Re: US University OA Resolutions Omit Most Important Component
I am happy to report that 4 out of the 8 University OA Resolutions in ARL's 2005 list http://www.arl.org/scomm/open_access/2005facultyresolutions.html do *not* omit the all-important self-archiving component of an Open Access Policy. University of Kansas (1) has already registered its policy at http://www.eprints.org/signup/fulllist.php and it is hoped Cornell (2), Case Western Reserve University (3) and University of Wisconsin-Madison (3) will register theirs too! Their self-archiving policies [excerpted] are: (1) University of Kansas: [T]he University of Kansas Faculty Senate... Calls on all faculty of the University of Kansas to... deposit... a digital copy of every article accepted by a peer-reviewed journal into the [KU] ScholarWorks repository, or a similar open access venue http://www.provost.ku.edu/policy/scholarly_information/scholarly_resolution.htm (2) Cornell University: The Senate strongly urges all faculty to deposit preprint or postprint copies of articles in an open access repository such as the Cornell University DSpace Repository... http://www.library.cornell.edu/scholarlycomm/resolution.html (3) University of Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin-Madison...faculty and academic staff researchers... must take action to ensure that their works are accessible to advance research and learning, and specifically should consider... Self-archiving their works in information repositories supported by research institutions and professional societies. http://www.secfac.wisc.edu/senate/20050307/1839.pdf (4) Case Western Reserve University: Be it resolved that the Faculty Senate urges the University and its members to... Post their work prior to publication in an open digital archive and... to post their published work in a timely fashion and provide institutional support to those seeking to do so http://www.case.edu/president/facsen/frames/committees/library/LibraryComReport.pdf Peter Suber has a longer list including earlier University Resolutions at: http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/lists.htm#actions Over 90% of journals already endorse author self-archiving, http://romeo.eprints.org/ so the only thing still needed now is university policies mandating it: http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php http://www.surf.nl/download/Alma%20Swan%20-%20Faculty%20awareness.ppt http://www.eprints.org/berlin3/outcomes.html http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/39903.htm Stevan Harnad AMERICAN SCIENTIST OPEN ACCESS FORUM: A complete Hypermail archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open access to the peer-reviewed research literature online (1998-2005) is available at: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/ To join or leave the Forum or change your subscription address: http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html Post discussion to: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@amsci.org UNIVERSITIES: If you have adopted or plan to adopt an institutional policy of providing Open Access to your own research article output, please describe your policy at: http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php UNIFIED DUAL OPEN-ACCESS-PROVISION POLICY: BOAI-1 (green): Publish your article in a suitable toll-access journal http://romeo.eprints.org/ OR BOAI-2 (gold): Publish your article in a open-access journal if/when a suitable one exists. http://www.doaj.org/ AND in BOTH cases self-archive a supplementary version of your article in your institutional repository. http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/ http://archives.eprints.org/
RE: US University OA Resolutions Omit Most Important Component
In response to a comment by David Prosser, Jan Szczepanski said: I would say that You are absolutely wrong. We don't do the things you say we do. I don't think you, a director at SPARC or I, a librarian from Sweden has that power. NIH could be included in we, that's power, bureaucratic power. As You know bureaucrats are not liked by anyone. If it is not we that force the researcher, who is? It is certainly not up to librarians to issue edicts to researchers on this matter, but employers and funders do have the right to insist on researchers carrying out a course of action. If we replace the rather emotive word 'force' with 'require' then we already know what the outcome would be. Of the almost 1300 researchers recently polled on this issue, the results are as follows: * 81% would WILLINGLY comply with a requirement from their employer or funder to self-archive their articles * 13% would comply reluctantly * 5% would refuse to comply Researchers are part of a research community with a very special and nobel agenda and they act civilized. They do, and they have two other characteristics worth mentioning in this context. Many are still ignorant of open access and its benefits (over 30%, for example, are unaware of self-archiving as a means to provide open access) and they are busy people, for whom the few minutes it takes to self-archive an article may seem a distraction from other work. Just as funders require researchers to take the time to write an end-of-project report, and employers levy an implicit requirement for researchers to publish their results, they can also legitimately require them to spend a few minutes depositing articles in an open access archive. And expect little in the way of dissent, too. Alma Swan Key Perspectives Ltd Truro, UK
