Re: [GOAL] COVID-19 and access to knowledge

[brentier]

I am very sorry, but « everyone concerned at Elsevier from the top to the 
bottom and the bottom to the top » doesn’t seem to understand what research on 
a virus is about.

In order to be innovative and creative, researchers working on a specific virus 
need of course access to all the existing literature on this virus but also to 
all the existing literature on all the other viruses as well as on the 
immunological mechanisms induced and on the molecular biology of the cells this 
virus infects. Serendipity is at that price.
Many other areas must also be widely open such as epidemiology, sociology, 
psychology, you name it.

In other words - and even if we restrict our thinking to COVID-19 - what 
humankind needs urgently NOW, is an open access to all the relevant research 
literature in a much wider domain than just that of this virus. 
Very simply, to all the scholarly literature. 

This is the strong message that the Open Access movement (Diamond, free to 
write, free to read) has been propagating for two decades (before being 
perverted by the publishers’ highjacking of the Gold OA principle). Now that 
tens of thousands of people are dying, this message is becoming dreadfully 
justified.

Bernard Rentier
Professor emeritus of Virology
University of Liège, Belgium

> Le 30 mars 2020 à 20:48, Éric Archambault 
>  a écrit :
> 
> 
> Peter,
>  
> Two months ago, that is, on January 27, we started work at Elsevier to make 
> available as much as possible of the scholarly literature on coronavirus 
> research easily discoverable and freely accessible.
>  
> At 1science, we created the Coronavirus Research Hub:
> 
> https://coronavirus.1science.com/search
>  
> This hub contains more than 36,000 bibliographic records from scholarly 
> journals on coronavirus research which we are harvesting from all around the 
> world. Like all papers in 1findr, they cover every fields of knowledge and 
> all language. We’re working continuously to expand the collection yet we are 
> concerned to keep it a tight collection to make the literature as relevant as 
> possible.
>  
> Of these, a full 20,000 articles are freely downloadable. Everyone concerned 
> at Elsevier from the top to the bottom, and the bottom to the top has work to 
> make all Elsevier coronavirus-related literature freely available. Elsevier 
> is not alone and many other publishers have unlocked their articles.
>  
> If we can help further, please let us know, we have been on it for two months 
> and we continue to evaluate options to help the research community.
>  
> Yours sincerely
>  
> Éric
>  
> Eric Archambault
> 
> Vice-Président | ELSEVIER | Vice-President
> Directeur général | 1science | General Manager
> 
> 3863 St-Laurent, suite 206  | Montréal, QC, Canada  | H2W 1Y1
> e.archamba...@elsevier.com
> +1.438.356.4619
> 
>  
> 
>  
> From: goal-boun...@eprints.org  On Behalf Of Peter 
> Murray-Rust
> Sent: March 30, 2020 12:45 PM
> To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) 
> Subject: [GOAL] COVID-19 and access to knowledge
>  
> We've launched a site https://github.com/petermr/openVirus to search the 
> whole open literature for content  which could help tackle the pandemic. 
> We're looking for volunteers (tech, biblio/library, documenters to help).
>  
> Background
> =
> It's now clear that knowledge is one of the key tools in tackling this 
> COVID-19 epidemic, and also that citizens across the world are desperate for 
> knowledge. To address this some organizations are releasing restrictions on 
> all IP as long as the epidemic lasts + 1 year.
> https://opencovidpledge.org/
> 
> Immediate action is required to halt the COVID-19 Pandemic and treat 
> those it has affected. It is a practical and moral imperative that every 
> tool we have at our disposal be applied to develop and deploy 
> technologies on a massive scale without impediment.
> We therefore pledge to make all intellectual property under our control 
> available to any group or individual for use in ending the COVID-19 pandemic 
> and minimizing the impact of the disease, free of charge and without 
> encumbrances.
> 
> We will implement this pledge expeditiously in accordance with the rules and 
> regulations under which we operate.
> 
>  
> 
> The COVID-19 outbreak has drawn a minimal response from Scholarly publishing, 
> both commercial and academic (e.g. repositories). One publisher, The Royal 
> Society, has made ALL its publications freely accessible without restriction. 
> This is the minimum that makes any difference.
> The only other response I know of is CORD-19 dataset 
> (https://cset.georgetown.edu/covid-19-open-research-dataset-cord-19/) 
> 
> 
> CORD-19 contains 29,000 full-text articles with a wealth of information about 
> the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), the associated illness COVID-19, and 
> related viruses. The collection will be updated as new research is published 
> in peer-reviewed publications and archival 

[GOAL] Re: ‘It is all a bit of a mess’ – observations from Researcher to Reader conference

[brentier]

Dear Dietrich,

In the nowadays full fledged Internet era, circulation is ensured by web search 
engines, particularly with the younger generation. 
Publisher-based circulation (of digital articles) is linked directly to 
branding.
As long as branding remains the criterium of choice for research assessment, 
this bias will survive.  All DORA signatories should keep this in mind and act 
accordingly...

Best regards,

Bernard Rentier
Rector Emeritus
University of Liège, Belgium 

> Le 18 févr. 2016 à 13:09, Dietrich Rordorf  a écrit :
> 
> Dear Danny,
> 
> Interesting points, which I mostly agree with. However, I can not agree with 
> "Dissemination is no longer the value added offered by publishers. Anyone can 
> have a blog. The value-add is branding". Sure, I can open blog, without any 
> technical skills, within 5 minutes on wordpress.com, but if now one finds and 
> reads my blog, it's worthless. Thus, the value add by publisher for authors 
> is not branding in the first place, but circulation (in its widest sense: 
> readership / outreach). I would agree, though, that branding and circulation 
> are somehow related.
> 
> Best regards,
> Dietrich
> 
> 
> --
> 
> Dietrich Rordorf
> Hellring 9
> CH-4125 Riehen
> Switzerland
> 
> E-mail: drord...@gmail.com
> Tel. +41 61 601 91 87
> Tel. +41 76 561 41 83
> 
> 2016-02-18 10:16 GMT+01:00 Danny Kingsley :
>> 
>> 
>> Dear all
>> 
>> My observations from this week’s Researcher to Reader conference are now 
>> available as a blog https://unlockingresearch.blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=539 A 
>> taster:
>> 
>> “It is all a bit of a mess. It used to be simple. Now it is complicated.” 
>> This was the conclusion of Mark Carden, the coordinator of the Researcher to 
>> Reader conference after two days of discussion, debate and workshops about 
>> scholarly publication. The conference bills itself as: ‘The premier forum 
>> for discussion of the international scholarly content supply chain – 
>> bringing knowledge from the Researcher to the Reader.’  <…>
>> 
>> Suggestions, ideas and salient points that came up
>> 
>> Journals are dead – the publishing future is the platform
>> Journals are not dead – but we don’t need issues any more as they are 
>> entirely redundant in an online environment
>> Publishing in a journal benefits the author not the reader
>> Dissemination is no longer the value added offered by publishers. Anyone can 
>> have a blog. The value-add is branding
>> All research is generated from what was published the year before – and we 
>> can prove it
>> Why don’t we disaggregate the APC model and charge for sections of the 
>> service separately?
>> You need to provide good service to the free users if you want to build a 
>> premium product
>> The most valuable commodity as an editor is your reviewer time
>> Peer review is inconsistent and systematically biased. 
>> The greater the novelty of the work the greater likelihood it is to have a 
>> negative review
>> Poor academic writing is rewarded
>> Enjoy!
>> 
>> Danny
>> 
>> Dr Danny Kingsley
>> Head of Scholarly Communications
>> Cambridge University Library
>> West Road, Cambridge CB39DR
>> P: +44 (0) 1223 747 437
>> M: +44 (0) 7711 500 564
>> E: da...@cam.ac.uk
>> T: @dannykay68
>> ORCID iD: -0002-3636-5939
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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[GOAL] Re: The open access movement slips into closed mode

[brentier]

I am sure Elsevier, Wiley, Springer and the like are having great fun seeing 
membres of the Open Access community rip each other apart: 
1) those who have always tried to promote a healthy and moral alternative to 
what has become of the scholarly publication process in the 4 or 5 last decades;
2) those who are suspecting group (1) of trying to operate strange and secret 
maneuvers in ordre to take who-knows-which powers and to rule the world of 
research communication... 
Not just funny. Sad. 

