[GOAL] Re: Elsevier's query re: positive things from publishers that should be encouraged, celebrated, recognized
To answer Alicia Wise's query, 6 proposals of positive things from publishers that should be encouraged : Allow systematically and under no condition and at no cost depositing the peer-reviewed postprint – either the author's refereed, revised final draft or — even better for the Publishers publicity — the publisher's version of record in the author's institutional repository. Remove from authors' contracts the need to sign away their rights and transform it into a non exclusive license of their rights. Agree that by default, part of the rights on an article belong to the author's Institution if public and/or to the Funding organization, if public. Reduce significantly (or at least freeze for 5 years) the purchasing cost of periodicals, then increase at the real inflation rate, officially measured in Western countries (1-3 % per year). Reduce significantly the number of periodical titles published, aiming for excellence and getting rid of the mediocre title which are bundled in Elsevier's Big Deals and similar deals by other publishers. This would reduce their monopolistic position. Reward Institutions for the work provided by reviewers, editors and… authors, either directly or indirectly through lower subscription costs. Bernard Rentier___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: Elsevier's query re: positive things from publishers that should be encouraged, celebrated, recognized
To answer Alicia Wise's query, 6 proposals of positive things from publishers that should be encouraged : 1. Allow systematically and under no condition and at no cost depositing the peer-reviewed postprint â either the author's refereed, revised final draft or â even better for the Publishers publicity â the publisher's version of record in the author's institutional repository. 2. Remove from authors' contracts the need to sign away their rights and transform it into a non exclusive license of their rights. 3. Agree that by default, part of the rights on an article belong to the author's Institution if public and/or to the Funding organization, if public. 4. Reduce significantly (or at least freeze for 5 years) the purchasing cost of periodicals, then increase at the real inflation rate, officially measured in Western countries (1-3 % per year). 5. Reduce significantly the number of periodical titles published, aiming for excellence and getting rid of the mediocre title which are bundled in Elsevier's Big Deals and similar deals by other publishers. This would reduce their monopolistic position. 6. Reward Institutions for the work provided by reviewers, editors and⦠authors, either directly or indirectly through lower subscription costs. Bernard Rentier [ Part 2: Attached Text ] ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
Re: The affordability problem vs. the accessibility problem
And it is very easy to achieve. But only by University authorities. All it takes is a few minutes of political courage and let their research community know that any author's refereed, corrected, accepted final draft of any refereed journal article that is not in the Institutional Repository will be disregarded in any performance assessment within the University. It works. But it takes not just authority. It takes also a lot of preparation, information and incentives to convince everyone, because it works best if everybody understands that it is for their own good, for their own interest, and not only for the University's visibility. This is precisely why we created EOS (Enabling Open Scholarship; http://www.openscholarship.org/jcms/j_6/accueil ), to convince Heads of Universities to jump that leap. Bernard Rentier Le 6 nov. 2011 à 18:51, Stevan Harnad a écrit : On Sun, 6 Nov 2011, Allen Kleiman wrote: Is there a difference between 'access to information 'and 'access to the publishers copy'? Yes, a lot: (1) Information can mean any information: published, confidential, public, royalty-seeking, non-royalty-seeking, author give-away, non-author-giveaway. (2) The primary target information of the OA movement is refereed research journal articles, all of which, without exception, are written exclusively for research uptake, usage and impact, not for royalty revenues. (3) The restrictions (embargoes) that publishers place on OA self-archiving of the author's refereed, corrected, accepted final draft are far fewer than the restrictions on the publisher's version-or-record. (The publishers of over 60% of journals, including almost all the top journals in each field, already endorse OA self-archiving of the author's final draft -- but not the publisher's version-of-record -- immediately upon publication. These are called green publishers, and OA self-archiving is called green OA.) The OA movement is not -- and cannot be -- the movement for open access to all information. It is the movement for open access to refereed research journal articles. The author's refereed, corrected, accepted final draft is the refereed journal article. Access to the author's refereed, corrected, accepted final draft of a refereed journal article is the difference between night and day for all would-be users whose institutions cannot afford subscription access to the publisher's version of record. This is why the first and most urgent priority of the OA movement is to ensure that all research institutions and funders mandate (require) the deposit of the author's refereed, corrected, accepted final draft of every refereed journal article in their institutional repository immediately upon publication (with access to the deposit immediately set as Open Access for at least 60% of the deposits from green journals, and the repository's semi-automated email eprint request Button providing Almost OA to the remaining 40% for individuals requesting access for research purposes.semi-automatically with two key-presses, at the discretion of the author). Stevan Harnad
Re: Is Harvard's OA Policy pure bragging?
