On Tue, 9 Oct 2007, Albanese, Andrew (Library Journal) wrote:
> Hello Stevan: just writing to see if you have any thoughts on the
> UKPMC statement on re-use...seems a little unnecessary to me. Stating
> the obvious? Rather than say "copyright still applies," would it
> not have been more useful to issues guidelines on, say, how to craft a
> copyright clause that facilitates open access? Do these broad statements
> help anyone?
> http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTX041316.html
Yes, Andrew, I too think the UKPMC re-use statement is unnecessary
and stating the obvious. (Even advice on amending copyright clauses to
facilitate Green OA self-archiving is not necessary as a precondition
for self-archiving, or for mandating self-archiving, although it is a good
idea to try to amend copyright where feasible and desired -- hence good
advice is always welcome.)
(1) To begin with, the UKPMC statement is about paid Gold OA, and (for
reasons I have adduced many times before) I believe that -- except for
those researchers and funders who are so well off that money is no object
-- paying for Gold OA at this time is unnecessary and a waste of money
(until and unless most or all of the institutional money that is
currently being spent on subscriptions is released to pay for Gold OA).
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/399w
e152.htm
(2) Successfully establishing a credible, high-quality fleet of paid
Gold OA journals was definitely useful to demonstrate the principle of
paid Gold OA as a feasible one (especially under the current financially
straitened circumstance, with most of the potential Gold OA funds still
tied up in subscriptions); but that does not change the fact that
Gold OA is far from being either the fastest or surest way to scale up
to 100% OA today.
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13309/
(3) The fastest and surest way to scale up to 100% OA today is for
authors to self-archive their articles (Green OA) in their own
Institutional Repositories [IRs] (not in Central Repositories [CRs] like
PubMed Central: CRs should harvest from IRs) -- and for their institutions
and funders to mandate that they do so.
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/136-guid.html
(4) Green OA self-archiving does not require the description or
assertion of any new "re-use rights": All the requisite uses already
come with the Green OA territory itself (i.e., the full text being made
freely accessible to all on the web).
http://listserver.sigmaxi.org/sc/wa.exe?A2=ind06&L=american-scientist-open-a
ccess-forum&F=l&P=102378
So this is a lot of fuss and fanfare about nothing: paid Gold OA,
and direct deposit in 3rd-party CRs like UKPMC. Not what the research
community urgently needs today, nor what will get us there.
Stevan Harnad
AMERICAN SCIENTIST OPEN ACCESS FORUM:
http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.h
tml
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/
UNIVERSITIES and RESEARCH FUNDERS:
If you have adopted or plan to adopt a policy of providing Open Access
to your own research article output, please describe your policy at:
http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/71-guid.html
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/136-guid.html
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 an 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 own institutional repository.
http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/
http://archives.eprints.org/
http://openaccess.eprints.org/
Received on Tue Oct 09 2007 - 19:26:08 BST