As a member of group (1), I must admit that I don't see what kind of personal 
benefit I, or any of us could seek by defending the cause of OA. To me, there 
is  on l'y one giant potentially collective benefit : a more efficient, more 
fluid transmission of knowledge, free of charge and accessible for all and 
everywhere on the planet. 

Jumping at each others' throats is taking both our attention and energy away 
from the real combat, which must be focused on the mechanisms installed [indeed 
- with the agreement of many of our colleagues (I wouldn't say complicity, it 
is a false interpretation)] and organised in such a way that they generate 
enormous and nowadays disproportionate amounts of money at the expense of 
research funds.

Please, let's come back to our senses and let's unite. 

If we want to convince researchers, reviewers, finders, academic leaders and 
staff, etc. to develop new paradigms of knowledge transmission, sharing and 
interaction, let's work at it !

And please, let's gather and make public as many facts as possible.  A an 
example, see data and graph on my blog :
https://bernardrentier.wordpress.com/2015/12/31/denouncing-the-imposter-factor/
Data like these are needed to give corpus to our arguments.

On this, I wish you all an excellent 2016, which can only be better than 2015...
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[GOAL] Re: Inside Higher Ed: All six editors and all 31 editorial board members of Lingua resign over Elsevier

[brentier]

Éric,
Perfect response. I couldn't agree more.
In addition, there is a difference between Jeffrey's and Jean-Claude's 
exhortations: one proposes to ban journals (hence articles) on the basis of a 
risk of poor quality and the other suggests to ban journals (hence articles) on 
the basis of access barriers (in time and money) and unfair commercial 
practices.
Both attitudes have solid moral grounds and should be supported, as long as the 
selection is fair and rests on unbiased judgement.
Have a good day !
Bernard 

__
Prof. Dr. Bernard Rentier
Rector Emeritus
Université de Liège, Belgium

> Le 13 nov. 2015 à 14:54, Éric Archambault 
>  a écrit :
> 
> Jeffrey
>  
> Your black list is the largest journal banner in the world. Where do you take 
> the moral authority to give lessons to others who want to do the same thing 
> on a much smaller scale?
>  
> Éric
>  
> From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of 
> Beall, Jeffrey
> Sent: November-13-15 6:55 AM
> To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
> Subject: [GOAL] Re: Inside Higher Ed: All six editors and all 31 editorial 
> board members of Lingua resign over Elsevier
>  
> I think that Guedon's advice to "Remove access to Lingua going forward" is 
> the moral equivalent of a book banning.
>  
> There's no moral difference between saying "Remove access to Lingua" and 
> saying "Remove the book Heather Has Two Mommies."
>  
> I understand that all book banners (and journal banners) think they are doing 
> the right thing and helping society.
>  
> I think it is shameful for anyone, especially a librarian, to call for the 
> removal of content from a library.
>  
> Guedon is the modern-day equivalent of a book banner. He is pressuring 
> libraries to ban serials, the same, morally, as banning books.
>  
> Jeffrey Beall
> University of Colorado Denver
>  
> From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of 
> Richard Poynder
> Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2015 11:59 PM
> To: 'Global Open Access List' 
> Subject: [GOAL] Inside Higher Ed: All six editors and all 31 editorial board 
> members of Lingua resign over Elsevier
>  
> I am posting this message on behalf of Jean-Claude Guédon:
>  
>  
> The article below (thanks to Colin Steele) is an example of a courageous move 
> that must be supported by the libraries.
> 
> With regard to the Lingua (now Glossa) editorial board, libraries could, for 
> example,
> 
> 1. Remove access to Lingua going forward (keep access to archive up to 
> December 31st, 2015) if caught in a Big Deal; remove Lingua from 
> subscriptions, starting in 2016, if not in a Big Deal
> 
> 2. Support Glossa (the new journal) financially,
> 
> 3. Promote Glossa widely. ERIH is already classifying the new journal at the 
> level of its current status by arguing that the quality of a journal is 
> linked to the editors and editorial board, and not to the publisher.
> 
> Researchers in linguistics, of course, should boycott Elsevier's Lingua from 
> now on.
> 
> This event also demonstrates the importance for Learned and scientific 
> societies not to sell the title of their journals to publishers. So long as 
> we foolishly evaluate research according to the place where it is published 
> (i.e. a journal title), publishers will hold a strong trump card.
> 
> Finally, this event displays the incredible behaviour of the multinational, 
> commercial, publishers with particular clarity. These are not the friends of 
> the scientific communication system we need.
>  
> >> 
>  
> Extract from Inside Higher Ed article:
>  
> “All six editors and all 31 editorial board members of Lingua, one of the top 
> journals in linguistics, last week resigned to protest Elsevier's policies on 
> pricing and its refusal to convert the journal to an open-access publication 
> that would be free online. As soon as January, when the departing editors' 
> noncompete contracts expire, they plan to start a new open-access journal to 
> be called Glossa.”
>  
> The article can be read in full here:
>  
> https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/11/02/editors-and-editorial-board-quit-top-linguistics-journal-protest-subscription-fees
>  
> For a list of some of the other coverage of this issue see here: 
> http://kaivonfintel.org/2015/11/05/lingua-roundup/
>  
> No virus found in this message.
> Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
> Version: 2015.0.6173 / Virus Database: 4457/10972 - Release Date: 11/09/15
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[GOAL] Re: One way to expand the OA movement: be more inclusive

[brentier]

When I want to drive on a public road, whether it is closed or temporarily 
closed makes no difference to me. It is not open. I can't use it.
Embargo is antinomic to open.

Bernard Rentier

 Le 1 juin 2015 à 18:26, Stevan Harnad amscifo...@gmail.com a écrit :
 
 On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 10:16 AM, Michael Eisen mbei...@gmail.com wrote:
 There's a difference between trying to be inclusive, and redefining goals 
 and definitions to the point of being meaningless. I can not tell you how 
 many times I hear that the NIH provides open access because they make 
 articles freely available after a year. This is not just semantics. The 
 belief that the NIH provides open access with its public access policy 
 provides real drag on the quest to provide actual open access. You can argue 
 about whether or not the policy is a good thing because it's a step in the 
 right direction, or a bad thing because it reifies delayed access. But 
 calling what the provide open access serves only to confuse people, to 
 weaken our objectives and give the still far more powerful forces who do not 
 want open access a way to resist pressure for it. 
 
 It's nice to be able to agree with Mike Eisen.
 
 Open Access (OA) comes in two degrees: Gratis OA is immediate, permanent free 
 online access and Libre OA is Gratis OA plus various re-use rights (up to 
 CC-BY or even public domain).
 
 What both degrees of OA share is that they are both immediate (and permanent).
 
 Otherwise, there's just Delayed (Embargoed) Access, which is no more Open 
 Access than Toll Access is.
 
 To treat Delayed Access as if it were a form of Open Access would be to 
 reduce OA to meaninglessness (and would play into the hands of publishers who 
 would like to see precisely that happen).
 
 Stevan Harnad 
 
 On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 5:00 AM, Heather Morrison 
 heather.morri...@uottawa.ca wrote:
 hi David,
 
 Redefining open access and understanding that a great many people are 
 moving towards open access in slightly different ways are two different 
 things. My post will focus on the benefits of a more inclusive and 
 welcoming approach to open access.
 
 For example, I have been conducting interviews and focus groups with 
 editors of small journals that either are, or would like to be, open 
 access. Behind the more than 10 thousand journals listed in DOAJ are 
 probably much more than 10 thousand such editors, working hard to convince 
 colleagues to move to open access, struggling to figure out how to do this 
 in order to make ends meet. While some of us have been active and vocal in 
 OA discussions and policy formulation, others have been quietly doing this 
 work, often contributing a great deal of volunteer effort, over the years. 
 We rarely hear from these people, but actively listening and figuring out 
 how to provide the support needed for the journals to thrive in an OA 
 environment is in the best interests of continuing towards a fully open 
 access and sustainable system. These people are OA heroes from my 
 perspective, whether their journal is currently OA or not. In my 
 experience, when someone says their journal is free online after a year and 
 they would like to move to OA, asking about the barriers and what is needed 
 to move to OA results in productive discussions.
 
