[GOAL] Re: Some discussion points for the UK OA initiative

[Peter Murray-Rust]

On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 2:54 PM, Stevan Harnad wrote:

>
>
> 4. DATA. What about authors who do not wish to make their research
> data freely accessible to all immediately, having gathered it for the
> purpose of analyzing and data-mining it themselves? Would it not be
> a better idea for the time being to merely recommend rather than
> require that data be made OA as soon as possible, rather than risk
> resistance from authors who are happy to give away their journal articles
> but not their data?
>

Data are critical to modern science and I strongly support those who
require (mandate) that they be published.  Authors are resistant to a lot
of things - that doesn't condone their behaviour


>
>
-- 
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
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[GOAL] Re: Some discussion points for the UK OA initiative

[Stevan Harnad]

On 2012-05-07, at 10:30 AM, Peter Murray-Rust wrote:

> On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 2:54 PM, Stevan Harnad  wrote:
>> SH:
>> 4. DATA. What about authors who do not wish to make their research
>> data freely accessible to all immediately, having gathered it for the
>> purpose of analyzing and data-mining it themselves? Would it not be
>> a better idea for the time being to merely recommend rather than
>> require that data be made OA as soon as possible, rather than risk
>> resistance from authors who are happy to give away their journal articles
>> but not their data?
> 
> PM-R:
> Data are critical to modern science and I strongly support those who
> require (mandate) that they be published.  Authors are resistant to
> a lot of things - that doesn't condone their behaviour

I agree that data are critical to modern science and that they 
ought to be published. But when? There are many fields of 
science where the science is not the data-gathering itself
but the data-analysis. The amount of time that a researcher
would need to have a fair chance at first exploration rights
with the data he himself has gathered (with public funding).

Hence there is no straightforward counterpart to the kind of
immediate-OA mandate that is optimal for research articles.
Every field and every study would require some negotiation
about what is a fair period for the data-gatherer to have
first-exploitation rights.

(By the same token, research reported in books would be
very helpful if made OA. But there too, a blanket mandate
simply would not fit all. For both books and data, OA
mandates would not only generate resistance, but they
could even discourage doing the research in the first
place.)

Moral: Don't over-generalise from your own niche. Think,
and do some research, to see whether indeed the one
size that you think fits your particular case, fits all.

For mandating immediate Gratis Green OA to peer-reviewed
research articles, one size does fit all.

But for books, data, Libre OA, Gold OA -- more thought
is needed, lest co-bundling them all together
strangles the baby in the bathwater.

Stevan Harnad
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[GOAL] Re: Some discussion points for the UK OA initiative

[Stevan Harnad]

On 2012-05-07, at 10:16 AM, Ian Stuart (U Edinburgh) wrote:

> Question: what is the norm?
> 
> I believe the norm is that research papers are multi-authored, 
> multi-institutional,
> and a statistically significant quantity of them are international 
> (institutions in
> different countries.)
> 
> Laudable as a focus on the UK is, is this not a narrow focus on a larger 
> field?

Laudable as is the UK's lead and initiative in OA, the current thinking is
extremely fuzzy, and mixes empty political slogans with valid objectives
along with profound misunderstandings about the nature of scholarly
and scientific research, in about equal doses.

Is Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales really the one who is going to be able to
turn this into something practical and realistic?

> 
> On 07/05/12 14:54, Stevan Harnad wrote:
>> The UK's continuing leadership and initiative in opening access to
>> research is wonderful and only to be applauded, supported and
>> encouraged.
>> 
>> To help make the initiative focused and effective, I would suggest that
>> the following four questions should be given some thought.
>> 
>> If "UK public access to UK publicly funded research" is to be the
>> guiding principle, and the two ways of providing it are either the
>> Green OA self-archiving of articles published for free in subscription
>> journals (GRNOA) or the publishing of articles in Gold OA journals
>> for a fee (GLDOA):
>> 
>> 1. GLOBALISM. Is the objective really just UK public access to UK
>> research? Is the purpose of publishing research not to have it taken
>> up, built upon, used and applied in further research and applications
>> globally, and reciprocally, to the benefit of the public that funded the
>> research? (And aren't UK OA mandates likely to inspire complementary,
>> reciprocal OA mandates globally?)
>> 
>> 2. RECIPROCITY. Does paying unilaterally for GLDOA for UK
>> research -- making UK research freely accessible globally, but
>> with the UK still having to pay subscriptions to access non-UK
>> research -- make sense?  Is GRNOA, which  does not entail double
>> payment, not more likely to  inspire global reciprocity? And would
>>  global GRNOA not lead to GLDOA thereafter anyway?
>> 
>> 3. BOOKS. What about books resulting from UK publicly funded
>> research? Would it not be a better idea for the time being to merely
>> recommend rather than require that books  be made OA, rather than
>> risk resistance from authors who are happy to give away their journal
>> articles but not their books?
>> 
>> 4. DATA. What about authors who do not wish to make their research
>> data freely accessible to all immediately, having gathered it for the
>> purpose of analyzing and data-mining it themselves? Would it not be
>> a better idea for the time being to merely recommend rather than
>> require that data be made OA as soon as possible, rather than risk
>> resistance from authors who are happy to give away their journal articles
>> but not their data?
>> 
>> Stevan Harnad

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[GOAL] Re: Some discussion points for the UK OA initiative

[keith.jeffery]

Stevan -
As always succinct points.  Comments inline.
Best
Keith


Keith G Jeffery  Director International Relations   STFC
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-Original Message-
From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of 
Stevan Harnad
Sent: 07 May 2012 14:55
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
Cc: jisc-repositor...@jiscmail.ac.uk
Subject: [GOAL] Some discussion points for the UK OA initiative

The UK's continuing leadership and initiative in opening access to research is 
wonderful and only to be applauded, supported and encouraged.
[Keith Jeffery] thanks for recognising that there are many 'warriors' in UK 
working away at it.

To help make the initiative focused and effective, I would suggest that the 
following four questions should be given some thought.

If "UK public access to UK publicly funded research" is to be the guiding 
principle, and the two ways of providing it are either the Green OA 
self-archiving of articles published for free in subscription journals (GRNOA) 
or the publishing of articles in Gold OA journals for a fee (GLDOA):

1. GLOBALISM. Is the objective really just UK public access to UK research? Is 
the purpose of publishing research not to have it taken up, built upon, used 
and applied in further research and applications globally, and reciprocally, to 
the benefit of the public that funded the research? (And aren't UK OA mandates 
likely to inspire complementary, reciprocal OA mandates globally?)

