Re: How to Counter All Opposition to the FRPAA Self-Archiving Mandate

From: Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2006 05:06:06 +0100 (BST)

David, please reflect before posting yet another ill-thought-through response:

Right now, the proposed FRPAA policy is to mandate self-archiving but
allow deposit to be delayed until after the publisher's embargo period
(capped, one hopes, at 6 months); the proposed alternative is to mandate
*immediate* deposit and allow only the OA-setting date to be delayed until
after the publisher's embargo period (capped, one hopes, at 6 months).

Now what is your complaint, and who is your complaint with? Is your
complaint that FRPAA allows any embargo at all? I agree, but then please
register your complaint with FRPAA, not with me, since I would prefer
no embargo too (if FRPAA could be successfully passed without one).

But please don't complain to *me* that I urge that any embargo should
apply only to the access-setting and not to the deposit itself, because
that is a (vast) improvement (at no loss) to the FRPAA (and will almost
certainly be sufficient to lead to 100% OA soon thereafter, despite publisher
embargoes; and meanwhile the semi-automatic email-eprint-request feature
will be tiding over research usage through any embargo period).

You have simply not worked your way through the logic and pragmatics of
the two alternatives (embargoed deposit vs. embargoed access-setting)
and you are compounding the confusion by making it sound (absurdly) as if
the immediate-deposit/delayed-release alternative were a betrayal of OA
rather than an improvement on an already-compromised FRPAA proposal --
an improvement, moreover, proposed in order to maximize the probability
that the FRPAA will be speedily passed, and successful, rather than
continuing to hold out for immediate OA at the risk of prolonging still
further the 3-year running delay in getting any mandate passed at all.

(Your likening of the semi-automatic email-eprint-request feature to
Interlibrary Loan -- with its paper-era delays and expense -- also suggests
that you are not seriously thinking through what this email-eprint-request
capability is, and means.)

If your follow-up posting does not show some sign of seriously thinking
matters through, I regret I cannot take the time to answer yet again.

Stevan Harnad

On Tue, 13 Jun 2006, David Goodman wrote:

>
> The deposit of inaccessible full text is very probably
> good for some of PMC's functions, such as establishing
> a consistent article database.
>
> It doesn't help open access.
>
> Dr. David Goodman
> Associate Professor
> Palmer School of Library and Information Science
> Long Island University
> and formerly
> Princeton University Library
>
> dgoodman_at_liu.edu
> dgoodman_at_princeton.edu
>
> ----- Original Message -----
>
> From: Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
> Date: Tuesday, June 13, 2006 3:29 pm
> Subject: Re: [SOAF] How to Counter All Opposition to the
> FRPAA Self-Archiving Mandate
> To: SPARC Open Access Forum <SPARC-OAForum_at_arl.org>
>
> >
> > David has completely misunderstood the immediate deposit. Metadata
> > *and*full-text must be deposited immediately. The embargo can apply
> > only to
> > access-setting, not full-text deposit.
> >
> > Please read attentively, and reflect a little, before opining.
> >
> > Stevan
> >
> > On Tue, 13 Jun 2006, David Goodman wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > Stevan is correct that his ideas in this post will
> > > end the opposition of the society publishers. Why should they
> > oppose > him? He now agrees with their
> > > basic position. Like them, he sees no need for immediate open
> > access: >
> > > >But the part we must keep clearly in mind is that an
> > *immediate-deposit
> > > >mandate is enough*! There is no need to over-reach (and to
> > either hold
> > > >out for an immediate-OA mandate
> > >
> > > He accepts the deposit of metadata alone. In that sense there is
> > no need
> > > for any legislation, any compulsion. In biomedicine, Pubmed already
> > > provides rapid high-quality searchable metadata--and usually
> > abstracts > as well--for close to 100% of the mainstream articles,
> > all at no direct
> > > expense to reader, author, or publisher.
> > > (For the other sciences , Google Scholar will probably reach
> > > that point in a few months, with the full cooperation of most
> > > publishers.)
> > >
> > > Stevan thinks open metadata will lead authors
> > > to open access; there has been free access to metadata for many
> > years, and
> > > it hasn't led more than a fraction of the biomedical authors to OA.
> > >
> > > He thinks reprint request e-mails sufficient. This is similar to
> > those who
> > > think ILL sufficient--eventually, many of those who ask will get
> > some of
> > > what they need. (This is the level of access we had in the 60's:
> > > journals to
> > > subscribers in major universities, and reprints to as many
> > individuals > as the author could afford. Current Contents served
> > well as the very low
> > > cost source of metadata. Potential readers outside the academic
> > world > knew enough not to even try for access.)
> > >
> > > My friends in publishing should not prematurely rejoice. Stevan
> > may have
> > > adopted their views, but he is not likely to convince anyone else.
> > >
> > > My friends in the OA movement should not fear; we are better off
> > without > such a gullible leader.
> > >
> > > Dr. David Goodman
> > > Associate Professor
> > > Palmer School of Library and Information Science
> > > Long Island University
> > > and formerly
> > > Princeton University Library
> > >
> > > dgoodman_at_liu.edu
> > > dgoodman_at_princeton.edu
> > >
> > > ----- Original Message -----
> > >
> > > From: Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
> > > Date: Sunday, June 11, 2006 10:19 pm
> > > Subject: [SOAF] How to Counter All Opposition to the FRPAA Self-
> > Archiving > Mandate
> > > To: SPARC Open Access Forum <SPARC-OAForum_at_arl.org>
> > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > The AAP (and PPS and FASEB and STM) objections to the FRPAA
> > > > proposal to
> > > > mandate OA self-archiving (as well as its counterpart
> > proposals in
> > > > Europe, the UK, Australia and elsewhere worldwide) are all
> > completely > > predictable, have been aired many times before, and
> > are empirically
> > > > as well as logically so weak and flawed as to be decisively
> > refutable. > > [...]
> > >
>
>
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Received on Wed Jun 14 2006 - 05:07:04 BST