 OpenDOAR maintains a list of over 2,600 vetted open access archives:
 http://opendoar.org/
 
 OA archives have made a very great deal of work open access - so much so 
 that counting it all is very hard! The thesis, for example, was until 
 recently available in perhaps 1 or 2 print copies (that libraries were 
 reluctant to lend as they were not replaceable) and microfilm. Today we are 
 well on our way to open and online by default for the thesis. arXiv in 
 effect flipped high energy physics to full preprint OA close to two decades 
 ago. PubMed was an early OA success story making the Medline index 
 available for free. In the 1990's I remember how big a deal it was for a 
 small Canadian university college to buy access to Medline, and even then 
 having access restricted to senior students in biology. Today it's free for 
 everyone with internet access. So is Medline Plus, which provides high 
 quality free consumer health information. PubMedCentral both makes the 
 medical literature available and ensures that it is preserved, working with 
 both authors and journals to make this happen. By my calculations, 30% of 
 the literature indexed in PubMed is freely available through PubMed 2 years 
 after publication (all literature, no restrictions based on funder policy); 
 32% after 3 years. For the data, see the Dramatic Growth of Open Dataverse 
 http://dataverse.scholarsportal.info/dvn/dv/dgoa download the latest 
 spreadsheet and go to the PMC Free tab.
 
 These archives have happened because librarians and others have fought for 
 the resources to develop the archives, often the policies (there are a 
 great many more thesis deposit policies than are listed 

[GOAL] Re: Positive example: Springer

[brentier]

Eric,

What is the significance of 0.8% (83/10,429) ?
What useful metrics can you draw from that ?
Why would Springer deserve a kudo ? Just for transparency?
What's new if it becomes clear that double-dipping means taking underfunded 
academic institutions for a ride ?

Greetings,

Bernard 
_
BernardRentier
Hon. Rector, Université de Liège, Belgium

 Le 27 mai 2015 à 00:53, Éric Archambault 
 eric.archamba...@science-metrix.com a écrit :
 
 Dear all
 Yesterday I was complaining about the fact that journals were not transparent 
 about their gold à la pièce.
 Here is an example of a positive step in the right direction:
 http://link.springer.com/journal/10645
 Here, one can see clearly what the OA papers are, and one can calculate the 
 proportion of Gold to locked papers.
 The stats for this journal reveals that 83/10,429 papers are gold à la pièce 
 (aka hybrid).
 This helps library determine if they are taken for a ride (i.e. with double 
 dipping).
 I’ll see whether and how Science-Metrix could start monitoring these journals 
 to see how much more they get cited (or less, as this is a hypothesis!) – 
 this would show the golden benefits to scientific publishers.
 Well, Kudo to Springer! The company should definitely be congratulated for 
 leading the way among the big three, it is the least afraid of embracing OA, 
 the most transparent, and likely to be coming out on top following the 
 transition to OA (which certainly won’t be a simple flip, as Stevan said, 
 rather a Escher impossible-figure, an evolutionarily unstable strategy. As 
 Schumpeter said, these are certainly gales of creative destruction, and let’s 
 hope that more progressive publishers such as Springer destroy the market 
 share of dinosaurs!).
 Éric Archambault
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[GOAL] Re: The Open Access Interviews: Dagmara Weckowska, lecturer in Business and Innovation at the University of Sussex

[brentier]

I do not believe they are asking for anything contradictory. 
We all agree on (1), but when (2) is asking (some) librarians to get out of the 
way, it means just that they should not interfere with the process of self 
archiving on the basis of such considerations as scientific quality or any kind 
of personal judgement. They are welcome to help making the deposit which should 
be done as fast as possible, in restricted access if required. 


 Le 23 sept. 2014 à 16:27, Richard Poynder ri...@richardpoynder.co.uk a 
 écrit :
 
 I suspect that Andrew Adams and Stevan Harnad may be asking for two 
 contradictory things here. If I understand correctly, they want 1) as near 
 100% OA as soon as possible and 2) for librarians to get out of the way so 
 that researchers can get on and self-archive. Given that many researchers 
 have shown themselves to be generally uninterested in open access and, in 
 some cases, directly antagonistic towards it, and given that over half of UK 
 researchers appear to be unware of whether or not their future articles will 
 need to be published in accordance with the RCUK policy or not 
 (http://goo.gl/Y3Lyua) I cannot see how keeping librarians (who have done so 
 much to fill repositories and to educate researchers about OA) out of the way 
 (wish 2) is going to help achieve wish 1.
  
  
 From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of 
 Stevan Harnad
 Sent: 23 September 2014 14:33
 To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
 Subject: [GOAL] Re: The Open Access Interviews: Dagmara Weckowska, lecturer 
 in Business and Innovation at the University of Sussex
  
 Andrew is so right. 
  
 We did the rounds of this at Southampton, where the library (for obscure 
 reasons of its own) wanted to do time-consuming and frustrating (for the 
 author) checks on the deposit (is it suitable? is it legal? are the 
 metadata in order?). In ECS we bagged that right away. And now ECS has fast 
 lane exception in the university repository (but alas other departments do 
 not). Similar needless roadblocks (unresolved) at UQAM.
  
 Librarians: I know your hearts are in the right place. But please, please 
 trust those who understand OA far, far better than you do, that this library 
 vetting -- if it needs to be done at all -- should be done after the deposit 
 has already been made (by the author) and has already been made immediately 
 OA (by the software). Please don't add to publishers' embargoes and other 
 roadblocks to OA by adding gratuitous ones of your own.
  
 Let institutional authors deposit and make their deposits OA directly, 
 without intervention, mediation or interference. Then if you want to vet 
 their deposits, do so and communicate with them directly afterward.
  
 P.S. This is all old. We've been through this countless times before.
  
 Dixit
  
 Weary Archivangelist, still fighting the same needless, age-old battles, on 
 all sides...
  
 On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 7:35 PM, Andrew A. Adams a...@meiji.ac.jp wrote:
 
 The challenge now for UK Universities will be to keep librarians out of the
 way of reserachers, or their assistants, depositing the basic meta-data and
 full text in the repository. At the University of Reading, where I was
 involved in early developments around the IR but left the University before
 the final deposit mandate (*) was adopted and the process decided on, they
 have librarians acting as a roadblock in getting material
 uploaded.Thisistotheextentthat a paper published in an electronic proceedings
 at a conference was refused permission to be placed in the repository, for
 example, while there is a significant delay in deposited materials becoming
 visible, while librarians do a host of (mostly useful but just added value
 and not necessary) checking. Sigh, empire building and other bureaucratic
 nonsense getting in the way of the primary mission - scholarly communications.
 
 (*) They have a deposit mandate but refuse to call it that. I'm not sure why,
 butthey insist on calling it a policy. If one reads this policy, it's a
 mandate (albeit not an ideal one). For a University with an overly strong
 management team and a mangerialist approach, this unwillingness to call a
 spade a spade and a mandate a mandate, seems odd. Perhaps it's that this
 policy came from a bottom up development and not a senior management idea so
 they're unwilling to give it a strong name.
 
 --
 Professor Andrew A Adams  a...@meiji.ac.jp
 Professor at Graduate School of Business Administration,  and
 Deputy Director of the Centre for Business Information Ethics
 Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan   http://www.a-cubed.info/
 
 
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[GOAL] Re: Fwd: The Open Access Interviews: Paul Royster

[brentier]

 Le 21 sept. 2014 à 07:51, Jean-Claude Guédon 
 jean.claude.gue...@umontreal.ca a écrit :
 
 Finally, given that all universities require, an annual assessment of 
 performance, including a bibliography of publications in the completed year, 
 would it be difficult to compare the repository's holding against the 
 publications of the researchers as declared by them? Knowing researchers, 
 every last little scrap of paper will be minutely listed in the yearly 
 assessment forms...  

This should be very easy in Liège, considering that ORBi being the only 
resource for official assessment, everything the author considers worth 
mentioning in his/her own production is in there, of course.
So, your suggestion to evaluate how many items are in ORBi and are not in 
WoS/Scopus is a good advice.




 Le 21 sept. 2014 à 07:51, Jean-Claude Guédon 
 jean.claude.gue...@umontreal.ca a écrit :
 
 Extremely good answer, Bernard!
 
 It is also very good to clarify the fact that the 90% figure is calculated 
 against the baseline of a combined WoS_Scopus search. However, and this was 
 part of my difficulties with Stevan's argument, I suspect that in SSH, in a 
 French-speaking university, many publish in French-language journals that do 
 not appear in either list. This means that, for Liège, the baseline works 
 from one year to the next, but if you want to compare Liège's mandate and its 
 effectiveness (which, once again, I agree, is - from common sense - the best) 
 with another kind of mandate in an English-speaking university, the baselines 
 will not be comparable.
 