[Keith Jeffery] 
[Keith Jeffery] the objective is global access of course but there is leverage 
in the 'UK public access to UK publicly funded research' argument.  This is 
counteracted by the government tax-take from UK-based publishers and the 
potential damage to learned societies who rely on publishing for part of their 
income.  The problem is reciprocity so like gamblers at a card table it is 'who 
blinks first'.  I believe UK (funders) will go ahead anyway despite the 
reciprocity concerns.  There is a certain kudos (moral high ground) in making 
the research outputs available openly and toll-free.  There are also the 
well-rehearsed advantages for the author of higher citations as well as for the 
community in potentially faster research cycles, higher quality due to wider 
scrutiny etc. As a safety-net, if other countries do not reciprocate, open 
could be closed.

2. RECIPROCITY. Does paying unilaterally for GLDOA for UK research -- making UK 
research freely accessible globally, but with the UK still having to pay 
subscriptions to access non-UK research -- make sense?  Is GRNOA, which  does 
not entail double payment, not more likely to  inspire global reciprocity? And 
would  global GRNOA not lead to GLDOA thereafter anyway?

[Keith Jeffery] 
[Keith Jeffery] (lack of) reciprocity is a fear among some in UK.  I detect 
that we have lost the Green is better than Gold argument in UK, not least 
because the powerful biomedical community stampeded into Gold (but let us see 
what the Finch committee comes up with).  However, they can coexist (as 
recognised by the RCUK funders) and I suspect the publishers will not convert 
wholly to Gold for a very long while and meantime maybe the higher (than 
subscription) costs of Gold for highly productive institutions will reduce 
submissions to Gold channels and encourage green (or more likely a completely 
different publishing model along the lines of liquid publications with 
specialised reviewing mechanisms for which sustainable models are not yet in 
place).  I do not believe Global Green would lead to Global Gold.  The 
motivations and business models behind each are too dissimilar - as are the 
likely end-games.

3. BOOKS. What about books resulting from UK publicly funded research? Would it 
not be a better idea for the time being to merely recommend rather than require 
that books  be made OA, rather than risk resistance from authors who are happy 
to give away their journal articles but not their books?

[Keith Jeffery] 
[Keith Jeffery] I think we need (generalising somewhat) to distinguish 
monographs (with an academic and non-remuneration intention) from textbooks 
(with an educational and remuneration intention).  For me the former are 
candidates for mandated green OA.  Currently monographs are e

[GOAL] Re: Some discussion points for the UK OA initiative

[Stevan Harnad]

On 2012-05-07, at 12:43 PM,  wrote:

> I do not believe Global Green would lead to Global Gold.  
> The motivations and business models behind each are
> too dissimilar - as are the likely end-games.

The motivations need not be similar (and Green OA is not
a business model).

Here's the end-game:

What the research community needs, urgently, today, is free
online access (Open Access, OA) to its own peer-reviewed
research output. 

Researchers can provide that in two ways:
by publishing their articles in OA journals (Gold OA) or
by continuing to publish in non-OA journals and
self-archiving their final peer-reviewed drafts in their
own OA Institutional Repositories (Green OA). 

OA self-archiving (Green OA), once it is mandated by research
institutions and funders, can reliably generate 100% Green
OA. 

Gold OA requires journals to convert to OA publishing
(which is not in the hands of the research community) and
it also requires the funds to cover the Gold OA
publication costs. With 100% Green OA, the research
community's access and impact problems are already solved.

If and when 100% Green OA should cause significant
cancellation pressure the cancellation pressure will cause 
cost-cutting, downsizing and eventually a leveraged transition 
to OA (Gold) publishing on the part of journals. 

As subscription revenues shrink, institutional windfall 
savings from cancellations grow. 

If and when journal subscriptions become unsustainable,
per-article publishing costs will be low enough, and
institutional savings will be high enough to cover them,
because publishing will have downsized to just peer-review
service provision alone, offloading text-generation onto
authors and access-provision and archiving onto the global
network of OA Institutional Repositories. 

Green OA will have leveraged a transition to Gold OA.

Harnad, S. (2007) The Green Road to Open Access: 
A Leveraged Transition. In: Anna Gacs. The Culture of 
Periodicals from the Perspective of the Electronic Age. 
L'Harmattan. 99-106. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13309/
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[GOAL] Re: Some discussion points for the UK OA initiative

[Richard Poynder]

Is it not the case that there are two parts to the data issue, and these two
parts are often conflated? There is data mining (mining the underlying data
associated with scholarly papers), and there is text mining, pulling data
out from the text of scholarly papers (i.e. treating papers as data). As I
understand it, both these things present somewhat different problems, and so
presumably require different solutions.

For instance, I am told that researchers concerned about text mining argue
that when their institution buys a subscription to an electronic journal
they should be acquiring not only the right to read the papers in it, but
the right to text mine them too. Publishers, however, do not see it that
way. This is not the same problem as that described by Keith below I think.

That said, not all OA publishers are text-mining friendly either. Nature
reports that "of the 2.4 million abstracts listed by PubMedCentral, only
400,000 (17%) are licensed for text-mining."
(http://www.nature.com/news/trouble-at-the-text-mine-1.10184).

I hope the UK government is clear that these are different problems
requiring different solutions.

>>

4. DATA. What about authors who do not wish to make their research data
freely accessible to all immediately, having gathered it for the purpose of
analyzing and data-mining it themselves? Would it not be a better idea for
the time being to merely recommend rather than require that data be made OA
as soon as possible, rather than risk resistance from authors who are happy
to give away their journal articles but not their data?

[Keith Jeffery]
[Keith Jeffery] you are right to raise this.  Different communities /
domains of research have different practices with embargo periods on data to
allow the project leader / team to have publication precedence.  So we have
publishers wanting embargos for articles and communities wanting embargos
for data (and probably also associated software which may raise issues
concerning confidentiality / patenting).  The UK funding councils are
pushing for the same conditions on data as on publications but the document
is not yet finalised. One solution would be to make data available openly
but to have agreements that any researcher working on the data other than
the original project team should (a) notify of intent to publish (b) ideally
co-publish with the original team  or (c) minimally cite the original team
publication and dataset/software.  It is all a matter of research ethics.
The present competitive research world does not encourage such ethics.
Again the Finch committee output will be interesting.  The whole area of
research data from publicly-funded research has been caught up with the open
'data.gov' (public service information, semantic web, linked open data)
agenda.  While  the two certainly are related, I am not convinced the
semantic web / LOD browsing over data to find the nearest hospital or local
government office - or crime statistics in your neighbourhood or league
table ratings of local schools -  is the same as managing terabytes (or
more) of research data with specialised and complex software.

Best
Keith


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[GOAL] Re: Some discussion points for the UK OA initiative

[keith.jeffery]

Stevan -

Yes, I know your view on green leveraging gold - we have discussed it before.  
I accept your view is logical.  

But - and it is a big but - we are dealing with commercial publishers and 
commercial imperatives.  Why should the publishers reduce gold author pays 
charges if the academic community (especially the funders) are willing to pay?  
The evidence to date is that the academic community is willing to pay (although 
I accept the sample of gold channels is relatively small as yet).  Gold offers 
a seductively safe route for academics who object to high subscription charges 
and want maximum exposure of their work yet are unwilling to face up to the FUD 
(fear uncertainty and doubt) raised by the publishers concerning green OA.