Re: US University OA Resolutions Omit Most Important Component
Good news: Cornell University is now the second U.S. University (after University of Kansas) *not* to omit the all-important self-archiving component from its Faculty Senate Resolution on Scholarly Publishing, passed May 11 2005. http://www.library.cornell.edu/scholarlycomm/resolution.html That critical component was this: The Senate strongly urges all faculty to deposit preprint or postprint copies of articles in an open access repository such as the Cornell University DSpace Repository... which is almost identical to the corresponding passage in the University of Kansas Resolution: the University of Kansas Faculty Senate... Calls on all faculty of the University of Kansas to seek amendments... to permit the deposition of a digital copy of every article accepted by a peer-reviewed journal into the ScholarWorks repository... http://www.eprints.org/signup/fullinfo.php?inst=University%20of%20Kansas University of Kansas Registers its Institutional OA Self-Archiving Policy (April 7, 2005) http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/4484.html This means that now Cornell too can register its self-archiving policy, as Kansas has already done, at: http://www.eprints.org/signup/fulllist.php being the second U.S. University to have adopted a self-archiving policy. Registering the new policy and describing its critical self-archiving component will help encourage other universities worldwide to follow suit: http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php Stevan Harnad UNIVERSITIES: If you have adopted or plan to adopt an institutional policy of providing Open Access to your own research article output, please describe your policy at: http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php UNIFIED DUAL OPEN-ACCESS-PROVISION POLICY: BOAI-1 (green): Publish your article in a suitable toll-access journal http://romeo.eprints.org/ OR BOAI-2 (gold): Publish your article in a open-access journal if/when a suitable one exists. http://www.doaj.org/ AND in BOTH cases self-archive a supplementary version of your article in your institutional repository. http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/ http://archives.eprints.org/ AMERICAN SCIENTIST OPEN ACCESS FORUM: A complete Hypermail archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open access to the peer-reviewed research literature online (1998-2005) is available at: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/ To join or leave the Forum or change your subscription address: http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html Post discussion to: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@amsci.org
RE: : US University OA Resolutions Omit Most Important Component
In these discussions about authors doing, or being forced to do, what is 'good for them' we appear to forget that we already force authors to do 'what is good for them'. For example: In return for providing research grants we force researchers to deposit gene sequences, protein sequences, etc. It is not to the benefit of the individual researcher to deposit, they don't volunteer, but we recognise the value of it being done and so insist on it. In doing so we create databases that are of benefit to all researchers. In return for providing research grants we force researchers to write and file end-of-project reports. Again, researchers don't volunteer to write these reports, but we recognise the value of having a reporting step and insist on it. In return for providing (significant) research grants the NIH is now insisting on strategies to make data available. The researchers are not queuing-up to volunteer, but NIH sees it as important and so forces researchers to 'do the right thing'. Open access advocates would argue that in return for research grants funding agencies have the right to 'force' researchers to make a copy of their research papers available through open access. The fact that some may not volunteer to do this no more significant than the fact the some do not volunteer to deposit sequences, write reports, or publicly archive their data. If the funders of research believe it is important then they have a right to 'force' researchers to do something that benefits research by widening access and dissemination of the research they have paid for. David David C Prosser PhD Director SPARC Europe E-mail: david.pros...