 If, furthermore, you imagine two universities that not only differ 
 linguistically, but also differ in the relative weight of disciplines in 
 research output - say one heavily slanted STM and the other heavily slanted 
 SSH, this too will affect the baseline simply by virtue of the fact that SSH 
 publications are not as well covered by WoS and Scopus as are STM 
 publications.
 
 In conclusion, the baseline is OK for comparisons of a mandate's 
 effectiveness longitudinally, of for comparison purposes of two successive, 
 but different, mandates, assuming the institution remains pretty much the 
 same over time in terms of mix of research emphases; it is far more 
 questionable across institutions, especially when different languages are 
 involved (but not only).
 
 Incidentally, what proportion of papers deposited in ORBI do not appear in 
 either WoS or Scopus? That too would be interesting to know as it might help 
 Stevan refine his baseline and thus make it more convincing.
 
 Finally, given that all universities require, an annual assessment of 
 performance, including a bibliography of publications in the completed year, 
 would it be difficult to compare the repository's holding against the 
 publications of the researchers as declared by them? Knowing researchers, 
 every last little scrap of paper will be minutely listed in the yearly 
 assessment forms... face-smile.png 
 
 --
 Jean-Claude Guédon
 Professeur titulaire
 Littérature comparée
 Université de Montréal
 
 
 Le samedi 20 septembre 2014 à 19:10 +0200, Bernard Rentier - IMAP a écrit :
 Dear Richard,
 Here are the answers:
 1. ORBi, the Liège University Repository, will soon (I believe) reach 90% 
 compliance. It is our target for 2014 and I hope we make it.
 This figure comes from the calculation of the percentage of ULg papers that 
 can be found in Web of Science and/or in Scopus that are deposited in ORBi 
 as well (see method in  http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/340294/)
 It concerns one year at a time and it is not cumulative. Last May, the 
 compliance level for the publications of 2013 was already 73% and our figure 
 for 2012 is in the 80% range.
 2. Only a small proportion of ULg papers are in CC-BY.
 This is simply because, in order to publish in the journal of their choice 
 (I haven’t tried to do anything against that!), our authors, in the great 
 centuries-old tradition, give away their rights to the publisher. We have no 
 control on that.
 Later on, there is no way for them to CC-BY the same text (in fact, we are 
 preparing ORBi 2.0, that will offer a CC-BY choice).
 For now, we are aiming at free access and we are not yet fighting hard for 
 re-use rights. We shall move progressively in this direction of course, 
 while the publishing mores evolve…
 In other words, I agree that we have free access, not a full fledge open 
 access yet. It is not a failure, it is our objective to gain confidence 
 first.
 Unfortunately, even if we have established in-house rules for evaluation, 
 external evaluations are still based on traditional indicators such as the 
 highly and rightfully criticized but widely used Impact Factor and the like. 
 In these conditions, today we cannot sacrifice our researchers — singularly 
 the young ones — in the overall competition for jobs and funds, on the altar 
 of « pure » Open Access.
 Best wishes
 Bernard Rentier
 Rector, University of 

[GOAL] Re: Fwd: The Open Access Interviews: Paul Royster

[brentier]

Il agree, Richard, but we are not really looking for accuracy here, we are 
looking for a general trend. The method is approximative and, as Jean-Claude 
mentions rightfully, it suffers a terrible language and domain bias. In other 
words, it is plagued by a strong underestimation.
Whether ORBi's compliance level is 70, 80 or 90% is not a major concern to me 
(even though I would love it to reach 100%!), I must admit. I am satisfied to 
observe that it is very high and not in the 15-30% range which is what happens 
when a mandate is not being enforced by a link to assessment procedures.

Bernard


 Le 21 sept. 2014 à 10:51, Richard Poynder ri...@richardpoynder.co.uk a 
 écrit :
 
 As a layperson I would certainly be interested to know what margin of error 
 levels we can assume the “Web of Science and/or in Scopus” approach has. I am 
 conscious, for instance, that some of the reports by UK universities into 
 RCUK compliance mention using Web of Science, but they all appear keen to 
 stress that they have serious concerns about data accuracy.
  
 A list of RCUK compliance reports, by the way, can be found here: 
 http://goo.gl/Yi3twT
  
 There is also a very informative blog post on the topic of monitoring open 
 access mandates/policies by Cameron Neylon here: http://goo.gl/Y02S87
  
 Richard Poynder
  
  
  
  
 From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of 
 Jean-Claude Guédon
 Sent: 20 September 2014 23:27
 To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
 Subject: [GOAL] Re: Fwd: The Open Access Interviews: Paul Royster
  
 Extremely good answer, Bernard!
 
 It is also very good to clarify the fact that the 90% figure is calculated 
 against the baseline of a combined WoS_Scopus search. However, and this was 
 part of my difficulties with Stevan's argument, I suspect that in SSH, in a 
 French-speaking university, many publish in French-language journals that do 
 not appear in either list. This means that, for Liège, the baseline works 
 from one year to the next, but if you want to compare Liège's mandate and its 
 effectiveness (which, once again, I agree, is - from common sense - the best) 
 with another kind of mandate in an English-speaking university, the baselines 
 will not be comparable.
 
 If, furthermore, you imagine two universities that not only differ 
 linguistically, but also differ in the relative weight of disciplines in 
 research output - say one heavily slanted STM and the other heavily slanted 
 SSH, this too will affect the baseline simply by virtue of the fact that SSH 
 publications are not as well covered by WoS and Scopus as are STM 
 publications.
 
 In conclusion, the baseline is OK for comparisons of a mandate's 
 effectiveness longitudinally, of for comparison purposes of two successive, 
 but different, mandates, assuming the institution remains pretty much the 
 same over time in terms of mix of research emphases; it is far more 
 questionable across institutions, especially when different languages are 
 involved (but not only).
 
 Incidentally, what proportion of papers deposited in ORBI do not appear in 
 either WoS or Scopus? That too would be interesting to know as it might help 
 Stevan refine his baseline and thus make it more convincing.
 
 Finally, given that all universities require, an annual assessment of 
 performance, including a bibliography of publications in the completed year, 
 would it be difficult to compare the repository's holding against the 
 publications of the researchers as declared by them? Knowing researchers, 
 every last little scrap of paper will be minutely listed in the yearly 
 assessment forms... image001.png
 
 --
  
 Jean-Claude Guédon
 Professeur titulaire
 Littérature comparée
 Université de Montréal
 Le samedi 20 septembre 2014 à 19:10 +0200, Bernard Rentier - IMAP a écrit :
 
 Dear Richard,
  
 
 Here are the answers:
  
 
 1. ORBi, the Liège University Repository, will soon (I believe) reach 90% 
 compliance. It is our target for 2014 and I hope we make it.
 This figure comes from the calculation of the percentage of ULg papers that 
 can be found in Web of Science and/or in Scopus that are deposited in ORBi as 
 well (see method in  http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/340294/)
 It concerns one year at a time and it is not cumulative. Last May, the 
 compliance level for the publications of 2013 was already 73% and our figure 
 for 2012 is in the 80% range.
  
 
 2. Only a small proportion of ULg papers are in CC-BY.
 This is simply because, in order to publish in the journal of their choice (I 
 haven’t tried to do anything against that!), our authors, in the great 
 centuries-old tradition, give away their rights to the publisher. We have no 
 control on that.
 Later on, there is no way for them to CC-BY the same text (in fact, we are 
 preparing ORBi 2.0, that will offer a CC-BY choice).
 For now, we are aiming at free access and we are not yet fighting hard for 
 re-use rights. We shall move 

[GOAL] Re: Fwd: The Open Access Interviews: Paul Royster

[brentier]

Liège does not mandate anything, so far as I know; it only looks into the 
local repository (Orbi) to see what is in it, and it does so to assess 
performance or respond to requests for promotions or grant submissions. (JC. 
Guédon)

Oh no, Jean-Claude, Liège mandates everything.
It is a real mandate and it took me a while to get almost every ULg researcher 
to realise that it is to his/her benefit. 
Linking the deposits to personal in-house assessment was the trick to get the 
mandate enforced in the first place. As well as a few positive incentives and a 
lot of time consuming persuasion (but it was well worth it).
Last Wednesday, the Liège University Board has put an ultimate touch of wisdom 
on its mandate by adding immediately upon acceptance, even in restricted 
access in the official procedure. Actually, a nice but to some extent useless 
addition because, with time (the mandate was imposed in 2007), ULg authors have 
become so convinced of the increase in readership and citations that two thirds 
of them make their deposits between the date of acceptance and the date of 
publication. 
All this explains why we are getting close to 90% compliance, an outstanding 
result, I believe. 



