What Stevan Harnad says about the vacillations and fuzziness of SSHRC is correct. What he omits to say is that he has been in touch with at least one insider of SSHRC for quite some time ans has tried to coach him on these issues. What it points to is the question I keep on coming back to: mandating is the right way to go ... and so are other ways. Mandating, if achieved, will provide success; the difficulty is in achieving it precisely because the stakes are high and the resistances of all kinds, however irrational; speculative, unfounded, etc., are strong.
It is for this reason that I have unceasingly advocated the following:
1. Pushing for the mandating as strongly as possible;
2. In parallel, organize various forms of incentives at all levels.
These include measures such as (the order has no meaning as to relative importance):
a. Create an institutional repository;
b. Conflate faculty annual report requirement with the depositing of the metada of their publications in the institutional repository (this allows locating the mandating element in a zone that administrators will support for obvious reasons);
c. Give the libraries the mandate (and means) to collect the publications corresponding to the deposited metadata in any form, including paper and let them store or digitize these publications (in other words, just take the depositing task out of the hands of the faculty);
d. Work on tenure and promotion committees to make them review only publications deposited in the institutional repository;
e. Work on the granting agencies (e.g. SSHRC) to have them apply the same principle. Granting agencies would have to ask for OA URL's exclusively as acceptable proof of prior work (instead of a bibliography). This would also simplify the reviewers' work as they could simply downlad the needed documentation.
f. Work on university administrations to have them declare that the good name of their institution stands behind the repository and that, therefore, the documents stored in the suitable OA IR is citable as is (even though the version may not coincide exactly with the kournal version);
g. Re-evaluate publications in a suitable way - I have published and lectured on that point - to rank them in a credible way on a global scale so as to create new incentives for academics, and thus help them accept the whole archiving philosophy further. At the same time, create valuable filtering devices to help readers identify the best literature available.
These basic ideas offer a strategic roadmap that, undoubtedly; can and ought to be refined; In any case, this roadmap certainly makes the whole OA issue appear far more reachable than merely clamoring for mandating, and weeping and crying when it is not achieved (see Harnad's text below). It transforms the mandating hurdle into a series of attainable steps and could help favourable groups to push this or that way according to local conditions and possibilities. In short, it strives to be realistic.
Best,
jcg
-------- Message d'origine--------
De: American Scientist Open Access Forum de la part de Stevan Harnad
Date: ven. 05/05/2006 15:29
À: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Objet : Canada's SSHRC lacks leader, hence leadership, on OA
Canada is spinning its wheels on mandating OA, and the shrewd comparative
2004 vs. 2006 excerpts juxtaposed by Peter Suber below tell it all.
While the US, the UK, and the European Commission have been moving forward
(if far too slowly) toward mandating OA self-archiving --
http://cornyn.senate.gov/doc_archive/05-02-2006_COE06461_xml.pdf
http://europa.eu.int/comm/research/science-society/pdf/scientific-publication-study_en.pdf
http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/access/index.asp
-- Canada is not only treading water but floating backwards.
I am told that SSHRC (the only Canadian funding council that had been
actively considering a self-archiving mandate at all) has at last
succeeded in disentangling OA self-archiving from the irrelevant issue
of SSHRC-subsidised journals (with which SSHRC itself had needlessly
and repeatedly confused it), but that has not been enough to inspire
concrete action. (Nor does SSHRC's use of the phrase "imposing mandatory
requirements on researchers to *publish via open access*" inspire
confidence that the confusion has as yet been fully resolved: What needs
to be mandated is not "to publish via open access" but to continue
publishing normally, as always, but, in addition, to self-archive the
author's final draft in the author's Institutional Repository.)
SSHRC seems bent on faithfully following, some day, several years after
the fact, what nations with more initiative will already have gone ahead
and done. In the meanwhile there is to be a flurry of "consultations"
(of which there have already been a half-decade's worth, planet-wide)
among the "major stake-holders." These are and always have been:
Canadian researchers, their institutions, and their funders (i.e.,
Canadian tax-payers), who are, for some reason, described as "cautious"
about "various implementation obstacles" (one is not told about what,
or why, or on what basis this cautiousness has been ascertained).
SSHRC also proposes various pilot projects, to test the waters further
(as if the pilot projects of CERN, Minho, QUT, and Southampton ECS,
and their positive outcomes, were not pilot projects enough: they
mandated self-archiving, and it worked, admirably, and emulably).
http://www.eprints.org/signup/fulllist.php
I am also told that Canada has a problem with attaching any fulfilment
conditions on their research grants, apart from the researchers
doing whatever they had proposed to do. SSHRC does manage to attach
the condition that a final report needs to be done, describing the
outcomes, and how the money was spent, but, somehow, depositing the
putative publications resulting from the research in the researcher's
institutional repository is asking for too much (even when all legal
issues are mooted by merely requiring that they be *deposited* immediately
upon acceptance for publication, without requiring, but only recommending,
that they be set to Open Access rather than Closed Access).
This is of course all foolish, unthinking nonsense, and characteristic
of a state of indirection and inertia, leaderless -- possibly because
the SSHRC has been without a permanent Director for some time now.
I still have some hope, though, that Quebec can be galvanized into
action, even if the rest of Canada cannot. Stay tuned. Meanwhile,
read and weep:
Reposted from Peter Suber's Open Access News
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_04_30_fosblogarchive.html#114683602886476983
The SSHRC restates its OA policy
In the April 24 report on its March Council meeting, Canada's Social
Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) restates its position
on OA. (Thanks to the U of Toronto's OS/OA project:
http://open.utoronto.ca/index.php)
Here's the report note in full:
http://www.sshrc.ca/web/about/council_reports/news_e.asp#4
"Following on Council's October 2004 approval in principle of
open access --permanent, free, online access to the results of
federally-funded research-- staff consulted with the social sciences
and humanities community and reported on the options available
to make open access a reality. The idea of open access to all
research is widely accepted, but presents a number of implementation
obstacles, and the community is by and large cautious. Rather than
imposing mandatory requirements on researchers to publish via open
access, Council chose to increase awareness of open access, pursue
discussions with major stakeholders, and gradually incorporate open
access provisions in research support programs."
For comparison, here's its position from October 2004:
http://www.sshrc.ca/web/about/council_reports/news_e.asp#4
"At the October 2004 meeting, Council endorsed the principles of
the Open Access movement-promoting and sharing the results of the
SSHRC-funded research with the public. Council welcomed the news
that the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences
(CFHSS) has agreed to work with SSHRC to consult with the research
community on the best way to implement Open Access and incorporate
its principles into the Council's research support programs. The
Council also welcomed the involvement of the Canadian Association of
Research Libraries, which represents a major stakeholder community,
in the consultations."
Permanent link to OAN post:
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_04_30_fosblogarchive.html#114683602886476983
Received on Sat May 06 2006 - 13:58:56 BST