I suspect the majority of a new generation of academics raised on social 
networking and web 2.0 will demand new models of scholarly communication beyond 
the existing subscription/green and author pays/gold models.  Like you I hope 
they separate the activities done by the community (authoring, reviewing, 
editing) from the management of peer review and find appropriate models for the 
latter - but I believe this will be within a new model of communication.

However, this is some way ahead.  Meantime - as you know - I support strongly 
green OA as you have defined it as the best mechanism we have today.  My 
objections to gold are based on increased cost for high output institutions and 
the danger of vanity publishing - there is a potential conflict of interest.  A 
further problem concerns associated data: it makes no sense to ship terabytes 
to publisher servers - much better to leave it as close as possible to the 
generating source, close to the expertise and context (this is where CERIF-CRIS 
come in) within which it was collected. BTW a similar argument goes for the 
benefit of institutional repositories of scholarly publications.

The problem - as you have documented well - is persuading the community.

Best
Keith


Keith G Jeffery  Director International Relations   STFC
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-Original Message-
From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of 
Stevan Harnad
Sent: 07 May 2012 18:55
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
Subject: [GOAL] Re: Some discussion points for the UK OA initiative

On 2012-05-07, at 12:43 PM,  wrote:

> I do not believe Global Green would lead to Global Gold.  
> The motivations and business models behind each are too dissimilar - 
> as are the likely end-games.

The motivations need not be similar (and Green OA is not a business model).

Here's the end-game:

What the research community needs, urgently, today, is free online access (Open 
Access, OA) to its own peer-reviewed research output. 

Researchers can provide that in two ways:
by publishing their articles in OA journals (Gold OA) or by continuing to 
publish in non-OA journals and self-archiving their final peer-reviewed drafts 
in their own OA Institutional Repositories (Green OA). 

OA self-archiving (Green OA), once it is mandated by research institutions and 
funders, can reliably generate 100% Green OA. 

Gold OA requires journals to convert to OA publishing (which is not in the 
hands of the research community) and it also requires the funds to cover the 
Gold OA publication costs. With 100% Green OA, the research community's access 
and impact problems are already solved.

If and when 100% Green OA should cause significant cancellation pressure the 
cancellation pressure will cause cost-cutting, downsizing and eventually a 
leveraged transition to OA (Gold) publishing on the part of journals. 

As subscription revenues shrink, institutional windfall savings from 
cancellations grow. 

If and when journal subscriptions become unsustainable, per-article publishing 
costs will be low enough, and institutional savings will be high enough to 
cover them, because publishing will have downsized to just peer-review service 
provision alone, offloading text-generation onto authors and access-provision 
and archiving onto the global network of OA Institutional Repositories. 

Green OA will have leveraged a transition to Gold OA.

Harnad, S. (2007) The Green Road to Open Access: 
A Leveraged Transition. In: 

[GOAL] Re: Some discussion points for the UK OA initiative

[Peter Murray-Rust]

I hope I can give a factual analysis of your question.

On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 9:50 PM, Richard Poynder
wrote:

> Is it not the case that there are two parts to the data issue, and these
> two
> parts are often conflated? There is data mining (mining the underlying data
> associated with scholarly papers), and there is text mining, pulling data
> out from the text of scholarly papers (i.e. treating papers as data). As I
> understand it, both these things present somewhat different problems, and
> so
> presumably require different solutions.
>

The "data" spectrum is wider than that. "data mining" tends to be narrower
than "data analysis" or data re-use. It implies that there are patterns in
the data that can be best revealed (or only revealed) by machine methods.
For example the analysis of genomic data could be regarded as data-mining.

In many cases single instances or data sets can be valuable and the term
"data-mining" may not be appropriate. For example most single data sets
submitted as "supplemental information" would probably not be large enough
for data-mining but could be valuable for data analysis or re-use. However
if a large number of datasets can be assembled from such supp-info then
data mining might be appropriate.

Constraints on datamining include lack of clear metadata, and maybe lack of
clear licences.

>
> For instance, I am told that researchers concerned about text mining argue
> that when their institution buys a subscription to an electronic journal
> they should be acquiring not only the right to read the papers in it, but
> the right to text mine them too. Publishers, however, do not see it that
> way. This is not the same problem as that described by Keith below I think.
>
>
There are many different approaches to data and it's probably difficult to
generalize.


> That said, not all OA publishers are text-mining friendly either.


I think the term "OA publisher" is not precise. If the publications carry a
CC-BY or equivalent licence, as they do from BMC or PLoS,  then the reader
has the effective right to carry out textmining. However many publications
(sic) are "OA" in the sense that they are visible somewhere, but do not
carry a clear licence that permits textmining.


> Nature
> reports that "of the 2.4 million abstracts listed by PubMedCentral, only
> 400,000 (17%) are licensed for text-mining."
> (http://www.nature.com/news/trouble-at-the-text-mine-1.10184).
>

The licence rights on UK/PMC content is poorly defined and I don't think
anyonw know what the numbers are. Without a machine readable-licence then
the only way of knowing whether something is text-minable is whether it is
;published by BMC or PLoS. The figure that are known to be fully
BOAI-compliant is less than 400,000.

Also it's important not to confuse abstracts with full papers. The full
text of many papers is not visible on UK/PMC although the abstracts are.
The rights on abstracts are usually unclear. I gather than abstracts have
had to be removed from PMC at the behest of the publishers.

>
> I hope the UK government is clear that these are different problems
> requiring different solutions.
>
> The first problem is lack of clarity and information.




> >>
>
> 4. DATA. What about authors who do not wish to make their research data
> freely accessible to all immediately, having gathered it for the purpose of
> analyzing and data-mining it themselves? Would it not be a better idea for
> the time being to merely recommend rather than require that data be made OA
> as soon as possible, rather than risk resistance from authors who are happy
> to give away their journal articles but not their data?
>
> [Keith Jeffery]
> [Keith Jeffery] you are right to raise this.  Different communities /
> domains of research have different practices with embargo periods on data
> to
> allow the project leader / team to have publication precedence.  So we have
> publishers wanting embargos for articles and communities wanting embargos
> for data (and probably also associated software which may raise issues
> concerning confidentiality / patenting).  The UK funding councils are
> pushing for the same conditions on data as on publications but the document
> is not yet finalised. One solution would be to make data available openly
> but to have agreements that any researcher working on the data other than
> the original project team should (a) notify of intent to publish (b)
> ideally
> co-publish with the original team  or (c) minimally cite the original team
> publication and dataset/software.  It is all a matter of research ethics.
> The present competitive research world does not encourage such ethics.
> Again the Finch committee output will be interesting.  The whole area of
> research data from publicly-funded research has been caught up with the
> open
> 'data.gov' (public service information, semantic web, linked open data)
> agenda.  While  the two certainly are related, I am not convinced the
> semantic web / LOD browsing

[GOAL] Re: Some discussion points for the UK OA initiative

[Stevan Harnad]

Richard, you are quite right that making research data open for all
to mine is not the same thing as making the texts of research articles
(Libre) OA for text-mining, and you are also right that there are
different problems associated with each.