Indeed, Mr Graf's recurrent, outrageous, aggressive and above all useless comments are becoming very tiring on this Forum. Freedom of expression is a cherished value and should be preserved. However I am impressed with the moderator's patience: there are definitely some contributions that should be moderated. Bernard Rentier Le 22 mars 2010 à 03:38, Stevan Harnad har...@ecs.soton.ac.uk a écrit : On 20-Mar-10, at 9:57 PM, Klaus Graf wrote: A short update on the Knoll case: http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/6250326/ Klaus Graf For Prof. Shieber's remarkably patient and polite reply to Prof. Graf's prior posting along much the same lines, see http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/5918219/ (I think Prof. Shieber's reply pretty much covers Prof. Graf.'s latest installment too.) There are constructive criticisms one might make of some of the current implementational details of Harvard's policy -- http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/364-guid.html -- but certainly not the way Prof. Graf goes about it; moreover, chances are that Prof. Graf would continue in much the same tone even once those implementational details were fixed, since they are not the target of his criticism. Stevan Harnad P.S. I think I made a judgment error, as moderator, in approving Prof. Graf's subject header, as well as the pointer to his comment on his website. Let this be taken as notice that as of now, no subject headers like the above one will be approved for posting in this Forum; nor will postings, even with temperate headings, if they merely point to intemperate postings elsewhere, as the above one does.
Re: Is Harvard's OA Policy pure bragging?
Censorship is needed against insults. An accusation of bragging is insulting. This forum should remain a place where well educated people exchange their thoughts, not a boxing ring. B. Rentier Le 22 mars 2010 à 12:06, Klaus Graf a écrit : As you know it's pure censorship what you are doing. As moderator you have to be neutral but it is clear that you are misusing your administrative power regarding postings you don't like. I am not professor. Klaus Graf 2010/3/22 Stevan Harnad har...@ecs.soton.ac.uk: On 20-Mar-10, at 9:57 PM, Klaus Graf wrote: A short update on the Knoll case: http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/6250326/ Klaus Graf For Prof. Shieber's remarkably patient and polite reply to Prof. Graf's prior posting along much the same lines, see http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/5918219/ (I think Prof. Shieber's reply pretty much covers Prof. Graf.'s latest installment too.) There are constructive criticisms one might make of some of the current implementational details of Harvard's policy -- http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/364-guid.html -- but certainly not the way Prof. Graf goes about it; moreover, chances are that Prof. Graf would continue in much the same tone even once those implementational details were fixed, since they are not the target of his criticism. Stevan Harnad P.S. I think I made a judgment error, as moderator, in approving Prof. Graf's subject header, as well as the pointer to his comment on his website. Let this be taken as notice that as of now, no subject headers like the above one will be approved for posting in this Forum; nor will postings, even with temperate headings, if they merely point to intemperate postings elsewhere, as the above one does.
Launch of EOS
After a missed launch a few weeks ago, an organisation that will be of interest to all rectors and vice-rectors-for-research is now ready to take off. Enabling Open Scholarship (EOS) LAUNCHES NEW ORGANISATION FOR INSTITUTIONAL DIRECTORS WORLDWIDE Liege, Belgium 23 September 2009 ~W~W~W~W~W~W~W~W~W~W~W~W~W~W~W~W~W~W ENABLING OPEN SCHOLARSHIP (EOS), a new organisation for senior management in universities and research institutions, has been launched today. The context in which EOS has been established is that of increasing interest from governments, funders and the research community itself in opening up the way research is carried out and communicated. This interest is complemented by new research practices and processes that can work effectively only in an open, collaborative environment. As we rapidly approach 100 formal, mandatory, policies on Open Access from universities, research institutes and research funders a group of senior directors of universities and research institutes have come together to launch a new forum for the promotion of the principles and practices of open scholarship. The aim of Enabling Open Scholarship (EOS) is to further the opening up of scholarship and research that we are now seeing as a natural part of ~Qbig science~R and through the growing interest from the research community in open access, open education, open science and open innovation. These, and other, 'open' approaches to scholarship are changing the way research and learning are done and will be performed in the future. Enabling Open Scholarship (EOS) provides the higher education and research sectors around the world with information on developments and with advice and guidance on implementing policies and processes that encourage the opening up of scholarship. It also provides a forum for discussion and debate amongst its members and will be taking that discussion into the wider community. EOS membership is for senior institutional managers who have an interest in ~W and wish to help develop thinking on ~W strategies for promoting open scholarship to the