 Le 18 sept. 2014 à 23:40, Jean-Claude Guédon 
 jean.claude.gue...@umontreal.ca a écrit :
 
 A reasonably quick response as I do not want to go into discursive tsunami 
 mode...
 
 1. Stevan admits that his evaluation of compliance is an approximation, easy 
 to get, but not easy to correct. This approximation varies greatly from one 
 institution to another, one circumstance to another. For example, he admits 
 that language plays a role; he should further admit that the greater or 
 smaller proportion of SSH researchers in the research communities of various 
 institutions will also play a role. in short, comparing two institutions by 
 simply using WoS approximations appears rash and unacceptable to me, rather 
 than simply quick and dirty (which I would accept as a first approximation).
 
 The impact factor folly was mentioned because, by basing his approximation on 
 the WoS, Stevan reinforces the centrality of a partial and questionable tool 
 that is, at best, a research tool, not a management tool, and which stands 
 behind all the research assessment procedures presently used in universities, 
 laboratories, etc.
 
 2. Stevan and I have long differed about OA's central target. He limits 
 himself to journal articles, as a first step; I do not. I do not because, in 
 the humanities and social sciences, limiting oneself to journal articles 
 would be limiting oneself to the less essential part of the archive we work 
 with, unlike natural scientists. 
 
 Imagine a universe where a research metric would have been initially designed 
 around SSH disciplines and then extended as is to STM. In such a parallel 
 universe, books would be the currency of choice, and articles would look like 
 secondary, minor, productions, best left for later assessments. Then, one 
 prominent OA advocate named Stenan Harvard might argue that the only way to 
 proceed forward is to focus only on books, that this is OA's sole objective, 
 and that articles and the rest will be treated later... Imagine the reaction 
 of science researchers... 
 
 3. Liège does not mandate anything, so far as I know; it only looks into the 
 local repository (Orbi) to see what is in it, and it does so to assess 
 performance or respond to requests for promotions or grant submissions. If 
 books and book chapters are more difficult to treat than articles, then place 
 them in a dark archive with a button. This was the clever solution invented 
 by Stevan and I agree with it.
 
 4. To obtain mandates, you need either faculty to vote a mandate on itself 
 (but few universities have done so), or you need administrators to impose a 
 mandate, but that is often viewed negatively by many of our colleagues. 
 Meanwhile, they are strongly incited to publish in prestigious journals 
 where prestige is measured by impact factors. From an average researcher's 
 perspective, one article in Nature, fully locked behind pay-walls, is what is 
 really valuable. Adding open access may be the cherry on the sundae, but it 
 is not the sundae. The result? OA, as of now, is not perceived to be directly 
 significant for successfully managing a career. 
 
 On the other hand, the OA citation advantage has been fully recognized and 
 accepted by publishers. That is in part why they are finally embracing OA: 
 with high processing charges and the increased citation potential of OA, they 
 can increase revenues even more and satisfy their stakeholders. This is 
 especially true if funders, universities, libraries, etc., are willing to pay 
 for the APC's. This is the trap the UK fell into.
 
 5. SSH authors are less interested in depositing articles than STM 
 researchers because, for SSH researchers, articles have far less importance 
 than books (see above), and, arguably, book 

[GOAL] Re: Jeffrey Beall Needlessly Compromises Credibility of Beall's List

[brentier]

WOW !
And we did praise that man...!
Terrible...

 Le 9 déc. 2013 à 16:12, Stevan Harnad amscifo...@gmail.com a écrit :
 
 Beall, Jeffrey (2013) The Open-Access Movement is Not Really about Open 
 Access. TripleC Communication, Capitalism  Critique Journal. 11(2): 589-597 
 http://triplec.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/525/514
 
 This wacky article is going to be fun to review. I still think Jeff Beall is 
 doing something useful with his naming and shaming of junk OA journals, but I 
 now realize that he is driven by some sort of fanciful conspiracy theory! OA 
 is all an anti-capitlist plot. (Even on a quick skim it is evident that 
 Jeff's article is rife with half-truths, errors and downright nonsense. Pity. 
 It will diminish the credibility of his valid exposés, but maybe this is a 
 good thing, if the judgment and motivation behind Beall's list is as kooky as 
 this article! But alas it will now also give the genuine predatory 
 junk-journals some specious arguments for discrediting Jeff's work 
 altogether. Of course it will also give the publishing lobby some good 
 sound-bites, but they use them at their peril, because of all the other 
 nonsense in which they are nested!) 
 
 Before I do a critique later today), I want to post some tidbits to set the 
 stage:
 
 JB: ABSTRACT: While the open-access (OA) movement purports to be about 
 making scholarly content open-access, its true motives are much different. 
 The OA movement is an anti-corporatist movement that wants to deny the 
 freedom of the press to companies it disagrees with. The movement is also 
 actively imposing onerous mandates on researchers, mandates that restrict 
 individual freedom. To boost the open-access movement, its leaders sacrifice 
 the academic futures of young scholars and those from developing countries, 
 pressuring them to publish in lower-quality open-access journals.  The 
 open-access movement has fostered the creation of numerous predatory 
 publishers and standalone journals, increasing the amount of research 
 misconduct in scholarly publications and the amount of pseudo-science that is 
 published as if it were authentic science.
 
 JB: [F]rom their high-salaried comfortable positions…OA advocates... demand 
 that for-profit, scholarly journal publishers not be involved in scholarly 
 publishing and devise ways (such as green open-access) to defeat and 
 eliminate them...
 
 JB: OA advocates use specious arguments to lobby for mandates, focusing only 
 on the supposed economic benefits of open access and ignoring the value 
 additions provided by professional publishers. The arguments imply that 
 publishers are not really needed; all researchers need to do is upload their 
 work, an action that constitutes publishing, and that this act results in a 
 product that is somehow similar to the products that professional publishers 
 produce….  
 
 JB:  The open-access movement isn't really about open access. Instead, it is 
 about collectivizing production and denying the freedom of the press from 
 those who prefer the subscription model of scholarly publishing. It is an 
 anti-corporatist, oppressive and negative movement, one that uses young 
 researchers and researchers from developing countries as pawns to 
 artificially force the make-believe gold and green open-access models to 
 work. The movement relies on unnatural mandates that take free choice away 
 from individual researchers, mandates set and enforced by an onerous cadre of 
 Soros-funded European autocrats...
 
 JB: The open-access movement is a failed social movement and a false 
 messiah, but its promoters refuse to admit this. The emergence of numerous 
 predatory publishers – a product of the open-access movement – has poisoned 
 scholarly communication, fostering research misconduct and the publishing of 
 pseudo-science, but OA advocates refuse to recognize the growing problem. By 
 instituting a policy of exchanging funds between researchers and publishers, 
 the movement has fostered corruption on a grand scale. Instead of arguing for 
 openaccess, we must determine and settle on the best model for the 
 distribution of scholarly research, and it's clear that neither green nor 
 gold open-access is that model...
 
 And then, my own personal favourites:
 
 JB: Open access advocates think they know better than everyone else and want 
 to impose their policies on others. Thus, the open access movement has the 
 serious side-effect of taking away other's freedom from them. We observe this 
 tendency in institutional mandates.  Harnad (2013) goes so far as to propose 
 [an]…Orwellian system of mandates… documented [in a] table of mandate 
 strength, with the most restrictive pegged at level 12, with the designation 
 immediate deposit + performance evaluation (no waiver option). This 
 Orwellian system of mandates is documented in Table 1...  
 
 JB: A social movement that needs mandates to work is doomed to fail. A 
 social movement that 

[GOAL] Re: [Open-access] Re: Fight Publishing Lobby's Latest FIRST Act to Delay OA - Nth Successor to PRISM, RWA etc.