What I wrote below was about making research data open for mining.
This has nothing to do with publishers; the problems concern only
the researchers' own first-exploitation rights, and the wish (indeed
the need) of many not to surrender their hard-earned first-exploitation
rights  s soon as they've gathered their data (or right after their first 
public 
report based on the data). These are author-side barriers to data OA.
There are no author-side barriers to article OA (just sluggishness,
and some groundless fears).

Making article texts open for text-mining calls for Libre OA. Publishers
are much more resistant to Libre OA than to Gratis OA (free online access);
hence the barriers to Libre OA are much higher than the barriers to
Gratis OA. The majority of journals (including most of the top journals
in most fields) already endorse immediate Gratis Green OA self-archiving
of the author's peer-reviewed final draft, by the author, in the author's
institutional repository.

But few publishers endorse Libre OA, for fear of 3rd-party free-riders.
(Moreover, some flavors of Libre OA call for further re-use rights
that even some authors would not wish to grant.)

So all in all, both data OA and Libre OA face problems that Green
Gratis OA does not face.

So let funders and institutions mandate Green Gratis OA worldwide
first, and then let's worry about data OA and Libre OA (and Gold OA).

For then we will at least (and at last!) have free online access to research
articles -- whereas we only have it to about 20% of research now.

That will be a huge step forward for research progress.

And (I suggest), it will also be the fastest and surest step toward
data OA, Libre OA and Gold OA thereafter.

Over-reaching for them now just keeps of deprived of the 100%
Gratis Green OA that is already within our grasp.

Stevan Harnad

On 2012-05-07, at 4:50 PM, Richard Poynder wrote:

> Is it not the case that there are two parts to the data issue, and these two
> parts are often conflated? There is data mining (mining the underlying data
> associated with scholarly papers), and there is text mining, pulling data
> out from the text of scholarly papers (i.e. treating papers as data). As I
> understand it, both these things present somewhat different problems, and so
> presumably require different solutions.
> 
> For instance, I am told that researchers concerned about text mining argue
> that when their institution buys a subscription to an electronic journal
> they should be acquiring not only the right to read the papers in it, but
> the right to text mine them too. Publishers, however, do not see it that
> way. This is not the same problem as that described by Keith below I think.
> 
> That said, not all OA publishers are text-mining friendly either. Nature
> reports that "of the 2.4 million abstracts listed by PubMedCentral, only
> 400,000 (17%) are licensed for text-mining."
> (http://www.nature.com/news/trouble-at-the-text-mine-1.10184).
> 
> I hope the UK government is clear that these are different problems
> requiring different solutions.
> 
>>> 
> 
> 4. DATA. What about authors who do not wish to make their research data
> freely accessible to all immediately, having gathered it for the purpose of
> analyzing and data-mining it themselves? Would it not be a better idea for
> the time being to merely recommend rather than require that data be made OA
> as soon as possible, rather than risk resistance from authors who are happy
> to give away their journal articles but not their data?
> 
> [Keith Jeffery]
> [Keith Jeffery] you are right to raise this.  Different communities /
> domains of research have different practices with embargo periods on data to
> allow the project leader / team to have publication precedence.  So we have
> publishers wanting embargos for articles and communities wanting embargos
> for data (and probably also associated software which may raise issues
> concerning confidentiality / patenting).  The UK funding councils are
> pushing for the same conditions on data as on publications but the document
> is not yet finalised. One solution would be to make data available openly
> but to have agreements that any researcher working on the data other than
> the original project team should (a) notify of intent to publish (b) ideally
> co-publish with the original team  or (c) minimally cite the original team
> publication and dataset/software.  It is all a matter of research ethics.
> The present competitive research world does not encourage such ethics.
> Again the Finch committee output will be interesting.  The whole area of
> research data from publicly-funded research has been caught up with the open
> 'data.gov' (public service information, semantic web, 

[GOAL] Re: Some discussion points for the UK OA initiative

[Stevan Harnad]

On 2012-05-07, at 5:31 PM,  
 wrote:

> I know your view on green leveraging gold... [but]
> we are dealing with commercial publishers and commercial imperatives.  
> Why should the publishers reduce gold author pays charges if the academic
> community (especially the funders) are willing to pay?  

According to the leveraging scenario there is absolutely nothing to induce
publishers either to convert to Gold OA or to reduce costs -- *now* -- when
we have only 20% Green OA and few funder and institutional Green OA
mandates.

But leveraging is predicated on scaling up institutional and funder Green
OA self-archiving mandates globally, to make them universal, generating
100% Green OA.

*That*'s what may then eventually lead to cancellation pressure and 
journal downsizing to peer review alone, funded on the Gold OA model.

But there's no reason to hinge it all on that final economic outcome.

Even if universal Green OA mandates "only" generate 100% Green OA,
both the worldwide research community and the tax-paying public that
funds it will be incomparably better off.

(And journal affordability will no longer be a life/death problem, even
if the subscription model survives, because whoever cannot afford
subscription access will still have Green OA access.)

> The evidence to date is that the academic community is willing to pay
> (although I accept the sample of gold channels is relatively small as yet).  

Those are *two* distinct pieces of evidence, Keith:

(1) *Some* parts of the academic community are willing to pay, and
 
(2) Those parts are very small -- not just relatively, but absolutely.

And their growth curve projections are extremely slow, reaching
100% Gold OA only in the 2020's:

See Richard Poynder's "Open Access by the Numbers"
http://www.richardpoynder.co.uk/Open_Access_By_Numbers.pdf

> Gold offers a seductively safe route for academics who object to high
> subscription charges and want maximum exposure of their work

(i) ... for that very small number of academics...

(ii) ...who want maximum exposure *and/or* object to high subscription
charges. (I suspect it's more of the former than the latter.)

> yet are unwilling to face up to the FUD (fear uncertainty and doubt)
> raised by the publishers concerning green OA.

True: This is why institutional and funder mandates are the
crucial factor in accelerating and ensuring the transition to
100% OA while you and I are still compos mentis  -- and that 
is what needs to be focused on and given priority.

> I suspect the majority of a new generation of academics... [will
> go much farther]

Yes, but by that time this generation of OA advocates will be
far under ground. 

We need 100% OA now (yesterday!) and it is within reach.
All that's needed is for institutions and funders worldwide to
mandate it.

> I support strongly green OA as you have defined it as the best mechanism
> we have today.  The problem - as you have documented well - is persuading
> the community.

