JQ Johnson wrote:
Assuming that there is in fact a lot of author negativity towards
having multiple versions, what can we do to fix the problem?
Comment:
As JQ points out in another post, this does indeed appear to be a
barrier to self-archiving for some authors, one that varies by
discipline.
Three possible approaches:
One-on-one: could this be an opportunity to turn the conversation
towards full open access publishing? This is not to say that you
would not want to come back to self-archiving of the author's version,
perhaps even in the same conversation. Publishing with a traditional
publisher and archiving a version that is different from the final
version is a trade-off, especially if there are embargoes involved.
This approach might in some cases lead to more in-depth discussion
with the faculty member, which would give us an opportunity to learn
more about why this is a problem from their perspective, and in some
cases some tips about what would be an incentive. For example, I
suspect that one of the hesitations with the author's final version,
in some cases, is knowing exactly what this version is, and when it is
ready. If publishers wish to support OA in this way, they could send
the author a note saying - if you're self-archiving, you might want to
use this version, couldn't they?
Research (and the one-on-one interview could be part of a research
approach): to uncover the extent to which this perception is an
issue, and - more importantly, from my perspective - why it is an
issue. For example, it strikes me as possible that some people might
not like the idea of having a copy out there which has not been
professionally copyedited or formatted like the publisher's PDF. In
such cases, is there any possibility of providing help to the faculty
person to ensure the author's version is of high quality? Light
copyediting is not expensive, and modern word processing software
makes it fairly easy to create articles that look good, too. If
citation expectations is the problem, then this could be because
citation style guides are not optimized for today's scholarship. From
my perspective as a reader / author / editor, if there is an open
access copy, the URL should always be included, even if this is
against the citation stye guide rules.
Research should not just focus on the barriers, though; more exciting
to me is the possibilities that open up with self-archiving. An
author who actively practices self-archiving has a URL to a collection
(or collections) of their own works, for example. If a reader goes to
an article in the IR, they have an easy way to look up other works by
the same author; here is where the IR version has an advantage over
the journal version. An author's version can be creative commons
licensed, even libre open access. If it is easy to copy (and
appropriately cite, of course), a chart, graph or paragraph, it makes
sense that people would be more likely to cite (another topic for
research; here, you would have to compare articles on a fine-grained
basis).
Education focused on exploring the possibilities: this is an indirect
approach. Rather than focus on this particular conversation, help all
of us to dream of the possibilities of the new environment, and
connect the dots with the overall opportunities of the new medium, and
the need for transformation in scholarly communication. Depending on
the discipline, what might be exciting is the new availability of
primary sources in searchable, manipulable digital format, the ability
to post online oral histories, open data, new forms of communication
such as blogs or wikis, or the enhanced potential for reader/ author
communication. In some cases, it may even be worthwhile to highlight
the experiments of traditional publishers, such as Nature Precedings
or the journals that publish articles online in advance of the issue.
As for leading to conversation on transforming scholarly
communication, if the author is reluctant to post an author's version,
perhaps they might be concerned about the difficulty of publishing
monographs in their area? What are the possibilities if we were to
take the excessive profits of some of these journals producing these
"versions of record", and redirect the monies to support the
publication of scholarly monographs? From my point of view, the more
scholars out there thinking about things like this, the better.
Many thanks to JQ for raising an important and timely issue.
best,
Heather Morrison, MLIS
PhD Student, SFU School of Communication
http://pages.cmns.sfu.ca/heather-morrison/
The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com
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