[brentier]

Dear Bjoern, Eric and Heather,

I fully agree that it is good practice to duplicate deposits. Actually, there 
is nothing wrong with that.
And on these lines, I would recommend public repositories. I feel much less at 
ease with private ones.
We have had terrible experiences with commercial publishers who cut us from 
accessing contents we had already paid for. That really sobers you up when it 
happens and it cures you definitively from attempting to trust any private 
repository of any kind.

Duplication is OK. It increases your chances of being read (which, after all, 
is the only point here). The thing is that you must make sure that all your 
Institution's production is complete somewhere, so the best possible place is 
in your Institutional Repository.

Mandates are very useful to fill up IRs but it takes firm control at the start. 
After some time, the urge to store their production there is a good incentive 
enough for researchers and it tends to become a habit (I am am talking here 
about a mere 5-year experience!).

IRs are much less exposed to politics than Government-run ones. Of course, I 
live in a country where Government is not excessively intrusive in University 
policies. However, I agree that one should not rest on a single storage silo.


 Le 18 nov. 2013 à 17:30, Bjoern Brembs b.bre...@gmail.com a écrit :
 
 Dear Eric,
 
 I am so completely and utterly on your page. This is precisely the way we 
 need to go and every library meeting I speak at confirms this view: everyone 
 I meet there gives me the feedback that they're ready to go for it.
 
 Thanks for making this important point!
 
 Bjoern
 
 
 
 On Monday, November 18, 2013, 5:17:37 PM, you wrote:
 
 Stevan, Bernard:
 My main concern is not with mandates, but with the
 repositories themselves. If memory serves me right, there
 was at least one unsuccessful attempt to defund the
 NIH-run Pubmed repository. ArXiv also had an existential
 crisis when run from a government lab.
 
 
 The weakness of government-run repositories is that those
 who want to undermine these repositories have to be
 successful only once. Those who support these OA
 repositories must fend off every attack.
 
 
 To immunize against this, we need a distributed approach
 with sufficient duplication to form an archive that is
 immune from any one particular weakness. This is what
 libraries have always done, and should continue to do.
 
 
 Libraries have no role (except as advocates) in enacting
 and enforcing mandates, but they can be useful in
 implementing the mandates effectively by managing the distributed archive.
 
 
 In fact, Stevan has made the same arguments against
 central repositories in the past. So, I think we are all
 on the same wave length here up to this point.
 
 
 Where I go one step further, is in making the argument
 that libraries need to get out of the digital-lending
 business altogether and dedicate their efforts to the
 maintenance and development of the archive. See: 
 Where the Puck won't be
 http://scitechsociety.blogspot.com/2013/10/where-puck-wont-be.html
 and
 Annealing the Library
 http://scitechsociety.blogspot.com/2012/04/annealing-library.html
 
 
 --Eric.
 
 
 http://scitechsociety.blogspot.com
 
 Twitter: @evdvelde 
 E-mail: eric.f.vandeve...@gmail.com
 
 
 On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 9:52 PM, brent...@ulg.ac.be wrote:
 
 Libraries are definitely places where awareness occurs.
 They are the sentinels. However, they don't have enough
 power (generally) to impose Open Access as a permanent reflex with 
 researchers.
 The only way researchers can be convinced is through
 mandatory pressure from the funders and/or the Academic
 authorities. And the only way mandates can be imposed is
 through the research assessment procedures. Everything else lingers or fails.
  (82% compliance with incitative mandates instead of 8%
 on average with 'soft' mandates).
 If the pressure is applied through Green OA mandates,
 academic freedom is fully respected. All it takes is 5
 minutes (max) extra work for each new publication (usually not a daily task).
 Considering the benefits for the author(s), the mandate soon becomes 
 accessory.
 
 Le 17 nov. 2013 à 23:11, Bjoern Brembs b.bre...@gmail.com a écrit :
 
 On Friday, November 15, 2013, 1:09:13 AM, you wrote:
 
 The political approach may be necessary to get OA
 enacted, but we need to implement OA in such a way that it
 is immune from political influence. In my book, that seems
 to be a perfect role for libraries.
 
 This is a serious problem with mandates: they are liable to political 
 influence - and billions in $$$ pay for plenty of political influence, way 
 more than we can ever dream of having.
 
 I thus support Eric's motion: we need to move everything in-house, away 
 from any political influence. Libraries are the natural place for that.
 
 Best wishes,
 
 Bjoern
 
 
 
 
 
 --
 Björn Brembs
 -
 http://brembs.net
 Neurogenetics
 Universität 

[GOAL] Re: [Open-access] Fight Publishing Lobby's Latest FIRST Act to Delay OA - Nth Successor to PRISM, RWA etc.

[brentier]

Indeed Heather, in Belgium, we are now achieving total compatibility between 
universities IRs as well as with the FRS-FNRS (the major Research Funder). 
Authors have to file in their papers only once. However, if absolutely needed, 
various formattings can be provided by the software.

I should stress again that after the rough (and tedious) starting period, 
benefits have become so obvious to researchers that the mandate has become much 
less necessary: we have entered a bottom-up phase now, generating a huge 
support for ORBi. Researchers consider it a precious tool today, rather than a 
chore.


 Le 18 nov. 2013 à 17:07, Heather Morrison heather.morri...@uottawa.ca a 
 écrit :
 
 Rentier makes some good points here. May I add that if deposit in the IR 
 becomes THE way to report to the tenure and promotion committee and funding 
 agencies, this could actually save researchers a lot of time? Currently we do 
 need to report our publications, often to multiple venues with different 
 formatting requirements. I think time comparison studies (current vs Liege 
 style) would be a good investment of time.
 
 [Disclosure: I am an academic with a personal and professional interest in 
 spending fewer evenings and weekends reformatting my CV and more time getting 
 on with research].
 
 Best,
 
 Heather Morrison
 
 On Nov 18, 2013, at 1:59 AM, brent...@ulg.ac.be brent...@ulg.ac.be wrote:
 
 Libraries are definitely places where awareness occurs. They are the 
 sentinels. However, they don't have enough power (generally) to impose Open 
 Access as a permanent reflex with researchers. 
 The only way researchers can be convinced is through mandatory pressure from 
 the funders and/or the Academic authorities. And the only way mandates can 
 be imposed is through the research assessment procedures. Everything else 
 lingers or fails. 
 (82% compliance with incitative mandates instead of 8% on average with 
 'soft' mandates).
 If the pressure is applied through Green OA mandates, academic freedom is 
 fully respected. All it takes is 5 minutes (max) extra work for each new 
 publication (usually not a daily task).
 Considering the benefits for the author(s), the mandate soon becomes 
 accessory. 
 
 Le 17 nov. 2013 à 23:11, Bjoern Brembs b.bre...@gmail.com a écrit :
 
 On Friday, November 15, 2013, 1:09:13 AM, you wrote:
 
 The political approach may be necessary to get OA
 enacted, but we need to implement OA in such a way that it
 is immune from political influence. In my book, that seems
 to be a perfect role for libraries.
 
 This is a serious problem with mandates: they are liable to political 
 influence - and billions in $$$ pay for plenty of political influence, way 
 more than we can ever dream of having.
 
 I thus support Eric's motion: we need to move everything in-house, away 
 from any political influence. Libraries are the natural place for that.
 
 Best wishes,
 
 Bjoern
 
 
 
 
 
 -- 
 Björn Brembs
 -
 http://brembs.net
 Neurogenetics
 Universität Regensburg
 Germany
 
 
 ___
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 GOAL@eprints.org
 http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
 
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[GOAL] Re: [Open-access] Fight Publishing Lobby's Latest FIRST Act to Delay OA - Nth Successor to PRISM, RWA etc.

[brentier]

Libraries are definitely places where awareness occurs. They are the sentinels. 
However, they don't have enough power (generally) to impose Open Access as a 
permanent reflex with researchers. 
The only way researchers can be convinced is through mandatory pressure from 
the funders and/or the Academic authorities. And the only way mandates can be 
imposed is through the research assessment procedures. Everything else lingers 
or fails. 
(82% compliance with incitative mandates instead of 8% on average with 'soft' 
mandates).
If the pressure is applied through Green OA mandates, academic freedom is fully 
respected. All it takes is 5 minutes (max) extra work for each new publication 
(usually not a daily task).
Considering the benefits for the author(s), the mandate soon becomes accessory. 