It is evident by now that the community cannot be persuaded to provide
Green OA (self-archive) of its own initiative (beyond 20%) precisely
because of the FUD you mention.

That's why it is their institutions and funders that need to be made
aware that they can and should mandate Green OA (and why, and
how).

That should be the OA movement's #1 priority (and should have
been all along: we could have had 100% OA a decade ago if
the OA movement had kept its eye on the [green] ball, instead
of contracting gold fever and chasing after gold dust (and libre
luxuries, and copyreform praecox...)

SH


> -Original Message-
> From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of 
> Stevan Harnad
> Sent: 07 May 2012 18:55
> To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
> Subject: [GOAL] Re: Some discussion points for the UK OA initiative
> 
> On 2012-05-07, at 12:43 PM,  wrote:
> 
>> I do not believe Global Green would lead to Global Gold.  
>> The motivations and business models behind each are too dissimilar - 
>> as are the likely end-games.
> 
> The motivations need not be similar (and Green OA is not a business model).
> 
> Here's the end-game:
> 
> What the research community needs, urgently, today, is free online access 
> (Open Access, OA) to its own peer-reviewed research output. 
> 
> Researchers can provide that in two ways:
> by publishing their articles in OA journals (Gold OA) or by continuing to 
> publish in non-OA journals and self-archiving their final peer-reviewed 
> drafts in their own OA Institutional Repositories (Green OA). 
> 
> OA self-archiving (Green OA), once it is mandated by research institutions 
> and funders, can reliably generate 100% Green OA. 
> 
> Gold OA requires journals to convert to OA publishing (which is not in t

[GOAL] Re: Some discussion points for the UK OA initiative

[Peter Murray-Rust]

On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 11:11 PM, Stevan Harnad wrote:

> Richard, you are quite right that making research data open for all
> to mine is not the same thing as making the texts of research articles
> (Libre) OA for text-mining, and you are also right that there are
> different problems associated with each.
>
> I should point out that Libre OA as defined by Suber-Harnad does not
automatically give rights for textmining. Libre OA indicates that "some
permission barriers are removed" - it does not indicate what those barriers
are. For example by default an toll-access article may not be posted in an
Institutional repository. The permission to post it is the removal of a
barrier. However that permission does not allow text-mining as the copyirgh
and re-use rights remain with other parties (publisher or repository or
both). For this reason the phrase "LibreOA" is operationally meaningless -
it may have political value. Wiley claims "fully open access" for its Gold
hybrid and no doubt would label it as LibreOA but I can see no difference
between it and publisher-supported Green OA other than that Wiley is 3000
USD better off and the research community is worse and that the authors can
claim they have "Gold OA".

I urge people to realise that textmining requires an explicit statement of
rights of re-use.


> Making article texts open for text-mining calls for Libre OA.


Specifically it calls for BOAI-compliant LibreOA, not just "LibreOA". It
also calls for clear licensing with something equivalent to CC-BY or CC0.


>
> But few publishers endorse Libre OA, for fear of 3rd-party free-riders.
>

BMC and PLoS do this enthusastically. I have seen no serious evidence of
free-riders.


> (Moreover, some flavors of Libre OA call for further re-use rights
> that even some authors would not wish to grant.)
>

This statement is made without evidence and is typical of some of the
casual and damaging inaccuracies made in this debate. I have no evidence
that people fail to publish in PLoS and BMC because of their worry about
re-use.


>
> So all in all, both data OA and Libre OA face problems that Green
> Gratis OA does not face.
>

And they deserve careful, accurate discussion.

P.

-- 
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
___
GOAL mailing list
GOAL@eprints.org
http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal

[GOAL] Re: Some discussion points for the UK OA initiative

[Stevan Harnad]

For the perplexed reader:

1. Peter Murray-Rust is a dedicated advocate for certain text-mining and
re-use rights that are very important and very fruitful in certain fields
of research (but not all, and probably not many).

2. One of the necessary conditions for the kind of text-mining and
re-use rights PM-R seeks is free online access to the articles
(Gratis OA).

3. We do not yet have Gratis OA, because authors are not providing
it, partly out of sluggishness and partly out of fear (see Keith
Jeffery's posting on publisher FUD), even though virtually all authors 
want Gratis OA and even though the majority of journals (including 
almost all the top journals in almost all fields) already endorse their 
authors providing immediate Gratis OA by self-archiving their refereed
final drafts in their institutional repository (Green Gratis OA).

4. Only about 20% of articles are being made Gratis OA (because
of author sluggishness and fear of FUD) even though over 60% 
of journals endorse immediate Green Gratis OA, 90% endorse it 
after an embargo, and user needs during the embargo can be fulfilled 
via "Almost-OA" using the institutional repositories' semi-automatic 
email-eprint-request Button.

5. Research institutions and funders are in a position to
mandate (require) Green Gratis OA, as the remedy for author
sluggishness and fear of FUD, which would immediately
generate at least 60% immediate Green Gratis OA, plus 40%
embargoed OA and Almost-OA.

PM-R keeps reiterating that Gratis OA is not enough, 
but he takes no practical account of the fact that we don't 
even have Gratis OA, that Gratis OA is within reach, via 
mandates, and that more than Gratis OAis not within reach.

We would be at an OA impasse if grasping the Green
Gratis OA that is already within immediate reach of
Green Gratis OA mandates is discouraged as not being
enough, because it does not meet all the potential needs
of some fields.

Whatever you call it, "Libre OA" or Gratis OA plus certain
further re-use rights is not within reach today. Publishers oppose
it and it is not at all clear whether all, many, or most authors
want it -- but it is clear that only 20% of authors are providing
even just Gratis OA.

Hence immediate burden of the OA movement is not, as PM-R 
suggests, to gather evidence as to how many authors need and 
want the further re-use rights PM-R seeks. Nor is there any practical 
strategy for mandating the further re-use rights PM-R seeks.

The immediate priority is to mandate the Green Gratis
OA that is already within reach -- and that also happens
to be a necessary condition for the further re-use rights PM-R 
seeks.

I urge PM-R to stop arguing that Gratis OA is not enough,
and that what is needed instead is Gratis OA plus certain 
further re-use rights.

Stop letting the out-of-reach best get in the way of 
grasping the within reach better.

We'll all end up a lot better off that way.

