** Apologies for Cross-Posting **
Re: Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity
http://www.oacompact.org/compact/
(Hyperlinked version of this posting:
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/627-guid.html )
I've said this so often now, unheeded, that all I can do is echo it yet again:
Regardless of the size of the asking price ("reasonable" or
unreasonable), it is an enormous strategic mistake for a university or
research funder to commit to pre-emptive payment of Open Access
Journal Publishing fees (Gold OA) until and unless the university or
funder has first mandated Green OA self-archiving for all of its own
published journal article output (regardless of whether published in
OA or non-OA journals).
There are so far five signatories to the "Compact for Open-Access
Equity." Two of them have mandated Green OA (Harvard and MIT) and
three have not (Cornell, Dartmouth, Berkeley). Many non-mandating
universities have also been committing to the the pre-emptive SCOAP3
consortium.
If Harvard's and MIT's example is followed, and Green OA mandates grow
globally ahead of Gold OA commitments, then there's no harm done.
But if it is instead pre-emptive commitments to fund Gold OA that
grow, at the expense of mandates to provide Green OA, then the
worldwide research community will yet again have shot itself in the
foot insofar as universal OA -- so long within its reach, yet still
not grasped -- is concerned.
Harnad, S. (1991) Post-Gutenberg Galaxy: The Fourth Revolution in the
Means of Production of Knowledge. Public-Access Computer Systems
Review 2 (1): 39 - 53
Harnad, S. (1995) Universal FTP Archives for Esoteric Science and
Scholarship: A Subversive Proposal. In: Ann Okerson & James O'Donnell
(Eds.) Scholarly Journals at the Crossroads; A Subversive Proposal for
Electronic Publishing. Washington, DC., Association of Research
Libraries, June 1995.
Harnad, S. (1999) Free at Last: The Future of Peer-Reviewed Journals.
D-Lib Magazine 5(12) December 1999
Harnad, S., Carr, L., Brody, T. & Oppenheim, C. (2003) Mandated online
RAE CVs Linked to University Eprint Archives. Ariadne 35.
Harnad, S., Brody, T., Vallieres, F., Carr, L., Hitchcock, S.,
Gingras, Y, Oppenheim, C., Stamerjohanns, H., & Hilf, E. (2004) The
Access/Impact Problem and the Green and Gold Roads to Open Access.
Serials Review 30. Shorter version: The green and the gold roads to
Open Access. Nature Web Focus.
Harnad, S. (2006) Opening Access by Overcoming Zeno's Paralysis, in
Jacobs, N., Eds. Open Access: Key Strategic, Technical and Economic
Aspects. Chandos.
Harnad, S. (2007) The Green Road to Open Access: A Leveraged
Transition. In: Anna Gacs. The Culture of Periodicals from the
Perspective of the Electronic Age. L'Harmattan. 99-106.
Harnad, S. (2008) The PostGutenberg Open Access Journal. To appear in:
Cope, B. & Phillips, A (Eds.) The Future of the Academic Journal.
Chandos.
Received on Tue Sep 15 2009 - 13:20:49 BST