few deposit mandates; and authors are not yet well informed about how the button works. But nothing follows from that except that we need more mandates, more deposits, more installations, and more information for authors. And that's exactly what the button is intended to help facilitate. Stevan Harnad
Re: Green Angels and OA Extremists
[ The following text is in the "utf-8" character set. ] [ Your display is set for the "iso-8859-1" character set. ] [ Some characters may be displayed incorrectly. ] I support Michael's analysis. Commercial presses will do all they can to keep self-archiving at some artisanal, confusing level while lobbying like mad wherever they can (this means governmental agencies such as NIH and other similar agencies). The artisanal dimension I am talking about refers to constraints such as preventing the use of the publisher's pdf. Making it difficult for libraries to stock their own IR's with the articles of their faculty in some bulk fashion is another way to slow down archiving. When publishers impose their own particular constraints on self-archiving, they make things more confusing for the researchers, and this slows down progress. In short, they act in such a way that they cannot be directly and clearly faulted for opposing OA, but they make sure progress will be slow, difficult, reversible and temporary. While allowing self-archiving is indeed a step forward, it is accompanied by so many side issues that the step is small, hesitant, and not always pointed in the right direction. Of course, one can always invent some work around, add yet another button, or whatever, but this ends up making things only a little more complex and a little more confusing for the average researcher and it only reinforces the elements of confusion sought by at least some of the publishers. In short, it is a very clever strategy. To achieve OA, we do need self-archiving, all the difficulties thrown into its path by publishers notwithstanding, including the devious strategies I just referred to. But we also need OA publishing. Not to say that OA publishing should come before self-archiving, but to point out a very simple fact: a pincer strategy on the scientific communication system is better than a strategy based on a single method. OA needs self-archiving, but it also needs some reform in scientific publishing. Rather than opposing green and gold strategies, it is better to see how they can support each other. Jean-Claude Guédon Le mardi 02 décembre 2008 à 07:47 -0800, Michael Eisen a écrit : Les Carr wrote: > > HAVING SAID THAT, the library is in no way adverse to finding > mechanisms that assist individuals and ease their tasks, and I guess > that Elsevier can have no objections to that either! How about a > notification email to be sent to authors of "In Press" papers that > contains a "Deposit this paper" button that initiates the user's > deposit workflow on the ScienceDirect Submitted Manuscript PDF. > You guys are such suckers. OF COURSE Elsevier can have objections to libraries assisting individuals in self-archiving their work, because Elsevier does not want self archiving to succeed! What do they have to do to actually prove this to you? Stevan, Les and others seem to think that Karen Hunter's recent email was some kind of bureaucratic error, rather than realize it for what it clearly is - a direct statement from Elsevier that they do not want self-archiving to actually take off. It's a ploy (an apparently successful ploy) on their part to diffuse moves towards effective universal open access by a) making them seem like good guys and b) fostering the illusion that we can have universal green OA without altering the economics of publishing. And Stevan, rather than the typical retort about how green OA can be achieved now, with a few keystrokes, can you please instead explain how the policy statement from your friends at Elsevier does not indicate that they are really opposed to real OA. Jean-Claude Guédon Université de Montréal
Re: JISC/SIRIS "Subject and Institutional Repositories Interactions Study"
[ The following text is in the "windows-1252" character set. ] [ Your display is set for the "iso-8859-1" character set. ] [ Some characters may be displayed incorrectly. ] Dear Stevan, I will focus on your comments on my Recommendation 1 and leave the judgment on the Recommendations 2 and 3 and your criticism thereon to the readers. So this is about a comparison between a ?mandate to self-archive? and the usage of a ?licence to publish?. Both tools only apply to the domain of toll-gated publishing where they try to improve the accessibility of publications. It is the copyright owner who decides about the conditions of access and reuse and the toll-gated domain is characterized by many access limitations and conditions that only may be lifted after payment. However, there is an important legal exception to that model; the fair use clause states that these access limitations do not apply for a personal copy. In the self-archiving approach the author assigns the full copyrights to a publisher and subsequently utilises the fair use clause to facilitate access to the publication. The licence to publish leaves the copyrights with the author, gives the publisher the right of first publishing and adopts an embargo period for other publishing modes. For a fair comparison of the two tools, let?s assume that in both cases an institutional mandate applies. When it comes to mandating self-archiving, the only party involved is the author. That makes such a mandate relatively easy of course. But it also has a high price. Open Access remains to the publisher?s discretion. Currently that?s a complete mess. Publishers? policies vary widely when it