academy as a whole and to society at large. The EOS website is a resource open to all. It provides background information, data and guidance material on open scholarship-related issues. In a limited access area, members can find announcements, news and discussions. EOS offers an outreach service to universities and research institutes ~W whether members or not ~W that need help, advice, guidance or information on open scholarship issues. We do this through our website and also by providing information on an individual basis to institutions that need it. The EOS board is composed of people who have personally designed or instigated the kinds of changes in their own institutions that herald the benefits of the open scholarly communication system of the future. Now this expertise is available for others to tap into. The current EOS board comprises: ~U Bernard RENTIER (Chairman), Rector of the University of Liege, Belgium ~U Tom COCHRANE, Deputy Vice Chancellor, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia ~U William DAR, Director General of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Hyderabad, India ~U Stevan HARNAD, Canada Research Chair, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), Montreal, Quebec ~U Keith JEFFERY, Director of IT and International Strategy at the Science Technology Facilities Council, Swindon, UK ~U Sijbolt NOORDA, President of VSNU, the Association of Dutch Research Universities ~U Stuart SHIEBER, James O. Welch, Jr. and Virginia B. Welch Professor of Computer Science in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University and Director of Harvard~Rs Office of Scholarly Communication ~U Ian SIMPSON, Deputy Principal for Research and Knowledge Transfer, and Professor of Environmental Science, University of Stirling, UK ~U Peter SUBER, Berkman Center for Internet Society, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA ~U John WILLINSKY, Khosla Family Professor of Education at Stanford University and director of the Public Knowledge Project at the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University, USA ~U Alma SWAN (Convenor/Coordinateur), Director of Key Perspectives Ltd, Truro, UK ~SThe world of research is changing and universities and other research-based institutions must drive the change, not sit back and let it happen. Having embarked upon implementing changes in thinking and practice at my own university, I want to encourage others in my position to join the discussion and help lead the way to a better future,~T said Professor Bernard Rentier. ~SWe will be reaching out to universities and research institutes across the world to invite them to play an active role in building better systems of scholarship for the future. EOS will provide the forum and the voice for the research community on open scholarship issues and represents a very
Re: Repositories: Institutional or Central ? emergent properties and the compulsory open society
On 07-Feb.-09 at 14:18, Klaus Graf wrote : 2009/2/6 Bernard Rentier brent...@ulg.ac.be: 1. Universities may legitimately own a repository of all the publications by their employees, no matter what their statutes can be, they may also impose a mandate and simply enforce it by making it conditional for futher in-house funding, advancement, promotions, etc. This isn't true for Germany, see http://archiv.twoday.net/search?q=mandat Legal mainstream in Germany says that the freedom of research forbidds mandating on university level. Klaus Graf It is most unfortunate for German researchers and for German Institutions (Universities Research Centres). As opposed to researchers in other countries, they are missing a superb opportunity for efficient worldwide dissemination of the knowledge they generate... I have a hard time understanding what this legal mainstream means and what is the rationale for it... It sounds more like a moral mainstream to me. Indeed, is it unclear whether it is a law, a decree, a widely followed institutional rule, or a dominant frame of mind ? Why should people be afraid of institutional mandates ? Just because they are orders ? commandments ? Certainly not because they deprive researchers from their freedom to publish wherever they want. Freedom to decide where to publish is perfectly safe, even with IR mandates. IRs are not scientific journals and they have no intention, even in the long run, to replace them (OA journals are a different matter and they do not change a single bit the role and objectives of IRs). Depositing in an IR has nothing to do with submitting a paper to peers for review and to editors for acceptance in a journal. Basically, depositing a paper in the local IR is exactly like depositing a reprint of the paper ay the local library. Sending it to a potential reader upon request by a simple keystroke (if the paper cannot be made freely available yet legally) is just like sending a reprint by mail (but easier and cheaper). We have done this for many decades without complaints from anyone. Why would it turn into a legal worry now ? No researcher would complain (and consider it an infringement upon his/ her academic freedom to publish) if we mandated them to deposit reprints at the local library. It would be just another duty like they have many others. It would not be terribly useful, needless to say, but it would not cause an uproar. Qualitatively, nothing changes. Quantitatively, readership explodes. Best regards, Bernard Rentier
Re: Repositories: Institutional or Central ? emergent properties and the compulsory open society