 Le 17 nov. 2013 à 23:11, Bjoern Brembs b.bre...@gmail.com a écrit :
 
 On Friday, November 15, 2013, 1:09:13 AM, you wrote:
 
 The political approach may be necessary to get OA
 enacted, but we need to implement OA in such a way that it
 is immune from political influence. In my book, that seems
 to be a perfect role for libraries.
 
 This is a serious problem with mandates: they are liable to political 
 influence - and billions in $$$ pay for plenty of political influence, way 
 more than we can ever dream of having.
 
 I thus support Eric's motion: we need to move everything in-house, away from 
 any political influence. Libraries are the natural place for that.
 
 Best wishes,
 
 Bjoern
 
 
 
 
 
 -- 
 Björn Brembs
 -
 http://brembs.net
 Neurogenetics
 Universität Regensburg
 Germany
 
 
 ___
 GOAL mailing list
 GOAL@eprints.org
 http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal

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[GOAL] Re: My last post on the Cherubim/Seraphim issue (promise!)

[brentier]

Elsevier's policy is now clear:
Accepted author manuscripts (AAM): Immediate posting and dissemination of AAM’s 
is allowed to personal websites, to institutional repositories, or to arXiv. 
However, if your institution has an open access policy or mandate that requires 
you to post, Elsevier requires an agreement to be in place which respects the 
journal-specific embargo periods. Click here for a list of journal specific 
embargo periods (PDF) and see our funding body agreements for more details.


Le 3 mai 2013 à 14:17, Stevan Harnad har...@ecs.soton.ac.uk a écrit :

 
 On 2013-05-03, at 5:02 AM, Andras Holl h...@konkoly.hu wrote:
 
 Though this be madness, yet there is method in it. I think that could be 
 said on Elsevier's OA 
 policy, because of two reasons. Firstly, it quite effectively hinders OA. 
 Secondly, however badly 
 constructed this OA policy is, one can see that from a publisher's 
 perspective, mandates like the
 NIH mandate are threatening. As a side effect, other mandates - which would 
 cover only a tiny
 fraction of the articles, and does not designate a single target repository 
 are also affected,
 regardless that these hardly affect any publishers' profits. 
 
 
 Andras,
 
 You are right that the pseudo-legal hedging is a pain.
 
 But in point of fact, Elsevier is still just as Green on paper as Springer is,
 once one realizes that one can ignore all their hedging.
 
 It is clear that Elsevier wants to hold onto the good PR it gains them to be
 perceived as Green. That's why they have not, in fact, revoked their
 policy since it was adopted in 2004. They have a terrible image problem, 
 on all fronts, and this is their only positive face.
 
 But it's not just psychology or strategy: The Elsevier policy really does
 mean that all Elsevier authors retain their right to provide Green OA,
 unembargoed. 
 
 Yes, it's a nuisance that Elsevier hedges this with pseudo-legal FUD,
 but our job is to make it clear to authors, institutions and funders that
 the Elsevier policy does, indeed, formally allow immediate, unembargoed
 OA, exactly as Springer policy does, and that the Elsevier hedging is 
 empty and can be completely ignored.
 
 The real problem here is not Elsevier's double talk: It is the gratuitous
 boost that the credibility of Elsevier's hedging has received from the
 breath-takingly fatuous and counterproductive Finch/RCUK policy and its
 flow-charts (which Elsevier has eagerly included in its rights 
 documentation).
 
 For Elsevier has now got a new positive face that it can use for PR:
 Elsevier is fully RCUK-compliant.
 
 Please add this to the growing list of the perverse effects of Finch/RCUK...
 
 But rest assured that (1) the RCUK's own forced back-pedalling, grudgingly
 admitting that Green is just as RCUK-compliant as Gold, together with
 (2) HEFCE/RCUK's timely proposal to mandate immediate-deposit as the
 precondition for submitting a paper for REF 2020 undoes most of the
 damage done by the Finch Report.
 
 Stevan
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[GOAL] Re: House of Lords enquiry

[brentier]

Alma,
There is a mistake on the link. It should read:

http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/lords-select/science-and-technology-committee/news/open-access/

Cheers,
Bernard

Le 12 janv. 2013 à 10:11, Alma Swan a.s...@talk21.com a écrit :

 Alma, could you provide the source of the issues you highlight? The URL you
 gave is just to the format of how to submit, but does not include the actual
 remit of the inquiry.
 
 I can now, but there was nothing available when I posted the news
 approximately 24 hours ago. This press release was published 21 hours ago:
 http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/lords-select/sci
 ence-and-technology-committee/news/open-access/
 
 
 
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[GOAL] Re: RCUK EC Did Not Follow Finch/Willets

[brentier]

I wouldn't want to let Stevan look like he stands alone here.

I am terrified by such statements as those made here by Mr. Belenkiy (whom, by 
the way, I do not know). 

These statements are not only peremptory, but they take us back 15 years in the 
dark ages of the nascent OA era.

I admire Stevan for responding to such uninformed arrogance. It is a pity that 
this person has not even tried to get some reliable information prior to swarm 
into this forum, wasting everybody's time. 

Bernard Rentier
Chair, EOS
http://www.openscholarship.org


Le 31 juil. 2012 à 11:43, Stevan Harnad har...@ecs.soton.ac.uk a écrit :

 
 On 2012-07-30, Ari Belenkiy wrote in LIBLICENSE:
 
 Stevan Harnad,
 
 I failed to hear this time the key word taxpayer that permeated your
 earlier writings.
 
 Here's the word: 
 
 Research is funded by the *tax-payer* so that it can be used, applied and 
 built upon, toward progress in further research and applications, to the 
 benefit of the *tax-payer*.
 
 Access-denial denies *tax-payers* the full usage, progress, applications and
 benefits from the research they funded.
 
 Research usage, applications, progress and benefits do not come from
 restricting access to users in the country in which the research was 
 funded and conducted. (Not even subscription-access does that!)
 
 Research is global, and the intended users of research are worldwide.
 
 Thus, the taxpayer's status is unimportant? You argued for the
 well-being of an ideal taxpayer - is this a researcher?
 
 Not at all, as you see.
 
 I cannot see how the modern system prevents a serious researcher from
 an immediate intake in other's research. I did not hear of any
 independent researcher in Medicine who works inside of any institution
 which cannot allow itself to buy all necessary journals.
 
 Look again.
 
 And the third response on the list convinced me again that it is
 Medicine that matters most for the OA advocates.
 
 I cannot follow. OA is for all research, in all disciplines. What research
 fails to benefit from being accessible to all its intended users, rather
 than just those that can afford to subscribe? 
 
 (Research is not being funded and conducted by the tax-payer in order 
 to generate access-toll revenue  for the publisher, let alone the researcher. 
 Refereed research  journal publication is not trade publication. It is 
 written 
 for research uptake and impact, not for royalty income.)
 
 Perhaps this is lobbying for the people with serious medical problems.
 Though then your position is quite understandable, you still a
 lobbyist, like any other group with particular interests.
 
 I (and most other OA advocates) are lobbying for research progress, 
 in all disciplines, worldwide.
 
 Stevan Harnad
 
 
 
 On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 2:29 PM, LIBLICENSE liblice...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 From: Stevan Harnad har...@ecs.soton.ac.uk
 Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2012 06:35:40 -0400
 
 From: Ari Belenkiy ari.belen...@gmail.com
 Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2012 18:50:34 -0700
 
 Despite his valuable personal recollections, Steven Harnad  so far
 failed to answer  two my questions:
 
 1. Why the EU research must be immediately open for the non-EU
 researchers (who are not, in particularly, EU-taxpayers)?
 
 Because research is done and reported in order to be used, applied
 and built upon by other researchers -- not just those who can
 subscribe to the journal in which it appeared, or who live in the same
 country as the researcher.
 
 2. Why the EU taxpayers, who contribute different amounts in tax, must
 have equal opportunities to access the results of the EU research?
 
 The primary purpose of providing OA is so that the primary intended
 users of the research (researchers worldwide) can use, apply and
 build upon it. Access by the interested public is a secondary bonus.
 
 [Of course, EU could be substituted here for Britain or the US or
 Russia or China or etc.]
 
 If you want your research findings to be confidential and
 restricted, you don't publish them at all.
 
 OA is for research published in peer-reviewed journals, for all
 potential users. The journal price-tag is an access-restrictor.
 