comes to permitting access to different versions (pre-print, post-print, pdf) for different uses (author?s web site, institutional window, educational usage, commercial usage) after different embargo periods. In the meantime for personal copies an end user may use the request button in the same way as she uses the SFX button of her library. (Why not combine the two buttons?). Under the circumstances the request button is a smart invention. Kudos for you! When an institution considers mandating the usage of the licence to publish they should involve the publishers as well. It would be unfair just to issue such a mandate and leave the authors to the mercy of the publishers. It?s my guess that negotiations with publishers may not be prospectless. A common interest, not only for authors and their institutions but also for (some) publishers is to raise their social and academic profile and clear the operational situation. In order to have a stronger position institutions should combine their efforts in (national) consortiums. By the way, I allready know of several occasions where a publisher (including Elsevier and even Wiley) has published articles without the copyrights being transferred to them. To conclude. Indeed, in the toll gated domain I prefer mandating the usage of the licence to publish over mandating of self-archiving. The first option involves a higher commitment of the institutions which makes it tougher of course. But the operational result is much clearer and better sustainable. Leo. Stevan Harnad wrote: On 1-Dec-08, at 5:55 AM, leo waaijers wrote (in SPARC-OAForum: Dear Stevan, Most authors do not self-archive their publications spontaneously. So they must be mandated. But, apart from a few, the mandators do not mandate the authors. In a world according to you they themselves must be supermandated. And so on. This approach only works if somewhere in the mandating hierarchy there is an enlightened echelon that is able and willing to start the mandating cascade. Leo, you are quite right that in order to induce authors to provide Green OA, their institutions and funders must be induced to mandate that they provide Green OA (keystrokes). Authors can be mandated by their institutions and funders, but institutions and funders cannot be mandated (except possibly by their governments and tax-payers), so how to persuade them to mandate the keystrokes? The means that I (and others) have been using to persuade institutions and funders to mandate that authors provide OA have been these: (1) Benefits of Providing OA: Gather empirical evidence to demonstrate the benefits of OA to the author, institution, and funder, as well as to research progress and to tax-paying society (increased accessibility, downloads, uptake, citations, hence increased research impact, productivity, and progress, increased visibility and showcasing for institutions, richer and more valid research performance evaluation for research assessors, enhanced and more visible metrics of research impact -- and its rewards -- for authors, etc.). (2) Means of Providing OA: Provide free software for making deposit quick, easy, reliable, functional, and cheap, for authors as well as their institutions. Provide OA metric
Re: Green Angels and OA Extremists
On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 10:47 AM, Michael Eisen wrote: You guys are such suckers... Elsevier does not want self archiving to succeed!... Eyes wide open: We never asked publishers to support (Green) OA (or to wish it success), just not to oppose it. And in adopting the Green policy of formally endorsing immediate self-archiving of the peer-reviewed final draft by the author, thereby removing the single biggest obstacle to Green OA and Green OA mandates, Green publishers have done exactly that: not opposed OA.  [Elsevier's Green policy on author self-archiving is] a ploy (an apparently successful ploy) on their part to diffuse moves towards effective universal open access by... fostering the illusion that we can have universal green OA without altering the economics of publishing. How does endorsing immediate Green OA self-archiving "diffuse moves towards effective universal open access"? And why does universal Green OA self-archiving require "altering the economics of publishing"? (Don't forget that, unlike you, Mike, I believe -- on a wealth of evidence and analysis -- that universal Green OA [and hence universal OA itself] can and will and must precede Gold OA publishing. Reiterating the belief that it has to happen the other way round for some unstated reason or other does not strengthen the empirical or logical case for Gold first!) And Stevan...can you please... explain how the policy statement from your friends at Elsevier does not indicate that they are really opposed to real OA. They may be well be subjectively opposed to it, in their hearts, but their Green policy on OA self-archiving objectively removes one of the biggest barriers to "real OA." So I would say that Green publishers, in removing this barrier, are not-opposing OA, and non-Green publishers, not removing this barrier, are opposing OA. (The rest -- including the unsuccessful publisher lobbying against Green OA mandates -- is of no great importance. If all publishers were, like Elsevier, Green, then the worldwide university community's dithering on the adoption of Green OA mandates would be all the more evident -- and readily remediable.) Stevan Harnad
Re: Mandating OA: Don't Let the Best Be the Enemy of the Good
On 2-Dec-08, at 7:08 AM, leo waaijers wrote (on SPARC-OAForum):
Dear Stevan,
I will focus on your comments on my Recommendation 1 and
leave the judgment on the Recommendations 2 and 3 and
your criticism thereon to the readers.