@bodley.ox.ac.uk Tel: +44 (0) 1865 277 614 Mobile: +44 (0) 7974 673 888 http://www.sparceurope.org -Original Message- [mailto:owner-liblicens...@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Lisa Dittrich Sent: 12 May 2005 03:37 To: liblicens...@lists.yale.edu; mef...@mail.med.cornell.edu Subject: Re: Fwd: US University OA Resolutions Omit Most ImportantComponent People have been educated to death about what's good for them health wise; the public knows all this, they (we) just won't act on it. So the question is, do we legislate behavior? We all know that is the issue now. And who gets legislated/punished? The companies that make the bad products (Mcdonalds, etc.) or the people that practice the bad behaviors (through higher insurance rates, etc.). OA is hardly brand new, and lord knows PLOS and others have worked the press very well indeed. Perhaps (shock!) researchers aren't as generous minded as OA/IR proponents would like to think (remember all that fighting over who discovered the AIDS virus?)? Or perhaps, indeed, busy researchers are just too busy doing their jobs (and the problem is...?) What OA and IR evangelists seem increasingly eager to do is legislate when recruiting volunteers doesn't work. They are like the Republicans ranting about family values--if they can't change peoples hearts, they'll by God force! them to follow the Moral Law as they see it. Researchers give our journal their papers--via an online ms. submission system that we pay a monthly fee for (and that we paid a hefty fee and lots of staff time to start up); that we then review (more staff time, on the part of our editor and other staff); that we generate correspondence for; substantively edit if accepted, etc. etc. etc. The reason the author gives it to us is that he/she wants the imprimature of our journal's name and reputation to enhance his or her reputation. That's the fact. Otherwise, OA/IR advocates would promote simply bypassing the journal process altogether and recommend posting mss. on online repositories and forget we money-grubbing journals altogether. Lisa Dittrich Managing Editor Academic Medicine lrdittr...@aamc.org (e-mail)
Re: US University OA Resolutions Omit Most Important Component
On Mon, 9 May 2005, Lisa Dittrich wrote: I love all the rhetoric about faculty not knowing what's good for them and how they simply have to be educated about the virtues of OA and IRs. Baloney. If it was of value to them, they'd know, and they'd do. Here is a partial reply (re-posted from Alma Swan): Date: Fri, 6 May 2005 17:58:46 +0100 From: Alma Swan a.s...@talk21.com To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Subject: Re: What Provosts Need to Mandate I can now report that I have completed the data analysis for the latest survey on self-archiving and the results on this issue of mandating are as follows: Percentage of authors who would willingly self-archive if their employer or funder required them to do so = 81% Percentage who would do so reluctantly = 13% Percentage who would not self-archive, even with a mandate = 5% The 'most willing' country is the USA, where 88% of authors would self-archive willingly under a mandate and a further 11% would self-archive reluctantly. The 'least willing' is China, where 58% would self-archive willingly and 32% would do so reluctantly. The report is now written and out with reviewers. It will be published by JISC shortly. Alma Swan Key Perspectives Ltd Truro, UK I have been reading lately about how uninterested authors seem to be in OA (except a vocal few) and how the response is we must educate them. Too funny. Summer is upon us: shall we organize special camps? I would say that, for example, the 34,000 biologists who signed the PLoS open letter hardly betoken a lack of interest in OA: http://www.plos.org/about/history.html But there is certainly still a lack of awareness on the part of many researchers about OA, how and why to provide it, and especially about its dramatic influence of research impact: http://opcit.eprints.org/oacitation-biblio.html I will close with some more data from the remarkable Alma Swan, along with her recommendations on ways of raising faculty awareness, from a presentation she is doing in Amsterdam this very day: -- Making the strategic case for institutional repositories (CNI, JISC, SURF) Amsterdam, May 10-11 Alma Swan (2005) Session on [Raising] Faculty Awareness http://www.surf.nl/en/bijeenkomsten/index4.php?oid=6 AWARENESS OF SELF-ARCHIVING: Of those who have not self-archived any articles: -- 29% are aware of the possibility of providing open access this way -- 71% are not -- Non-archivers = 51% of the population -- 31% of researchers are not aware of the possibility of self-archiving -- Only 10% of self-archivers know about the SHERPA/RoMEO publisher policies directory http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php -- Less than 25% are aware of the UK House of Commons Select Committee recommendations http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/39903.htm -- Less