I believe we are getting carried away here. My point was much simpler... 1. Universities may legitimately own a repository of all the publications by their employees, no matter what their statutes can be, they may also impose a mandate and simply enforce it by making it conditional for futher in-house funding, advancement, promotions, etc. 2. Funders may legitimately own a repository of all the publications they have funded and exert a mandate as well. 3. Researchers my want their publications to be accessible in a thematic repository. And so on. One cannot reasonably hope that all researchers will fulfill all these objectives. There is only one way to get close to it while minimising the efforts for the author: make the institutional repository the primary deposit locus and set up an easy mechanism for harvesting the data in other loci. I believe the whole matter of academic freedom is flat wrong here. Academic freedom is freedom to speak and write without neither constraint nor censorship. It has nothing to do with compliance to university rules. Researchers are free to publish wherever they want to. They are also free to deposit wherever they want to. Depositing in an instititutional repository is a different matter. Mandates are a duty among many others for university members, they do not by any means reduce academic freedom. It is true that To consider that researchers have the freedom to choose and promote the channels of distribution for their work. The Institutional mandate does not reduce that freedom. It is just an additional (but sufficient) duty. Refusing this duty is denying recognition of what is owed to one's Institution. Fortunately, in my own experience in Liege, compliance is very good (although still incomplete of course, after 2,5 months). All it takes is, when explaining to the researchers community, to put more emphasis on the positive aspects and benefits for the Institution, for the research teams and for the researchers themselves rather that on the inconvenience of having to file in the data. Bernard Rentier Le 06-févr.-09 à 19:38, Tomasz Neugebauer a écrit : Research repositories, whether they are a physical library, an electronic journal archive, an institutional repository or a subject repository, are collections of interconnected components. Understood in this way, as systems, they have emergent properties. That is, properties of the collection that none of the components (eg.: individual research articles) have, as well as properties of the components that the components have as a result of being a part of that collection (eg.: relevance ranking with respect to a topic within that collection). What are some examples of emergent properties of repositories: the subject coverage, the intended purpose of the collection, the demographics of the readers and authors of the collection, etc. When a researcher makes the decision to publish/provide access to their work, the emergent properties of the repository are a relevant consideration. Consider the following hypothetical situation: a researcher in Buddhist studies may, for example, object to being mandated to the act of placing his article on the topic of interdependent co-arising in the same repository that is also home to articles from another department in his institution that specializes in, say, promoting the philosophy of Charles Darwin in social science. That researcher may wish to place his article in the Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library, but not in the IR of his university. I agree with Thomas Krichel that researchers currently have the freedom to choose and promote the channels of distribution for their work. About Arthur Sale's statements such as: Arthur Sale: Researchers are not free agents. [..] I strongly support academics being required to contribute to their discipline and access to knowledge (and opinion). Otherwise why are they employed? In my opinion these statements can only succeed in creating resistance from researchers. I don't think that the compulsory open society is what Karl Popper had in mind when he wrote The Open Society and Its Enemies; Open access in your employer's IR, or else! The fact that the Open Society Institute claims to be inspired by Karl Popper's Open Society and its Enemies does not mean that Popper ever intended to have his theories be implemented through OSI's NGOs, or at all. The Open Access Initiative claims to define and promote open access, but the concepts of open society and open access reach back to antiquity and touch on paradoxes of freedom and political theory. As an aside, OAI-PMH is a a low-barrier mechanism, but a barrier nevertheless - perhaps not a paradox, but there is something counterintuitive about promoting open access with a new barrier. The concepts of open society and open access existed long before Budapest OAI and OAI-PMH. And here we can go back to Jean-Claude Guédon's
Re: Repositories: Institutional or Central? [in French, from Rector's blog, U. Li�ge]