So this is about a comparison between a 'mandate to
self-archive' and the usage of a 'licence to publish'.
Dear Leo,
For comparability, it needs to be a comparison between a 'mandate to
self-archive' and a 'mandate to successfully adopt a license to
publish'. Neither self-archiving nor licensing is being done
spontaneously by authors, hence we are talking about mandates in both
cases, and the question is (1) for which mandate is it more likely
that consensus on adoption will be achieved at all, and (2) what is
the likelihood of compliance, if mandated.
Moreover, both questions have to be considered separately for funder
mandates and for institutional mandates, as funders and institutions
have different prerogatives.
(Institutional consortia on mandates are yet another category, though
at a time when consensus on adopting even individual institutional
mandates is still hard to achieve, consortial consensus on mandates
seems even more difficult; the analogy with consortial consensus on
subscription licensing is, I think, very misleading. Subscription
licensing consortia are based on strong shared interests on the part
of institutional libraries, and no countervailing interests on the
part of institutional authors; author licensing mandates, in
contrast, involve the problem of authors' free choice of journals and
author risk of journal nonacceptance.)
The reason I think an author licensing mandate has a much higher
hurdle to mount is that it raises the problem of authors' free choice
of journals and author risk of journal nonacceptance, whereas author
deposit mandates face only the inertia about doing the few extra
author keystrokes required -- and both surveys and outcome studies
on actual practice show that most authors will comply, willingly.
Both tools only apply to the domain of toll-gated
publishing where they try to improve the accessibility of
publications. It is the copyright owner who decides about
the conditions of access and reuse and the toll-gated
domain is characterized by many access limitations and
conditions that only may be lifted after payment.
However, there is an important legal exception to that
model; the fair use clause states that these access
limitations do not apply for a personal copy.
Digital documents that are made freely accessible on the web can be
accessed, read on-screen, downloaded, stored, printed-off, and
data-crunched by any individual user. (They can also be harvested by
harvesters like google.) That is all the use that researchers need,
and that is all the use that ("Gratis") OA need provide.
In the self-archiving approach the author assigns the
full copyrights to a publisher and subsequently utilises
the fair use clause to facilitate access to the
publication. The licence to publish leaves the copyrights
with the author, gives the publisher the right of first
publishing and adopts an embargo period for other
publishing modes.
This is incorrect, I am afraid. In the self-archiving approach, the
author makes the article freely accessible online, and the rest comes
with the territory. As I said, this is done with the official
blessing of the journal for 63% of journals, providing full OA for
those articles. For the remaining 37%, the author has the option of
depositing in Closed Access and letting users rely on the "email
eprint request" button during any publisher embargo. This is "Almost
OA" -- and once immediate-deposit mandates are universally adopted,
over and above immediately providing 63% OA + 37% almost-OA, they
will soon usher in 100% OA as a matter of natural course.
In my view, it makes no sense at all to delay still further the
certainty of providing 63% OA + 37% almost-OA (by mandating
immediate-deposit), to wait instead and try to adopt a much stronger
mandate (mandatory author licensing) for which consensus on adoption
is much harder to achieve -- because of the problem of authors' free
choice of journals and author risk of journal nonacceptance -- simply
because of the possibility of 37% almost-OA owing to publisher
embargoes.
63% OA + 37% almost-OA is already fully within reach and long
overdue. We should not delay grasping it for one minute longer, in
quest of something stronger yet not now within rich and far less
certain.
The Immediate-Deposit/Optional Access (ID/OA) Mandate:
Rationale and Model
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/71-guid.html
(Note that there can be -- and are -- stronger self-archiving
mandates than ID/OA, but that ID/OA is the default option, the
mandate for which consensus on adoption is most easily achieved and
all legal conc
Re: Green Angels and OA Extremists
Les Carr wrote: > > HAVING SAID THAT, the library is in no way adverse to finding > mechanisms that assist individuals and ease their tasks, and I guess > that Elsevier can have no objections to that either! How about a > notification email to be sent to authors of "In Press" papers that > contains a "Deposit this paper" button that initiates the user's > deposit workflow on the ScienceDirect Submitted Manuscript PDF. > You guys are such suckers. OF COURSE Elsevier can have objections to libraries assisting individuals in self-archiving their work, because Elsevier does not want self archiving to succeed! What do they have to do to actually prove this to you? Stevan, Les and others seem to think that Karen Hunter's recent email was some kind of bureaucratic error, rather than realize it for what it clearly is - a direct statement from Elsevier that they do not want self-archiving to actually take off. It's a ploy (an apparently successful ploy) on their part to diffuse moves towards effective universal open access by a) making them seem like good guys and b) fostering the illusion that we can have universal green OA without altering the economics of publishing. And Stevan, rather than the typical retort about how green OA can be achieved now, with a few keystrokes, can you please instead explain how the policy statement from your friends at Elsevier does not indicate that they are really opposed to real OA.