than 25% are aware of the NIH proposals What to do about author awareness, then? Make them AWARE: -- of the citation advantage of open access work -- of the existence of IRs and what is in them -- that THEY can self-archive too and reap the benefits easy to do -- doesn't take long - just a few minutes, a few keystrokes http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10688/ -- copyright -- of moves on the official requirement to self-archive -- officially require them to self-archive! POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT: -- Providing hit statistics http://eprints.comp.utas.edu.au:81/ http://citebase.eprints.org/analysis/correlation.php -- Demonstrating the citation advantage http://citebase.eprints.org/isi_study/ http://www.crsc.uqam.ca/lab/chawki/ch.htm -- Showing how to find citation counts http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/search -- Stevan Harnad AMERICAN SCIENTIST OPEN ACCESS FORUM: A complete Hypermail archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open access to the peer-reviewed research literature online (1998-2005) is available at: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/ To join or leave the Forum or change your subscription address: http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html Post discussion to: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@amsci.org UNIVERSITIES: If you have adopted or plan to adopt an institutional policy of providing Open Access to your own research article output, please describe your policy at: http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php UNIFIED DUAL OPEN-ACCESS-PROVISION POLICY: BOAI-1 (green): Publish your article in a suitable
Re: US University OA Resolutions Omit Most Important Component
While Stevan's push for 100% coverage of academic materials within OA repositories is on target, I still believe that we need a more reliable and universal infrastructure for decentralized repositories ... one that includes long-term support, which means funding for all authors and organized RD for enhanced navigation. The present loose federation of existing D-Space (and other) and possible FEDORA-based institutional repository (IR) platforms does not yet offer the scalable design that we require in order to develop integrated tools with universal storage. Perhaps we need to devlop a blend of IRs and discipline-based repositories (a la arXiv) in order to provide platforms and navigation for all users -- not just those in organizations able to run their own IRs? We have the technology, now we need to focus our support on a plan that provides universal storage and access ... with or without the peer review overlay for the present time. David David Stern Director of Science Libraries and Information Services Kline Science Library New Haven, CT 06520-8111 email: david.e.st...@yale.edu Quoting Stevan Harnad har...@ecs.soton.ac.uk: University Open Access (OA) Resolutions, even toothless, purely abstract ones with no concrete policy proposals, are better than no University OA Resolutions, one would have thought, just as some sort of NIH OA Policy is better than none (one would have thought). [SNIP] The only thing universities need to do in order to make the content that they themselves already provide openly accessible is to keep on publishing it in journals exactly as they always have done, but in addition, to make an online copy of it openly accessible to all would-be users webwide who cannot afford the official published version -- by self-archiving a supplementary draft of every published article in the university's own OA eprint archive. [SNIP] Let us hope that other universities (US and non-US) as well as research institutions and research funders world-wide will not copy/clone diffuse and directionless statements/resolutions such as Columbia's and Berkeley's but instead include the critical concrete component {1} that will convey us all at long last to the optimal and inevitable (and long overdue) outcome for research, researchers, their institutions, their funders, and their funders' funders, the tax-paying public: 100% OA Stevan Harnad
Re: US University OA Resolutions Omit Most Important Component
Dear Stevan, Maybe the problem is reality. Maybe scientists is fighting for their freedom. Maybe scientists feel that Your alternative is taken that freedom from them. Maybe their is something wrong when you make it compulsary. In Russia under the Stalin rule many things were compulsory to force people into the communist heaven. Maybe scientists are sceptical when their employer makes something compulsary. Scientists just trust other scientists. That is the problem with the green way. Sincerely Yours Jan Jan Szczepanski Frste bibliotekarie Goteborgs universitetsbibliotek Box 222 SE 405 30 Goteborg, SWEDEN Tel: +46 31 773 1164 Fax: +46 31 163797 E-mail: jan.szczepan...