Stevan Harnad

On 2012-05-08, at 3:59 AM, Peter Murray-Rust wrote:

> 
> 
> On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 11:11 PM, Stevan Harnad  wrote:
> Richard, you are quite right that making research data open for all
> to mine is not the same thing as making the texts of research articles
> (Libre) OA for text-mining, and you are also right that there are
> different problems associated with each.
> 
> I should point out that Libre OA as defined by Suber-Harnad does not 
> automatically give rights for textmining. Libre OA indicates that "some 
> permission barriers are removed" - it does not indicate what those barriers 
> are. For example by default an toll-access article may not be posted in an 
> Institutional repository. The permission to post it is the removal of a 
> barrier. However that permission does not allow text-mining as the copyirgh 
> and re-use rights remain with other parties (publisher or repository or 
> both). For this reason the phrase "LibreOA" is operationally meaningless - it 
> may have political value. Wiley claims "fully open access" for its Gold 
> hybrid and no doubt would label it as LibreOA but I can see no difference 
> between it and publisher-supported Green OA other than that Wiley is 3000 USD 
> better off and the research community is worse and that the authors can claim 
> they have "Gold OA".
> 
> I urge people to realise that textmining requires an explicit statement of 
> rights of re-use. 
>  
> Making article texts open for text-mining calls for Libre OA.
> 
> Specifically it calls for BOAI-compliant LibreOA, not just "LibreOA". It also 
> calls for clear licensing with something equivalent to CC-BY or CC0.
>  
> 
> But few publishers endorse Libre OA, for fear of 3rd-party free-riders.
> 
> BMC and PLoS do this enthusastically. I have seen no serious evidence of 
> free-riders.
>  
> (Moreover, some flavors of Libre OA call for further re-use rights
> that even some authors would not wish to grant.)
> 
> This statement is made without evidence and is typical of some of the casual 
> and damaging inaccuracies m

[GOAL] Re: Some discussion points for the UK OA initiative

[Peter Murray-Rust]

On Tue, May 8, 2012 at 11:50 AM, Stevan Harnad wrote:

> For the perplexed reader:
>
> I hope that it is allowed to discuss matters on this list other than the
absolute need for the whole world to move towards Green OA and that their
arguments can be read and acted on. There are a  number of inaccuracies in
what is posted here and I have to go through the process of correcting them


> 1. Peter Murray-Rust is a dedicated advocate for certain text-mining and
> re-use rights that are very important and very fruitful in certain fields
> of research
>


> (but not all, and probably not many).
>

The "probably not many"  is not based on evidence and does not help the
tone of the debate. The following are evidence:
* JISC  and Manchester University set up the National Text-mining centre
(NaCTeM) because it believed in the value of Textmining and has spent
considerable public funds on it. It covers many fields in medicine ,
bioscience and chemistry at least.
* JISC  has recently published a position statement on text-mining which
asserts its considerable value.
* The UK government has initiated the Hargreaves report which specifically
recommended that exceptions or changes to copyright law be made for the
purpose of, inter alia, textmining.
* there are many conferences on the value of textmining in science - I will
list some if you don't trust this assertion



> 2. One of the necessary conditions for the kind of text-mining and
> re-use rights PM-R seeks is free online access to the articles
> (Gratis OA).
>

That is an unnecessary simplification. There are at least two major cases:
* where material is "freely available" (Gratis) and where the textminer
wishes to know whether they have rights to mine it.
* where material is toll-access and where the subscriber wishes to text-m
ine it and publish some or all of the mined content under a permissive
licence (e.g. CC0).

There are intermediate cases where material is available in certain places
such as IRs and the conditions and access are unclear.

>
> PM-R keeps reiterating that Gratis OA is not enough,
> but he takes no practical account of the fact that we don't
> even have Gratis OA, that Gratis OA is within reach, via
> mandates, and that more than Gratis OAis not within reach.
>
>
As I said clearly above Gratis OA does not confer automatic rights to
textmine. Note that access to a subset of the literature with
BOAI-compliant rights may be sufficient for many types of textmining
activity. These include generation of corpora and their redistribution,
collections of representative material, educational materials, etc. A major
problem with UK/PMC is that much of the "Open" material is not sufficiently
labelled for re-use.


> Whatever you call it, "Libre OA" or Gratis OA plus certain
> further re-use rights is not within reach today. Publishers oppose
> it and it is not at all clear whether all, many, or most authors
> want it -- but it is clear that only 20% of authors are providing
> even just Gratis OA.
>

And - as I have just said, even 10% of the literature as BOAI-compliant OA
is valuable for many purposes. The problem is that the 10% is not clearly
defined and in practice.

I support Green OA rather than nothing but where authors and funders wish
to provide re-usable material they should be taken seriously and the issues
carefully looked at.

>
> Hence immediate burden of the OA movement is not, as PM-R
> suggests, to gather evidence as to how many authors need and
> want the further re-use rights PM-R seeks.
>


> Nor is there any practical
> strategy for mandating the further re-use rights PM-R seeks.
>
> I many cases this is simply the labelling of material correctly and the
correct use of terminology. (It is a great pity that "Libre" means almost
nothing in this area).

The immediate priority is to mandate the Green Gratis
> OA that is already within reach -- and that also happens
> to be a necessary condition for the further re-use rights PM-R
> seeks.
>

but not a sufficient condition. 100% Green OA would per se give 0% re-use
rights

>
> I urge PM-R to stop arguing that Gratis OA is not enough,
>

Maybe I will have a dream tonight and see the One True Green Path.



-- 
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
___
GOAL mailing list
GOAL@eprints.org
http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal

[GOAL] Re: Some discussion points for the UK OA initiative

[Steve Hitchcock]

> [Keith Jeffery] (lack of) reciprocity is a fear among some in UK.  I detect 
> that we have lost the Green is better than Gold argument in UK, not least 
> because the powerful biomedical community stampeded into Gold (but let us see 
> what the Finch committee comes up with). 

We can see the way the Finch discussions are going. Tim Brody provided some 
pointers on this list

On 2 May 2012, at 13:05, Tim Brody wrote:

> Unfortunately they seem to have a focus on "big deal" licensing (!) and
> author-pays economics. I haven't heard anything from their institutional
> repository sub-group, although there are a lot of layers between me and
> them ... hopefully IRs - a solution to access - won't get drowned out by
> licensing/author-pays reform - a solution to library budget constraints
> - in their report.

Stephen Curry has blogged some selected extracts from the committee's minutes 
http://occamstypewriter.org/scurry/2012/05/05/access-to-the-finch-committee-on-open-access/

For what it's worth, my own tweeted summary of the minutes of the Feb meeting 
was:
>  not as bullish on #openaccess as Willetts. Lots on licensing, transition to 
> APCs; short-termism on #repositories

What's clear is how difficult it will be for the committee to produce coherent 
OA advice if it tries to extend current green OA policy without any clear 
commitment to funding other approaches, which Finch does not have. To put it 
another way, take the green case out and see what is left - the Finch minutes 
will enlighten.

OTOH, a Wired interview with Jimmy Wales today suggests a more belligerent 
approach
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-05/08/jimmy-wales-open-access-scientific-journals
(Jimmy Wales has been invited to advise the UK government, but is not on the 
Finch committee)

Moving on to data, RCUK seems to be ahead of Finch in making its proposals to 
strengthen OA policy. Its section on research data is as follows - summary, 
there is a presumption of access to data that supports a research publication, 
but not open access.