[new Open Access journal: L.I.S. CRITIQUE, Vol.1 No.1] First Issue worldwide launching; English TOC; Library & Information Science Critique: Journal of the Sciences of
First Issue (Vol. 1, No. 1, Jul-Dec 2008) of the journal: Library and Information Science Critique: Journal of the Sciences of Information Recorded in Documents (LIS CRITIQUE) Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico, November 19, 2008 http://critica.bibliotecologica.googlepages.com/liscritique ISSN: pending                                                          [ Spanish version ] Welcome!!! Last news: November 19, 2008  Library & Information Science Critique has launched its FIRST ISSUE, and you can download it here, in full, free, free of charge, unhampered, democratic and Open Access here, but if you wish we can also send it by e-mail and you can also contact us if you have any problems to access the articles, or queries, or if you like to send us your critical contributions for the next number, our contact here: critica.bibliotecolog...@gmail.com Table of Contents  Open Access free of charge and direct of the full issue  | PDF | [Only in Spanish] [139 pp.] [+3MB] Editorial  A new space for the critique without censorships within the sciences of information recorded in documents has been born: Library and Information Science Critique: the Journal of the Sciences of Information Recorded in Documents, by: Zapopan Martin Muela-Meza (MEXICO), pp. 4-7 |full text pdf | [Only in Spanish]  |English abstract| This editorial introduces the reader to the work behind the creation of the journal Library and Information Science Critique: Journal of the Sciences of Information Recorded in Documents (LIS Critique). It argues that LIS Critique comes to be a journal that will challenge the mainstream LIS communication venues, both from traditional publishers and Open Access. It describes the aims, the editorial board, the peer review process and the collaboration of the first issue.  Articles  Six theses about the economy of information, by: Enrique de-la-Garza-Toledo (MEXICO),  pp. 8-13 |full text pdf | [Only in Spanish]  |English abstract| On the problem of why the concepts of the Information Society or the Knowledge Society--although they do not form a theory--are being imposed as part of an international consensus of academic and public policies, and why this has to do, not with their intrinsic truth, but because those who promote them have sufficient power to impose meaning on them as accepted concepts.  An introduction to the critical and skeptical thinking in the sciences of information recorded in documents, by: Zapopan Martin Muela-Meza (MEXICO),  pp. 14-40  |full text pdf | [Only in Spanish]  |English abstract| An analysis and critique is made of a reduced sample of contemporary deceptive ideologies within the research of Library and Information Science, defined as the science of documental information, as well as within the institutions of documental information, i.e., libraries, as applied by the professionals of documental information, i.e., librarians providing service both theoretically and practically to users of documental information. The analysis employs terms such as documental information or information recorded in documents as conceptualized by Rendón Rojas (2005), and is based on the critical and skeptical thought of Sagan (1997). Examined are deceits specific to ideology associated with the dominant Alfa social classes executed against all the dominated ones--unto the Betas to the Omegas--communicated through arguments containing logical and rhetorical fallacies (Bowell and Kemp, 2005). Here they are examined as possible valid elements for analysis to be researched in LIS. The following fallacies were found: a) to call on authority; b) of Common Practice; c) selection from an arbitrary observation; d) epistemic fallacy. According to the data obtained through the literature reviewed it could be observed that these fallacies occured mostly around the following examples of the most representative ideological and pseudo-scientific deceits: 1) concerning the primacy of pragmaticism against theory in LIS research; 2) concerning the impregnation of LIS research with pseudo-science; 3) concerning the ideologies of the Information Society and/or Knowledge Society (ISKS); 4) concerning "social capital" and "human capital"; 5) regarding the commercialization and marketing of the documental information in the ISKS; 6) regarding "knowledge and information as generators of material wealth" in the ISKS; 7) regarding the competition to find the foundation/origin/canon of all the ISKS ideologies. Intertwined throughout the argumentation of the paper there is proposed an adoption/integration of a learned epistemology, scientific and humanistic, as the core of LIS research, education and training, so that students, faculty and professionals can base their library research and practice on critical and skeptical thought. A critical analysis of the copyright and its n
