On Tue, 30 Jan 2007, Prof. Tom Wilson wrote:
> Perhaps I did not express myself clearly. I support self-archiving - which is,
> by the way, a publication model (to 'publish' is to make publicly available),
> albeit a somewhat informal one.
But we are researchers and academics. And for research and academic purposes, it is
articles accepted for publication by peer-reviewed journals that we list under
"PUBLICATIONS" in our CVs, not preprints that we have merely posted on the Web: Those
we list under "UNPUBLISHED."
Nor do we list the posting of a published postptint on the web as yet another
publication. It is merely access-provision, just as mailing reprints is.
So, I repeat, self-archiving is not a form of publication, nor a publication model: It
is a(nother) way of providing access to one's published (and unpublished work): Open
Access (OA).
> I fully support mandating, etc., although I am
> dubious about the ultimate success of top-down urgings from any authority.
To settle doubts, please consult first the results of the (repeatedly confirmed)
author surveys, which (correctly) predicted 95% compliance with self-archiving
mandates. Then consult the actual data on the compliance rates with actual
self-archiving mandates, which fully confirm the survey results:
Swan, A. (2006) The culture of Open Access: researchers'
views and responses, in Jacobs, N., Eds. Open Access: Key
Strategic, Technical and Economic Aspects, chapter 7. Chandos.
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12428/
Sale, A. The Impact of Mandatory Policies on
ETD Acquisition. D-Lib Magazine April 2006,
12(4).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1045/april2006-sale
Sale, A. Comparison of content policies for institutional
repositories in Australia. First Monday, 11(4), April 2006.
http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_4/sale/index.html
Sale, A. The acquisition of open access research
articles. First Monday, 11(9), October 2006.
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_10/sale/index.html
Sale, A. (2007) The Patchwork Mandate
D-Lib Magazine 13 1/2 January/February
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january07/sale/01sale.html
doi:10.1045/january2007-sale.
Harnad, S., Carr, L., Brody, T. & Oppenheim, C. (2003) Mandated
online RAE CVs Linked to University Eprint Archives: Improving
the UK Research Assessment Exercise whilst making it cheaper and
easier. Ariadne 35 (April 2003).
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue35/harnad/
> My argument is not about archiving vs. OA journals but about the difference
> between author-payment journals (which is still toll-levying and, therefore,
> not true OA) and no-payment journals, subsidized and collaboratively produced
> by the scientific community. The community will continue to be held to ransom
> by an increasingly oligarchic publishing industry until no-payment journals
> become a serious economic threat to its existence.
Being held to ransom to journal prices in a world where 100% of published
articles have been "freed" by OA self-archiving mandates does not seem
too worrying a prospect! Yes, journals will still be subscribed to,
within the limits of affordability, as before, but is it not evident
that journal affordability will no longer be a life/death decision,
once there is the safety net of the author's self-archived postprints
for the articles in the journals that are unaffordable?
> Just as there has been a strong technological rationale for self-archiving since
> the emergence of the World Wide Web, so that same technological rationale
> exists for no-payment journals.
But self-archiving depends only on the author (and his university and funder), and is
motivated by interest in maximising research impact. Conversion to OA publishing depends
on the publisher; it is not in the author's hands, as self-archiving is.
> But archiving assumes the existence of a
> publishing system as a quality control mechanism for publications:
Of course. To repeat: Self-archiving is not self-publishing: It is the provision of Open
Access to an author's own published articles.
> with properly peer-reviewed no-payment journals, self-archiving of papers published
> in such journals would become unnecessary, since the papers would be freely
> available in any case.
Yes, if there *were* such no-payment journals for all or most of the
research literature. But there aren't, so why are we talking about
hypothetical possibilities, when actual self-archiving mandates are already
within sight, and reach?
> A small point - there is no behavioural change in submitting to OA journals: the
> same actions must be engaged in as when submitting to toll-journals.
Indeed. But the no-payment OA journals must exist, in sufficient quality and quantity.
Today, they do not.
> By all means mandate self-archiving and encourage it as much as possible, but it
> is only a half-way house to the genuine open access system.
I don't know what a "genuine open access system" means, but self-archiving
mandates have already been shown to lead to full, genuine OA.
Stevan Harnad
Received on Tue Jan 30 2007 - 17:50:11 GMT