Re: [SOAF] Harnad's faulty thinking on OA deposit and APA policy

From: Stevan Harnad <amsciforum_at_gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2008 13:29:50 -0400

On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 8:34 AM, Guédon Jean-Claude
<jean.claude.guedon_at_umontreal.ca> wrote:

      How can Harnad simultaneously state that there is no
      drive on his part against "institution-external OA
      repositories" and then proceed to state point 4?


To repeat: 

No drive against institution-external OA repositories, just a drive
against MANDATING DIRECT DEPOSIT in institution-external OA
repositories.

(Deposit mandates should be convergent, on institutional OA
repositories, not divergent; then institution-external OA
repositories can harvest the deposits from the institutional OA
repositories.)

Reason: 

To facilitate instead of retarding the scaling up to universal OA.

(It would save readers a lot of time and bandwidth if those rushing
to proclaim "Harnad's faulty thinking on OA deposit and APA policy"
would first take the trouble to understand what Harnad is saying on
OA deposit and APA policy...)

Stevan Harnad

 -------- Message d'origine--------
      De: American Scientist Open Access Forum de la part de
      Stevan Harnad
      Date: mar. 22/07/2008 15:44
      À:
      AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
      Objet :      Re: Harnad's faulty thinking on OA deposit
      and APA policy

      On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 2:06 PM, Armbruster, Chris
      <Chris.Armbruster_at_eui.eu>
      wrote in SOAF:

      I fail to see how Harnad's drive against the best that
      exists: large,
      functional and service-oriented repositories, is of any
      service to the OA
      movement.

      (1) No drive against institution-external OA
      repositories, just a drive for
      mandating direct deposit in institutional OA repositories
      instead of
      institution-external ones -- into which the institutional
      repository
      contents can then be harvested.

      (2) Institutions are the research-providers (of all of
      OA's target research
      output, funded and unfunded, across all disciplines,
      institutions and
      countries).

      (3) Institutions are in the position to mandate and
      monitor the deposit of
      all their own research output (funded and unfunded,
      across all
      disciplines) in their own OA institutional repositories.

      (4) Funder OA mandates need to converge with and
      reinforce institutional OA
      mandates, rather than diverge from or compete with them,
      so as to facilitate
      a coherent transition to universal OA.

      Chris keeps talking about the functional benefits of
      central services, which
      are neither disputed  by anything I am saying nor
      diminished in the least by
      the locus of deposit I am urging. Meanwhile Chris
      completely overlooks th
      real problem of OA, which is getting the content
      provided.

      Convergent institutional and funder mandates will
      facilitate and accelerate
      this OA content provision; divergent ones will needlessly
      complicate and
      retard it.

      (APA has, as predicted, withdrawn its proposed $2500
      surcharge for
      institution-external deposit, and continues to be Green
      on immediate deposit
      in the institutional OA repository, without charge, as it
      has been since
      2002.)

      "The OA Deposit-Fee Kerfuffle: APA's Not Responsible; NIH
      Is"
      http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/436-guid.html


      Stevan Harnad


      On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 2:06 PM, Armbruster, Chris
      <Chris.Armbruster_at_eui.eu>
      wrote:

      Stevan Harnad keeps on claiming that the natural and only
      sensible locus for
> Green OA deposits is the institutional repositories. He
      says we must fill
> the institutional repositories first. He also claims
      that any kind of
> service based on repositories (like SSRN, RePEc,
      CiteSeerX, Arxiv, PMC,
> European Research Paper Archive etc.) will then take
      care of itself. The
> proposed solutions is centralised harvesting, inlcuding
      harvesting from IRs
> to PMC.
>
> Steven Harnad is currently publicly applauding the
      policy of the APA
> (American Psychological Association), which wishes to
      charges authors USD
> 2500 for NIH-compliant OA deposit in PMC, but leaves
      standing an earlier
> policy that enables Green OA deposit in the author's IR
      for free.
>
> Given the APA stance, is it conceivable that they would
      watch as all
> manuscripts are harvested by PMC (as a 'third-party'
      provider, like Harnad
> likes to call them) to provide service? The logical
      corollary of the APA
> policy is to slap on conditions that prevent
      harvesting, for why else would
> they seek to prevent deposit in PMC in the first place?
      Now, we may
> speculate on whether APA will back down or not, but the
      fundamental point is
> this one:
> You cannot applaud efforts to prevent Green OA
      archiving in large,
> functional repositories that have a decent service for
      scholars and then say
> we must all deposit in the individual IRs, which are
      little more than a
> storage facility, and then claim that - as in a miracle
      - functionality and
> service will emerge. The point of APA's policy is to
      try to prevent that
> Green OA will ever become functional and meaningful.
>
> I fail to see how Harnad's drive against the best that
      exists: large,
> functional and service-oriented repositories, is of any
      service to the OA
> movement.
>
> Chris Armbruster
>
> http://ssrn.com/author=434782
>
>
Received on Wed Jul 23 2008 - 19:02:07 BST

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