On Mon, 18 Feb 2008, Klaus Graf wrote:
> Stevan Harnad wrote:
>
> > The ID/OA mandate is to *deposit* -- not to make OA. There are no legal
> > strictures, for example, on Closed Access deposit.
>
> That's right. But such a mandate is in the same way helpful like
> convincing publishers that OA (= Open Access, not: Optional Access) is
> great.
The ID/OA mandate has nothing to do with publishers. It was designed to
remove publishers from the causal and decisional loop, as the research
community determined what it wants to do with its own published research
output. It is a compromise mandate that moots any legal obstacles and
allows consensus when it cannot be quickly reached with a stronger
mandate (such as immediate OA).
> Closed Access deposit helps nothing.
Nothing?
(1) It makes it possible to adopt a deposit mandate (ID/OA) that ensures
the immediate deposit of 100% of research article output: No exceptions,
no delays, no embargoes, no opt-outs. It gets the all-important keystrokes
done, at long last. The keystrokes have always been the only thing
standing between the research community and Open Access to its outputs.
(2) Without ID/OA, mandates become even weaker delayed-deposit mandates,
which are much worse (if agreement on a mandate can be reached at all:
the weaker ID/OA is the consensus-maker when agreement cannot be reached
on a stronger mandate).
(3) ID/OA makes it possible to make the majority of the deposits
OA immediately upon deposit, and, with the help of the Button, it makes
it possible to provide almost-immediate, almost-OA to all the rest
during any embargo. 100% maximized access: 62% OA, 38% almost-OA.
(4) Growing pressure from the greatly accelerated growth of OA and
almost-OA with universal ID/OA mandates will also accelerate the natural
and well-deserved deaths of all access embargoes (hence Closed Access).
(5) None of this happens (or happens much more slowly) if you balk at
allowing Closed Access for the time being, today. A compromise ID/OA
mandate is infinitely preferable to a still weaker (delayed deposit)
mandate, or no consensus on the adoption of any mandate at all.
> *If publishers don't want OA the articles remain CA permanently.
Without OA mandates, the articles' fate is even worse, and research
access is even less.
> * Why should scholarly authors act in a fair way using the mail
> button? If they don't know the person who requests the article there
> is high probability that they won't mail the article. There is no
> empirical proof that this would be a better model than the "ask the
> author" solution which is common practice without any mandate.
I think this last point illustrates how exceedingly out of touch Klaus
Graf is with the actual needs, practices and priorities of researchers.
Of course researchers will email eprints to would-be users. They have
been doing so for decades in other (harder, slower, more expensive, less
universal) ways. (And the Button also has a box so the requester can
identify himself and give reasons, if he wishes; for researchers the
email address usually identifies the requester already.)
And the many reasons an ID/OA mandate is (incomparably) better than just
the today's status quo (with "ask the author") is that (a) most articles
are still not deposited at all today, absent a mandate; (b) email eprint
requests for undeposited articles require the extra task of finding the
author's email address and emailing a request instead of just a click
for the seeker, and of retrieving and attaching the article instead of
just a click for the author; (c) with the minority Closed Access deposits
(38%) comes also the majority OA deposits (62%), given an ID/OA mandate,
and (d) ID/OA mandates provide not only 100% access today (62% OA, 38%
almost-OA), but once it universalizes, it will hasten 100% OA thereafter.
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 Mon Feb 18 2008 - 18:16:35 GMT