(8) Acknowledgement of funding sources and access to the underlying research 
materials
Proposed Policy Research papers which result from research that is wholly or 
partially funded by the Research Councils must include details of the funding 
that supported the research, and a statement on how the underlying research 
materials - such as data, samples or models – can be accessed.

What would be different?
The Research Councils’ policy already requires funding information to be 
included within the acknowledgement section of a paper. The need for a 
statement on how underlying research materials can be accessed is currently in 
place for some, but not all of the Research Councils. As part of supporting the 
drive for openness and transparency in the research funded by the Research 
Councils, we are extending this policy to all Research Councils.

The underlying research materials do not necessarily have to be made Open 
Access, however details of relevant access policies must be included.

END RCUK extract

Driven partly by RCUK initiatives, a number of JISC projects are assessing 
institutional support for data management. I won't go into the issues here, but 
it would seem bizarre to be building repository infrastructure for data if, as 
Keith suggests, the case for green is lost. While there is caution about 
linking the two initiatives prematurely, they have to be seen as mutually 
reinforcing. It's time to deploy every case for IRs that we can.

Steve Hitchcock
WAIS Group, Building 32
School of Electronics and Computer Science
University of Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK
Email: sh...@ecs.soton.ac.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/stevehit
Connotea: http://www.connotea.org/user/stevehit
Tel: +44 (0)23 8059 9379Fax: +44 (0)23 8059 9379

On 7 May 2012, at 17:43,   
wrote:

> Stevan -
> As always succinct points.  Comments inline.
> Best
> Keith
> 
> 
> Keith G Jeffery  Director International Relations   STFC
> ---
> The contents of this email are sent in confidence for the use of the intended 
> recipient only.  If you are not one of the intended recipients do not take 
> action on it or show it to anyone else, but return this email to the sender 
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> .
> --
> 
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of 
> Stevan Harnad
> Sent: 07 May 2012 14:55
> To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
> Cc: jisc-repositor...@jiscmail.ac.uk
> Subject: [GOAL] Some

[GOAL] Re: Some discussion points for the UK OA initiative

[Stevan Harnad]

For the perplexed reader:
1. Peter Murray-Rust is a dedicated advocate for certain text-mining and
re-use rights that are very important and very fruitful in certain fields
of research (but not all, and probably not many).

2. One of the necessary conditions for the kind of text-mining and
re-use rights PM-R seeks is free online access to the articles
(Gratis OA).

3. We do not yet have Gratis OA, because authors are not providing
it, partly out of sluggishness and partly out of fear (see Keith
Jeffery's posting on publisher FUD), even though virtually all authors 
want Gratis OA and even though the majority of journals (including 
almost all the top journals in almost all fields) already endorse their 
authors providing immediate Gratis OA by self-archiving their refereed
final drafts in their institutional repository (Green Gratis OA).

4. Only about 20% of articles are being made Gratis OA (because
of author sluggishness and fear of FUD) even though over 60% 
of journals endorse immediate Green Gratis OA, 90% endorse it 
after an embargo, and user needs during the embargo can be fulfilled 
via "Almost-OA" using the institutional repositories' semi-automatic 
email-eprint-request Button.

5. Research institutions and funders are in a position to
mandate (require) Green Gratis OA, as the remedy for author
sluggishness and fear of FUD, which would immediately
generate at least 60% immediate Green Gratis OA, plus 40%
embargoed OA and Almost-OA.

PM-R keeps reiterating that Gratis OA is not enough, 
but he takes no practical account of the fact that we don't 
even have Gratis OA, that Gratis OA is within reach, via 
mandates, and that more than Gratis OAis not within reach.

We would be at an OA impasse if grasping the Green
Gratis OA that is already within immediate reach of
Green Gratis OA mandates is discouraged as not being
enough, because it does not meet all the potential needs
of some fields.

Whatever you call it, "Libre OA" or Gratis OA plus certain
further re-use rights is not within reach today. Publishers oppose
it and it is not at all clear whether all, many, or most authors
want it -- but it is clear that only 20% of authors are providing
even just Gratis OA.

Hence immediate burden of the OA movement is not, as PM-R 
suggests, to gather evidence as to how many authors need and 
want the further re-use rights PM-R seeks. Nor is there any practical 
strategy for mandating the further re-use rights PM-R seeks.

The immediate priority is to mandate the Green Gratis
OA that is already within reach -- and that also happens
to be a necessary condition for the further re-use rights PM-R 
seeks.

I urge PM-R to stop arguing that Gratis OA is not enough,
and that what is needed instead is Gratis OA plus certain 
further re-use rights.

Stop letting the out-of-reach best get in the way of 
grasping the within reach better.

We'll all end up a lot better off that way.

Stevan Harnad

On 2012-05-08, at 3:59 AM, Peter Murray-Rust wrote:



  On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 11:11 PM, Stevan Harnad
   wrote:
Richard, you are quite right that making research data
open for all
to mine is not the same thing as making the texts of
research articles
(Libre) OA for text-mining, and you are also right that
there are
different problems associated with each.

  I should point out that Libre OA as defined by Suber-Harnad does not
  automatically give rights for textmining. Libre OA indicates that
  "some permission barriers are removed" - it does not indicate what
  those barriers are. For example by default an toll-access article
  may not be posted in an Institutional repository. The permission to
  post it is the removal of a barrier. However that permission does
  not allow text-mining as the copyirgh and re-use rights remain with
  other parties (publisher or repository or both). For this reason the
  phrase "LibreOA" is operationally meaningless - it may have
  political value. Wiley claims "fully open access" for its Gold
  hybrid and no doubt would label it as LibreOA but I can see no
  difference between it and publisher-supported Green OA other than
  that Wiley is 3000 USD better off and the research community is
  worse and that the authors can claim they have "Gold OA".

  I urge people to realise that textmining requires an explicit
  statement of rights of re-use.
   
  Making article texts open for text-mining calls for Libre OA.


Specifically it calls for BOAI-compliant LibreOA, not just "LibreOA". It
also calls for clear licensing with something equivalent to CC-BY or CC0.
 

  But few publishers endorse Libre OA, for fear of 3rd-party
  free-riders.


BMC and PLoS do this enthusastically. I have seen no serious evidence of
free-riders.
 
  (Moreover, some flavors of Libre OA call for further re-use
  

[GOAL] Re: Some discussion points for the UK OA initiative

[Peter Murray-Rust]

On Tue, May 8, 2012 at 11:50 AM, Stevan Harnad  wrote:
  For the perplexed reader:

I hope that it is allowed to discuss matters on this list other than the
absolute need for the whole world to move towards Green OA and that their
arguments can be read and acted on. There are a  number of inaccuracies in what
is posted here and I have to go through the process of correcting them
 
1. Peter Murray-Rust is a dedicated advocate for certain text-mining and
re-use rights that are very important and very fruitful in certain fields
of research

 
  (but not all, and probably not many).