 Stevan Harnad
 
 
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[GOAL] Re: Chemistry and the Green Door

[brentier]

Le 13 juil. 2012 à 09:32, Peter Murray-Rust pm...@cam.ac.uk a écrit :

 What is the percentage of full-text ACS papers pubished by Liege which are 
 visible at time of publication?

None, of course!
Just ask for an e-print when you are in thé ORBi web site and we'll send it at 
once. It's Green, not Gold!

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[GOAL] Re: Wikipedia founder to help in [UK] government's research scheme

[brentier]

Sorry, but I disagree with this. 

I understand all the help that celebrities can bring to a cause, but the choice 
of the celebrity should be wise. In this case, there is a dangerous risk of 
mixing up concepts.

Wikipedia is, by definition, the negation of peer reviewing. Or, at best, it is 
considering everyone as a peer to everyone else. 
It works surprisingly well, by the way, in many cases, but it fails completely 
at times as well. Expurging mistakes from WP (whether they are willingly forged 
or not) is a very difficult task and it can take forever. And you cannot 
control everything.

I do not want to engage in a debate on Wikipedia's qualities and weaknesses, 
but tens of thousands of professors around the world spend time explaining 
their students why WP, though comfortable (who has never used it?), is a 
dangerous tool because it makes widely public a lot of informations that have 
not been reviewed by acknowledged specialists.

Considering how people these days conflate Open Access and lack of peer 
reviewing, considering our relentless efforts to fight this confusion, I find 
it dangerous for a government to choose WP's founder as an advocate of 
scholarly OA.

Bernard Rentier
Chairman, EOS (Enabling Open Scholarship)
http://www.openscholarship.org/jcms/j_6/accueil



Le 2 mai 2012 à 12:47, Jan Velterop velte...@gmail.com a écrit :

 Strict logic is not what we win the battle for open access with. Some 
 celebrity involvement is to be welcomed. On a visceral level the success of 
 Wikipedia (not a logical outcome at the outset on the basis of the premises) 
 may well influence the perception of open access.
 
 Jan Velterop
 
 On 2 May 2012, at 11:00, Andrew A. Adams wrote:
 
 
   The [UK] government has drafted in the Wikipedia founder Jimmy
   Wales to help make all taxpayer-funded academic research in Britain
   available online to anyone who wants to read or use it.
 
 I was hoping that the new government might be less star-struck than the 
 previous one. Plus ca change, plus ca meme chose, it would seem. We really 
 don't need Jimmy Wales advising on this. The team behind eprints has been 
 (with minimal funding) developing the technology needed for many years and 
 there are many academics in the UK much better versed in the intricacies of 
 UK academic work and life than Mr Wales. Sigh. I foresee another lost couple 
 of years wasted on this instead of getting to grips with the known problem 
 and the known solution (including providing better funding for eprints 
 development to the team that created it and still does the software 
 engineering for it).
 
 
 -- 
 Professor Andrew A Adams  a...@meiji.ac.jp
 Professor at Graduate School of Business Administration,  and
 Deputy Director of the Centre for Business Information Ethics
 Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan   http://www.a-cubed.info/
 
 
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[GOAL] Re: Belgium: Funder's Green OA mandate for 2013

[brentier]

Dear Thierry,

In the French speaking community of Belgium (also called the Wallonia-Brussels 
Federation), the most advanced IR policy is that of Liege University. The 
others, mainly at Brussels and Louvain, are moving ahead and should be fully 
mandated by 2013, this is the reason why the FRS-FNRS mandate will be fully 
effective for the 2013 call.

The policy at University of Liege (ULg) is that no deposit can be made 
technically if it has been published from 2002 on and if it is not full text. 
It is physically impossible to file in metadata only, ORBi (the IR) will reject 
the deposit. Hence, although non-full text deposits do exist in ORBi, they can 
only correspond to papers published earlier than 2002.

In other words, in response to your question, only fully text postings are 
considered as published work for evaluation at ULg. This is the policy that 
will be followed at FRS-FNRS as soon as all IRs will adopt this policy. The 
fact that FRS-FNRS will impose this rule is definitely going to be a major 
incentive in imposing such a policy in all institutions.

Best regards and happy New Year!
Bernard Rentier



Le 28 déc. 2011 à 09:21, Thierry CHANIER thierry.chan...@univ-bpclermont.fr 
a écrit :

 Dear all,
 
 I am also very happy of this news and the achievement of Bernard  
 Rentier's work.
 But I need another information to appreciate the extent of this result.
 
 If I correctly understand this mandate, evaluation of the research's  
 institution or the researcher's work when s/he wants to apply for a  
 funding will be made out information which appears in his/her  
 institutional repository.
 
 But does this imply that publicatons will be deposit in the IR or only  
 metadata (notices) about publications ?
 
 In France (again for example), the initial mandate (2006) for deposit  
 has been completely diverted because in many places open archives are  
 full of notices without full-text articles deposit (look in Hal, the  
 ratio may be 3, 4 notices for one full-text deposit).
 
 Is this a possibility in Belgium ? If yes, what can we do against this  
 divertion ?
 
 Cordialement
 Thierry Chanier
 
 
 Quoting Stevan Harnad amscifo...@gmail.com:
 
 On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 1:46 AM, brent...@ulg.ac.be wrote:
 
 It is my pleasure to announce that the Board of Administrators of the
 FRS-FNRS (Fund for Scientific Research in French-speaking Belgium) has
 officially decided to use exclusively Institutional Repositories as sources
 of bibliographic data in support of grant or fellowship submission (except
 for foreign applicants) starting in 2013 (strongly encouraged in 2012).
 
 FRS-FNRS is by far the main funder for basic research in the
 Wallonia-Brussels Federation.
 
 
 * *I am sure that many readers will not quite realize the significance of
 this development in Belgium, so I would like to spell it out:
 
 This represents the first instance of extending one of the key features of
 Professor Rentier's Liege model  research* institution *repository
 deposit (ID/OA) mandate to a research *funder*.
 
 The Liege model institutional mandate is to (i)* require deposit* and, in
 order to ensure compliance, to (ii) *designate institutional repository
 deposit as the sole mechanism for submitting publications for institutional
 performance review*.
 
 The FRS-FNRS is the research funding council for French-speaking Belgium.
 Its Flemish-speaking counterpart, FWO, mandated OA deposit in 2007, but,
 like most funder mandates, it *did not specify where to deposit*, and *did
 not provide any system for monitoring and ensuring compliance*:
 http://roarmap.eprints.org/57/
 
 FRS-FNRS has has now *designated institutional repository deposit as the
 sole mechanism for submitting publications in support of a research funding
 application.*
 *
 *
 This one stipulation has six major knock-on benefits: It not only:
 
 (1) extends the Liege institutional mandate's compliance/monitoring clause
 to funder mandates,
 
 but it also
 
 (2) helps integrate institutional and funder mandates,
 
 (3) ensuring that deposit is made,
 
 (4) ensuring that deposit is made in the author's institutional repository
 (rather than in diverse institution-external repositories),
 
 (5) encouraging institutions that have not yet done so to adopt deposit
 mandates, so as to complement funder mandates for all institutional
 research output, funded and unfunded and
 
 (6) ensuring that institutional and funder mandates are convergent and
 mutually reinforcing rather than divergent and competitive, with deposits
 for both mandates being made institutionally, and with institutions hence
 monitoring and ensuring compliance with funder mandates.
 
 
 Bravo FRS-FNRS! Let us hope other research funders world-wde will adopt (or
 upgrade to) the Belgian model.
 *
 *
 
 *How to Integrate University and Funder Open Access
 Mandates*http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/369-guid.html
 *
 *
 *Optimize the NIH Mandate Now: Deposit 

[GOAL] Belgium: Funder's Green OA mandate for 2013

[brentier]

It is my pleasure to announce that the Board of Administrators of the FRS-FNRS 
(Fund for Scientific Research in French-speaking Belgium) has officially 
decided to use exclusively Institutional Repositories as sources of 
bibliographic data in support of grant or fellowship submission (except for 
foreign applicants) starting in 2013 (strongly encouraged in 2012).

FRS-FNRS is by far the main funder for basic research in the Wallonia-Brussels 
Federation.

Bernard RENTIER
Rector of the Université de Liège
Vice-President of the FRS-FNRS
Chairman, Enabling Open Scholarship (EOS) 

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