[ 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. ] I agree. It is exactly what I was trying to say in my last paragraph : it is my belief that lauching a centralised and/or thematic repository (C-TR) can make sense, but only if it does not discourage authors from posting their publications in an institutional repository (IR), otherwise many publications will be lost in the process (I mean lost for easy and open access). In addition, direct posting in C-TRs will shortcut IRs and it will be a loss for universities in their attempt to host their entire scholarly production (this is just a collateral effect, I know, but being a University President, it is a worry for me). C-TRs are of much more interest if they collect data at a secondary level by harvesting from primary IRs. Bernard Rentier Le 04-févr.-09 à 20:22, Jean-Claude Guédon a écrit : This is an old debate where one should carefully distinguish between two levels of analysis. 1. In principle, is it better to have institutional, distributed, depositories, or to have central, thematic, whatever depositories? 2. In practice, we know we will not escape the will by various institutions to develop central, thematic, whatever depositories (e.g. Hal in France). And these depositories will exist. The question then becomes: how do we best live with this mixed bag of situations? Pursuing the battle on principles is OK with me, but it does not get me enthused. Pursuing the battle on the pragmatic, practical level, knowing that various tools exist that will restore the distributed nature of these depositories anyway, appears to me far preferable. Jean-Claude Guédon Le mercredi 04 février 2009 à 13:14 -0500, Stevan Harnad a écrit : This is the timely and incisive analysis (in French) of what is at stake in the question of locus of deposit for open access self-archiving and mandates. It was written by Prof. Bernard Rentier, Rector of the University of Liège and founder of EurOpenScholar. It is re-posted here from Prof. Rentier's blog. For more background (in English) on the important issue of institutional vs. central deposit, click here. Liège is one of the c. 30 institutions (plus 30 funders) that have already adopted a Green OA self-archiving mandate . DéPôTS INSTITUTIONNELS, THéMATIQUES OU CENTRALISéS ? Posté par Bernard Rentier dans Open Access A lire: une remarquable revue très complète de l'OA par Peter Suber. La formule des dépôts institutionnels permettant la libre consultation de publications de recherche par l'Internet est certes la meilleure, mais elle est, tôt ou tard, menacée par une nouvelle tendance visant à créer des dépôts thématiques ou des dépôts gérés par des organismes finançant la recherche. La dernière initiative provient de la très active association EUROHORCs (European association of the heads of research funding organisations and research performing organisations), bien connue pour ses prix EURYI et dont l'influence sur la réflexion européenne en matière de recherche est considérable. Elle tente de convaincre l'European Science Foundation (ESF) de mettre sur pied, grâce à une subvention considérable des Communautés européennes, un dépôt centralisé qui serait à la fois thématique (sciences biomédicales) et localisé (Europe) sur base du principe qui a conduit à la création de PubMed Central, par exemple. L'idée part d'un bon sentiment. Elle est née d'une prise de conscience que nous partageons tous: il est impératif que la science financée par les deniers publics soit rendue publique gratuitement et commodément. Mais en même temps, elle est fondée
Re: Call for a vote of nonconfidence in the moderator of the AmSci Forum
This whole mess is amazing, and sad. I vote for Stevan and I am looking forward to a return to normal on this forum, even if normal is being criticized by some... Professor Bernard Rentier Rector University of Liege 7, place du 20 Aout 4000 Liege, Belgium Tel: +32-4-366 9700
Mandates, coercion and vegetables
I like Les Carr's way to put it. Indeed coercion and mandates are very unpleasant words. Being a university rector (as we say, let's say Chairman, President or Vice-Chancellor), I am very sensitive to words that remind us of dictatorship. At a meeting on Institutional Repositories in Valencia two months ago, after having explained that in my university (Liege, Belgium), posting in te repository every paper produced was mandatory, I was very unpleasantly compared to Stalin by one of the attending faculty. It makes you think. Since then, I try to avoid such dictatorial vocabulary. Obligation, mandate, coercion mean implicitly that ought to be a punishment, a penalty, if one does not comply. But there is a huge panel of possible penalties. If you want compliance, use penalties that mean something to people without shocking them. Indeed, telling your researchers very simply that only the publications deposited in the official list of their university, i.e. the institutional repository, will be taken into account for evaluation of their CVs in the context of promotions, will do. It is simple and fair. And it hits the goal. To the benefit of all: the author and the University. The second aspect is not fear, it is pride. Making some publicity about the papers published by the members of the Institution can be music to the researchers' ears. And selecting the good, or best papers of the week or of the month, or even better, the top ten or twenty or whatever most quoted papers and mentioning them specially on the University website is a real delight for the author(s). And there are many other incentives one can think of along the same line. I hate the expression carrot and stick but I am sure everybody understands here what I mean: both are effective, the secret is to use some stick perhaps, if really necessary, but mostly carrots. The university leaders who have difficulties to innovate in the carrot world are left with the sticks and will have a hard time succeeding in imposing reform. It is a great chance that institutional repositories provide so many opportunities to develop new carrots. Let's juste use some imagination and let's propose a wide panel of incentives.