The "probably not many"  is not based on evidence and does not help the tone of
the debate. The following are evidence:
* JISC  and Manchester University set up the National Text-mining centre
(NaCTeM) because it believed in the value of Textmining and has spent
considerable public funds on it. It covers many fields in medicine , bioscience
and chemistry at least.
* JISC  has recently published a position statement on text-mining which 
asserts
its considerable value.
* The UK government has initiated the Hargreaves report which specifically
recommended that exceptions or changes to copyright law be made for the purpose
of, inter alia, textmining.
* there are many conferences on the value of textmining in science - I will list
some if you don't trust this assertion



2. One of the necessary conditions for the kind of text-mining and
re-use rights PM-R seeks is free online access to the articles
(Gratis OA).


That is an unnecessary simplification. There are at least two major cases:
* where material is "freely available" (Gratis) and where the textminer wishes
to know whether they have rights to mine it.
* where material is toll-access and where the subscriber wishes to text-m ine it
and publish some or all of the mined content under a permissive licence (e.g.
CC0). 

There are intermediate cases where material is available in certain places such
as IRs and the conditions and access are unclear.

PM-R keeps reiterating that Gratis OA is not enough,  but he takes no
practical account of the fact that we don't 
even have Gratis OA, that Gratis OA is within reach, via 
mandates, and that more than Gratis OAis not within reach.

 
As I said clearly above Gratis OA does not confer automatic rights to textmine.
Note that access to a subset of the literature with BOAI-compliant rights may be
sufficient for many types of textmining activity. These include generation of
corpora and their redistribution, collections of representative material,
educational materials, etc. A major problem with UK/PMC is that much of the
"Open" material is not sufficiently labelled for re-use.
 
Whatever you call it, "Libre OA" or Gratis OA plus certain further re-use
rights is not within reach today. Publishers oppose
it and it is not at all clear whether all, many, or most authors
want it -- but it is clear that only 20% of authors are providing
even just Gratis OA.


And - as I have just said, even 10% of the literature as BOAI-compliant OA is
valuable for many purposes. The problem is that the 10% is not clearly defined
and in practice.

I support Green OA rather than nothing but where authors and funders wish to
provide re-usable material they should be taken seriously and the issues
carefully looked at.

Hence immediate burden of the OA movement is not, as PM-R 
suggests, to gather evidence as to how many authors need and 
want the further re-use rights PM-R seeks. 

 
  Nor is there any practical 
strategy for mandating the further re-use rights PM-R seeks.

I many cases this is simply the labelling of material correctly and the correct
use of terminology. (It is a great pity that "Libre" means almost nothing in
this area).

The immediate priority is to mandate the Green Gratis
OA that is already within reach -- and that also happens
to be a necessary condition for the further re-use rights PM-R 
seeks.


but not a sufficient condition. 100% Green OA would per se give 0% re-use rights

I urge PM-R to stop arguing that Gratis OA is not enough,


Maybe I will have a dream tonight and see the One True Green Path.



--
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069




[ Part 2: "Attached Text" ]

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[GOAL] Re: Some discussion points for the UK OA initiative

[Steve Hitchcock]

> [Keith Jeffery] (lack of) reciprocity is a fear among some in UK.  I detect 
> that we have lost the Green is better than Gold argument in UK, not least 
> because the powerful biomedical community stampeded into Gold (but let us see 
> what the Finch committee comes up with). 

We can see the way the Finch discussions are going. Tim Brody provided some 
pointers on this list

On 2 May 2012, at 13:05, Tim Brody wrote:

> Unfortunately they seem to have a focus on "big deal" licensing (!) and
> author-pays economics. I haven't heard anything from their institutional
> repository sub-group, although there are a lot of layers between me and
> them ... hopefully IRs - a solution to access - won't get drowned out by
> licensing/author-pays reform - a solution to library budget constraints
> - in their report.

Stephen Curry has blogged some selected extracts from the committee's minutes 
http://occamstypewriter.org/scurry/2012/05/05/access-to-the-finch-committee-on-open-access/

For what it's worth, my own tweeted summary of the minutes of the Feb meeting 
was:
>  not as bullish on #openaccess as Willetts. Lots on licensing, transition to 
> APCs; short-termism on #repositories

What's clear is how difficult it will be for the committee to produce coherent 
OA advice if it tries to extend current green OA policy without any clear 
commitment to funding other approaches, which Finch does not have. To put it 
another way, take the green case out and see what is left - the Finch minutes 
will enlighten.

OTOH, a Wired interview with Jimmy Wales today suggests a more belligerent 
approach
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-05/08/jimmy-wales-open-access-scientific-journals
(Jimmy Wales has been invited to advise the UK government, but is not on the 
Finch committee)

Moving on to data, RCUK seems to be ahead of Finch in making its proposals to 
strengthen OA policy. Its section on research data is as follows - summary, 
there is a presumption of access to data that supports a research publication, 
but not open access.

(8) Acknowledgement of funding sources and access to the underlying research 
materials
Proposed Policy Research papers which result from research that is wholly or 
partially funded by the Research Councils must include details of the funding 
that supported the research, and a statement on how the underlying research 
materials - such as data, samples or models – can be accessed.

What would be different?
The Research Councils’ policy already requires funding information to be 
included within the acknowledgement section of a paper. The need for a 
statement on how underlying research materials can be accessed is currently in 
place for some, but not all of the Research Councils. As part of supporting the 
drive for openness and transparency in the research funded by the Research 
Councils, we are extending this policy to all Research Councils.

The underlying research materials do not necessarily have to be made Open 
Access, however details of relevant access policies must be included.

END RCUK extract

Driven partly by RCUK initiatives, a number of JISC projects are assessing 
institutional support for data management. I won't go into the issues here, but 
it would seem bizarre to be building repository infrastructure for data if, as 
Keith suggests, the case for green is lost. While there is caution about 
linking the two initiatives prematurely, they have to be seen as mutually 
reinforcing. It's time to deploy every case for IRs that we can.

Steve Hitchcock
WAIS Group, Building 32
School of Electronics and Computer Science
University of Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK
Email: sh...@ecs.soton.ac.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/stevehit
Connotea: http://www.connotea.org/user/stevehit
Tel: +44 (0)23 8059 9379Fax: +44 (0)23 8059 9379

On 7 May 2012, at 17:43,   
wrote:

> Stevan -
> As always succinct points.  Comments inline.
> Best
> Keith
> 
> 
> Keith G Jeffery  Director International Relations   STFC
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> -Original Message-
> From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of 
> Stevan Harnad
> Sent: 07 May 2012 14:55
> To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
> Cc: jisc-repositor...@jiscmail.ac.uk
> Subject: [GOAL]