With so many publishers allowing self-archiving of the final article
(though not necessarily the published one), or, if you wish, so many
publishers turning 'green' in Stevan Harnad's colour palet, including
Elsevier and Springer, the largest two of the lot, there surely is less
and less of a reason to put off introducing a *requirement* for authors to
make available an open access version in one way or another? Particularly
those whose research has been funded with public money should welcome such
a prod. They are reported to "do so willingly" if it were required.
>From a recent posting by Stevan Harnad:
Quote: "I am more inclined to believe the results of the Swan & Brown
(2004) that I have quoted so frequently: They
"asked authors to say how they would feel if their employer or
funding body required them to deposit copies of their published
articles in... repositories. The vast majority... said they would
do so willingly."
Swan, A. & Brown, S.N. (2004) JISC/OSI Journal Authors Survey
Report.
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/JISCOAreport1.pdf
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3628.html
Swan, A. & Brown, S.N. (2004) Authors and open access
publishing. Learned Publishing 2004:17(3) 219-224.
http://www.ingentaselect.com/rpsv/cw/alpsp/09531513/v17n3/s7/
Note that the critical factor is adding their employer's mandate, not
adding a price-tag of $3000".
One could easily substitute 'funder' for 'employer' in the last sentence, I
would have thought.
Jan Velterop
www.biomedcentral.com
Received on Fri Jul 09 2004 - 14:24:10 BST