@ub.gu.se Stevan Harnad wrote: University Open Access (OA) Resolutions, even toothless, purely abstract ones with no concrete policy proposals, are better than no University OA Resolutions, one would have thought, just as some sort of NIH OA Policy is better than none (one would have thought). Please Don't Copy-Cat Clone NIH-12 Non-OA Policy! http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/4307.html But, we must ask ourselves, is this really true, at a time when 100% OA is fully within reach and already long overdue, with research access, usage, impact and progress continuing to be needlessly lost, the loss compounded daily, weekly, monthly, as we continue making false starts that miss the point and keep heading us off in the wrong directions (and mostly no direction at all)? [SNIP] What was missing from both was the core component of a targeted university OA policy, the only component with the capacity to move universities to 100% OA rather than continuing to drift aimlessly, as they do now. Of all the US University Statements and Resolutions, the only one that does contain this all-important component (albeit in a needlessly circuitous and somewhat hobbled form, because the part in square brackets is at least 92% superfluous -- http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php) is that of the University of Kansas: [SNIP] All the rest of the US university statements and resolutions so far fail to mention self-archiving at all, going on and on instead about {3} the high costs of journals, about {4} the (putative) need to reform copyright and retain ownership, and about {5} the (putative) need to favor alternative publication venues (by which is meant OA journals), not only by helping to fund them (i.e., {2} above), but even by more favorably evaluating the work that appears in them; and of course there is much abstract and ideological praise for {6} the abstract principle of free(r) access. [SNIP] The only thing universities need to do in order to make the content that they themselves already provide openly accessible is to keep on publishing it in journals exactly as they always have done, but in addition, to make an online copy of it openly accessible to all would-be users webwide who cannot afford the official published version -- by self-archiving a supplementary draft of every published article in the university's own OA eprint archive. With 92% of journals having already given their green light to university self-archiving it is nothing short of absurd to keep harping on retaining copyright {4} and favoring alternative venues {5} instead of simply adopting a policy of self-archiving all university journal article output: http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php [SNIP] Let us hope that other universities (US and non-US) as well as research institutions and research funders world-wide will not copy/clone diffuse and directionless statements/resolutions such as Columbia's and Berkeley's but instead include the critical concrete component {1} that will convey us all at long last to the optimal and inevitable (and long overdue) outcome for research, researchers, their institutions, their funders, and their funders' funders, the tax-paying public: 100% OA Stevan Harnad
Re: US University OA Resolutions Omit Most Important Component
On Wed, 4 May 2005, David Stern wrote: While Stevan's push for 100% coverage of academic materials within OA repositories is on target, I still believe that we need a more reliable and universal infrastructure for decentralized repositories ... one that includes long-term support, which means funding for all authors and organized RD for enhanced navigation. All funding and support are of course welcome, but please, please let us not lose sight (yet again) of the fact that the problem is not that the cupboards are not *there* but that they are (85%) *bare*! http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php?action=analysis http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php?action=analysis http://www.crsc.uqam.ca/lab/chawki/ch.htm That means the immediate problem is *not* an insufficiently reliable and universal infrastructure or insufficiently enhanced navigation. It is insufficient OA content provision (15%). Hence what is needed, urgently, is university *self-archiving policy*, not infrastructural or navigational enhancements: http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php http://www.eprints.org/berlin3/outcomes.html The present loose federation of existing D-Space (and other) and possible FEDORA-based institutional repository (IR) platforms does not yet offer the scalable design that we require in order to develop integrated tools with universal storage. Perhaps we need to devlop a blend of IRs and discipline-based repositories (a la arXiv) in order to provide platforms and navigation for all users -- not just those in organizations able to run their own IRs? Trust me: No blend of the present network of near-empty cupboards will create or invite OA content. Only an explicit OA content-provision policy, by the content-providing