Re: [BOAI] Fwd: The OA Deposit-Fee Kerfuffle: APA's Not Responsible; NIH Is
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I am a little puzzled by Stevan Harnad's accusation of "hypothetical
conditional". When he writes: "It would certainly have put
APA in a very bad light if, having given its authors the green light
to self-archive in their own IRs, APA then decided to slap a $2500
traffic ticket on them for going ahead and doing so!", is this not
another hypothetical conditional?
Jean-Claude Guédon
Le mercredi 16 juillet 2008 à 20:57 -0400, Stevan Harnad a écrit :
** Cross-Posted **
In Open Access News, Peter Suber commented on my posting
-- "In Defense of the American Psychological
Association's Green OA Policy" -- which defended the APA
from criticism for levying a $2500 fee on authors for
compliance with the NIH mandate to deposit in PubMed
Central (PMC). I had said the problem was with NIH's
stipulation that the deposit had to be in PMC rather than
in the author's own Institutional Repository (IR),
because the APA has been a Green publisher since 2002,
endorsing deposit in the author's IR immediately upon
acceptance for publication, with no fee.
Peter Suber: "Stevan is mixing up unrelated
issues. The APA "deposit fee" had nothing to
do with the distinction between disciplinary
repositories (like PMC) and institutional
repositories. If the NIH mandated deposit in
IRs instead of PMC, then the APA would demand
a $2,500 fee for deposit in IRs, and the fee
would be equally noxious and indefensible.
Even if the NIH's preference for PMC were as
foolish as Stevan says it is (a criticism I
do not share), it would not justify the APA
fee."
Peter seems to be replying with a hypothetical
conditional, regarding what the APA would have done. But
the APA has already been formally endorsing immediate
Open Access self-archiving in the author's own IR for six
years now. Moreover (see below), the publisher, Gary
Vandenbos, has confirmed that APA has not changed that
policy, nor are there plans to change it.
What needs to be changed is one small detail of NIH's
policy: the requirement to deposit directly in PMC. The
locus of deposit should be the author's own IR. PMC can
harvest the metadata and link to the full-text in the IR.
This will cost NIH authors nothing. And APA has no plans
to change its Green OA self-archiving policy. (It would
certainly have put APA in a very bad light if, having
given its authors the green light to self-archive in
their own IRs, APA then decided to slap a $2500 traffic
ticket on them for going ahead and doing so!)
____________________________________________________________________________
Date: 15 Jul 2008 23:28:40 -0400
To: Gary
Vandenbos (Publisher, American
Psychological Association
Journals)
Cc: Alan
Kazdin (President, American
Psychological Association)
Subject: In Defense of the
American Psychological
Association's Green OA Policy
Hi Gary (and Alan),
As long as APA does not dream of
back-sliding on its 6-year green
OA policy on institutional
self-archiving, you can count on
my firm support in the
forthcoming onslaught from OA
advocates worldwide, and you will
weather the storm and come out
looking good.
But please do reply to reassure
me that back-sliding is not an
option!
Best wishes, Stevan
Date: 16 Jul 2008 2:05:49 AM EDT (CA),
From: Gary VandenBos
Steven, I expect no change in the existing
policy. Have not ever heard anyone suggest
it.
Gary
Date: 16 Jul 2008 13:22:08 +0100
(BST)
To: Gary VandenBos
Splendid. Expect a spirited (and
successful) defense that will
leave APA looking benign and
responsible (as it indeed is).
The problem is in the
well-meaning juggernauts (in this
case, NIH OA policy-makers) that
simply do not think things
through.
Best wishes, Stevan
____________________________________________________________________________
Peter Suber: "Stevan points to a 2002
APA policy statement, still online, which
allows self-archiving in IRs. But he doesn't
point out that the APA's newer policy
statement describing the "deposit fee"
effectively negates the older green policy,
at least for NIH-funded authors. The new
policy prohibits NIH-funded authors from
depositing their postprints in any OA
repository, disciplinary or institutional."
The 2002 APA policy statement is not only still online
and still in effect, but we have the publisher's word
that there is to be no change in that policy.
Peter Suber: "The title of Stevan's post
suggests that he's defending the APA's 2002
self-archiving policy. I join him in that.
But the body of his post attempts to defend
the 2008 deposit fee as well: "Although
it looks bad on the face of it...things are
not always as they seem." Not always, but
this time."
Not this time, and never for a publisher that is Green on
OA. Once a publisher is Green on OA, there is nothing
more that can or should be demanded of them, by the
research community. The ball is now in the research
community's court. It is up to research institutions and
research funders to design sensible policies that will
ensure that the researchers they employ and fund actually
provide Green OA for their joint research output.
Not all research is funded (and certainly not all by
NIH), but (virtually) all researchers have institutions.
And all institutions are just a piece of free software,
some server-space, and a few hours of sysad set-up and
maintenance time away from having an IR, if they do not
already have one.
The sensible OA mandate, from both institutions and
funders (like NIH) is to require deposit in the
researcher's own IR, immediately upon acceptance for
publication. If there is an embargo, the deposit can be
Closed Access during the embargo. The IR's "email eprint
request" button will provide almost-immediate, almost-OA
for all user needs during any embargo.
If funders or others want to create institution-external,
central collections of already-OA content, based on
subject matter, funder, nationality, or whatever, then
they can harvest the metadata and link to the full-text
in the IR in which it was deposited. But there is
certainly no reason to insist that it be deposited
directly in their collections. Google, for example,
quietly harvests anything: no need to deposit things in
Google. And no charge.
Peter Suber: "Both arguments are moot for a
while, now that the APA has taken down the
new policy statement for "re-examination".
(See the 7/16/08 update to my blog post on
the policy.)"
I don't doubt that well-meaning OA supporters who have
not thought it through are now railing at APA instead of
resolutely requesting that NIH make the minor
modification in its otherwise admirable, timely, and
welcome policy that would put an end to this nonsense and
let researchers get on with the urgent task of providing
OA by depositing their own research in their own OA IRs,
free for all, webwide.
(For the record, and the too literal-minded: Of course a
$2500 fee for depositing in PMS is absurd, but what
reduced us to this absurdity was needlessly mandating
direct deposit in PMS in the first place. Time to remedy
the absurdity and let researchers' fingers do the
walking so we can all reach 100% OA at long last.)
A Simple Way to Optimize the NIH Public
Access Policy (Oct 2004)
Optimizing OA Self-Archiving Mandates: What?
Where? When? Why? How? (Sept 2006)
THE FEEDER AND THE DRIVER: Deposit
Institutionally, Harvest Centrally (Jan 2008)
Optimize the NIH Mandate Now: Deposit
Institutionally, Harvest Centrally (Jan 2008)
How To Integrate University and Funder Open
Access Mandates (Mar 2008)
NIH Invites Recommendations on How to
Implement and Monitor Compliance with Its OA
Self-Archiving Mandate (Apr 2008)
Institutional Repositories vs Subject/Central
Repositories (Jun 2008)
Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum
Jean-Claude Guédon
Université de Montréal
Received on Fri Jul 18 2008 - 08:06:40 BST
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