European Commission recommends Open Access archiving for publicly-funded research

From: Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, 4 Apr 2006 18:43:40 +0100

Peter Suber (in Open Access News) is quite right that "This is big"
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_04_02_fosblogarchive.html#114407521001187068
(though it could be even bigger!)

European Commission "Study on the Economic and Technical Evolution of
the Scientific Publication Markets in Europe" policy recommendation:

    RECOMMENDATION A1. GUARANTEE PUBLIC ACCESS TO PUBLICLY-FUNDED
    RESEARCH RESULTS SHORTLY AFTER PUBLICATION. Research funding
    agencies have a central role in determining researchers' publishing
    practices. Following the lead of the NIH and other institutions,
    they should promote and support the archiving of publications in open
    repositories, after a (possibly domain-specific) time period to be
    discussed with publishers. This archiving could become a condition for
    funding. The following actions could be taken at the European level:
    (i) Establish a Europea policy mandating published articles arising
    from EC-funded research to be available after a given time period
    in open access archives, and (ii) Explore with Member States and
    with European research and academic associations whether and how
    such policies and open repositories could be implemented.
http://europa.eu.int/comm/research/science-society/pdf/scientific-publication-study_en.pdf

There is a very simple way to make this very welcome recommendation even
more effective: Separate deposit from OA access-setting: Specify that
the deposit *must* be done immediately upon acceptance for publication,
in all cases, and apply all reference to delay to the timing of the
*access-setting* not deposit. The full-text plus its bibliographic
metadata (author, title, date, journal, etc.) can and should always
be deposited in the author's Institutional Repository immediately upon
acceptance for publication, without a moment's delay.

Access to the metadata can always be made immediately Open Access,
webwide. What can be delayed (for the 7% of articles in journals that do
not yet explicitly give immediate author self-archiving the green light)
is the setting of access to the full-text to Open Access.
http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php

It is of course preferable that access to the full-text too should be
set as Open Access immediately upon deposit. But if the author wishes,
access-privileges to the full-text can instead be set as Restricted Access
(author-only) instead of Open Access for "a (possibly domain-specific)
time period to be discussed with publishers."
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/weaker-OApolicy.htm

(During that delay-period, would-be users who access the metadata
but find they cannot access the full-text can email the author
to request an eprint, and the author can email the eprint to the
requester if he wishes, exactly as he did in paper reprint days.)

The European Commission is urged to make this small but extremely
important change in their policy recommendation.

http://europa.eu.int/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/06/414&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

Stevan Harnad

    Pertinent Prior AmSci Topic Threads:

2002:
    "Evolving Publisher Copyright Policies On Self-Archiving"
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2351.html

2003:
    "Draft Policy for Self-Archiving University Research Output"
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2550.html

    "What Provosts Need to Mandate"
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3241.html

    "Recommendations for UK Open-Access Provision Policy" (Dec 2003)
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3292.html

2004:
    "University policy mandating self-archiving of research output"
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3439.html

    "Mandating OA around the corner?"
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3830.html

    "Implementing the US/UK recommendation to mandate OA Self-Archiving"
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3892.html

    "A Simple Way to Optimize the NIH Public Access Policy" (Oct 2004)
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/4092.html

2005:
    "Comparing the Wellcome OA Policy and the RCUK (draft) Policy"
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/4549.html

    "New international study demonstrates worldwide readiness for Open
    Access mandate"
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/4605.html

    "DASER 2 IR Meeting and NIH Public Access Policy"
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/4963.html

    "Mandated OA for publicly-funded medical research in the US"
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/4982.html

2006:
    "Mandatory policy report"
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/4979.html
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/5055.html

    "The U.S. CURES Act would mandate OA"
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/5046.html

    "Generic Rationale and Model for University Open Access Mandate"
     http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/5216.html

AMERICAN SCIENTIST OPEN ACCESS FORUM:
A complete Hypermail archive of the ongoing discussion of providing
open access to the peer-reviewed research literature online (1998-2005)
is available at:
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/
        To join or leave the Forum or change your subscription address:
http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html
        Post discussion to:
        american-scientist-open-access-forum_at_amsci.org

UNIVERSITIES: If you have adopted or plan to adopt an institutional
policy of providing Open Access to your own research article output,
please describe your policy at:
        http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php

UNIFIED DUAL 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 a 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 institutional repository.
            http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/
            http://archives.eprints.org/
            http://openaccess.eprints.org/
Received on Tue Apr 04 2006 - 19:39:17 BST

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