institutions, for their own OA cupboards, will generate that missing OA content. Provide the content and the enhancements will all follow as a matter of course. Keep fussing instead about enhancements, and OA will be delayed yet another needless decade. We have the technology, now we need to focus our support on a plan that provides universal storage and access ... with or without the peer review overlay for the present time. Here David Stern is alas simply rehearsing well-worn (and long-answered) worries that have merely been serving to hold back OA for years now, not to advance it: http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#1.Preservation http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#4.Navigation http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#7.Peer Stevan Harnad David Stern Director of Science Libraries and Information Services Kline Science Library New Haven, CT 06520-8111 email: david.e.st...@yale.edu Quoting Stevan Harnad har...@ecs.soton.ac.uk: University Open Access (OA) Resolutions, even toothless, purely abstract ones with no concrete policy proposals, are better than no University OA Resolutions, one would have thought, just as some sort of NIH OA Policy is better than none (one would have thought). [SNIP] The only thing universities need to do in order to make the content that they themselves already provide openly accessible is to keep on publishing it in journals exactly as they always have done, but in addition, to make an online copy of it openly accessible to all would-be users webwide who cannot afford the official published version -- by self-archiving a supplementary draft of every published article in the university's own OA eprint archive. [SNIP] Let us hope that other universities (US and non-US) as well as research institutions and research funders world-wide will not copy/clone diffuse and directionless statements/resolutions such as Columbia's and Berkeley's but instead include the critical concrete component {1} that will convey us all at long last to the optimal and inevitable (and long overdue) outcome for research, researchers, their institutions, their funders, and their funders' funders, the tax-paying public: 100% OA Stevan Harnad
Re: US University OA Resolutions Omit Most Important Component
On Wed, 4 May 2005, Jan Szczepanski. Goteborgs Univ Bibl wrote: Maybe the problem is reality. Maybe scientists [are] fighting for their freedom. Maybe scientists feel that your alternative is [taking] that freedom from them. Maybe [there] is something wrong when you make it compulsary. In Russia under the Stalin rule many things were compulsory to force people into the communist heaven. Maybe scientists are sceptical when their employer makes something compulsory. Scientists just trust other scientists. That is the problem with the green way. Perhaps then scientists also trust empirical survey data rather than individual a-priori speculations. According to the empirical data from two international, cross-disciplinary JISC surveys of scientists (and scholars), when they were asked: If your employer or research funder REQUIRED you to deposit copies of your articles in an open archive...: 79% replied that they would comply WILLINGLY 17% replied that the would comply reluctantly 4% replied that they would not comply http://www.eprints.org/berlin3/ppts/02-AlmaSwan.ppt First study (69%), based on smaller sample is available (as article and report, below). Second study (79%), based on larger sample, is currently being written up. Swan, Alma and Brown, Sheridan (2004) Authors and open access publishing. Learned Publishing 17(3):pp. 219-224. http://cogprints.org/4123/ Swan, Alma and Brown, Sheridan (2004) JISC/OSI JOURNAL AUTHORS SURVEY Report. In JISC Report http://cogprints.org/4125/ http://www.keyperspectives.co.uk/OpenAccessArchive/ Stevan Harnad AMERICAN SCIENTIST OPEN ACCESS FORUM: A complete Hypermail archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open access to the peer-reviewed research literature online (1998-2005) is available at: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/ To join or leave the Forum or change your subscription address: http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html Post discussion to: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@amsci.org UNIVERSITIES: If you have adopted or plan to adopt an institutional policy of providing Open Access to your own research article output, please describe your policy at: http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php UNIFIED DUAL OPEN-ACCESS-PROVISION POLICY: BOAI-1 (green): Publish your article in a suitable toll-access journal http://romeo.eprints.org/ OR BOAI-2 (gold): Publish your article in a open-access journal if/when a suitable one exists. http://www.doaj.org/ AND in BOTH cases self-archive a supplementary version of your article in your institutional repository. http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/ http://archives.eprints.org/