On Thu, 3 May 2007, Rick Anderson wrote:
> Bravo in particular to the Russian institution, whose policy
> allows for a reasonable embargo period.
(1) It is odd (and rather sad) to see a librarian applauding an embargo on
researchers' access to research findings.
(2) The Russian ROARMAP entry says this:
All researchers of the Central Economics and Mathematics Institute
of Russian Academy of Sciences are mandated by a director's decree
to immediately deposit their papers/articles in the institutional
Open Archive.
["...mandate researchers of CEMI RAS to deposit all their completed
research (in a working paper form), including the full text, in
institutional OA (repository) not later than 6 months after their
completion."]
http://www.cemi.rssi.ru/rus/news/initiat-eng.htm
There is some linguistic ambiguity there, which I will write to
Professor Parinov to clarify. My guess is that CEMI is anxious to have
the pre-refereeing preprints deposited too, and so the director is saying
that if an economist writes a paper, it needs to be deposited within 6
months of its completion. It is not a reference to embargoing access to
the final, refereed draft (the postprint).
What I will ask is that (a) the statement clarify that the clock starts at
the moment of the completion of the preprint, (b) that the postprint
must be deposited immediately on acceptance, and (c) if access to the
postprint is not immediately set to "Open Access" then the "Fair Use
Button" (allowing for semi-automatic EMAIL EPRINT REQUESTS) will be
implemented to cover any research usage needs during any Closed Access
embargo period.
http://www.eprints.org/news/features/request_button.php
(Economics has an established preprint self-archiving practice analogous
to that in physics. In no field is it possible, or advisable, to force
authors to make their unrefereed drafts public if they do not wish
to. Hence my guess is that the 6-month window is intended more to ensure
that completed papers are submitted for publication, rather than sat
upon. In other words, it is just a manifestation of "publish or perish.")
I will post any clarification received from Professor Parinov.
> The policy of the Turkish institution is presented much more sketchily
> in ROARMAP:
http://www.eprints.org/signup/fulllist.php
> -- Require their researchers to deposit a copy of all their
> Masters and Ph.D. theses, published and refereed articles in the
> Institutional Repository of Middle East Technical University, if
> there are no legal objections,
>
> So there may be also be sufficient flexibility in the Turkish
> model to allow for commercial publishing prior to the OA deposit,
> but it's not at all clear.
Again, the Turkish statement could be made clearer, specifying that the
deposit should be immediately upon acceptance of the refereed final
draft (postprint) and that "legal objections", if any, pertain only
to the date of access-setting (Open Access vs. Closed Access), *not*
to the date of the deposit itself, which should be immediately upon
acceptance for publication. (Again, the Fair Use Button can tide over
research usage needs during any embargo period.)
"Optimizing OA Self-Archiving Mandates: What? Where? When? Why? How?"
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/136-guid.html
Let me close with a personal observation: I have criticised (some)
librarians for being part of the problem rather than the solution
insofar as OA is concerned. I think that is still very true, but perhaps
misleading, because it is equally true that some librarians are not only
part of the solution, but leaders of the worldwide OA movement toward the
optimal and inevitable solution. (Prominent examples are Eloy Rodriques
of Minho and Derek Law of Glasgow; there are many, many others too.)
And history will make it clear that the *real* problem that delayed OA
for over a decade longer than when it was already fully within reach was
not those in the library community who favored embargoing OA (or ignoring
it altogether); nor was it "legal objections." The historic cause of
the unnecessary and conterproductive delay was the vast majority (85%)
of the research community itself -- the ones who are the providers as
well as the beneficiaries of OA. Their causal role can best be described
as inertial inaction. That is why mandates by their institutions and
their funders became necessary at all.
Applauding access embargoes strikes me as a paradigmatic example of the
regressive role of some parts of the library community. But sitting on
their hands until the keystrokes were mandated trumps that several times
over...
"...why did the Give-Away authors not flock to the new medium, and the
free, open, global access to their work that it would provide? This
is what next year's millennium is poised to chide us for. There are
some excuses, but at bottom it will be seen to be the sluggishness
of human nature and its superstitious cleavage to old habits."
(D-lib Magazine 1999)
http://cogprints.org/1685/00/12harnad.html
(I shall abstain from the inevitable ensuing round of speculation and
counterspeculation about the destruction of journal publishing if
immediate OA self-archiving is mandated: It is to moot and thereby bypass
all of that idle conjecturing -- and equally idle "legal objections"
-- that the Immediate-Deposit/Optional-Access compromise mandate
plus the Fair Use Button were designed.)
"The Immediate-Deposit/Optional Access (ID/OA) Mandate: Rationale and
Model"
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/71-guid.html
Berners-Lee, T., De Roure, D., Harnad, S. and Shadbolt, N. (2005)
Journal publishing and author self-archiving: Peaceful Co-Existence
and Fruitful Collaboration.
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11160/
Harnad, S. (2006) Opening Access by Overcoming Zeno's Paralysis, in
Jacobs, N., Eds. Open Access: Key Strategic, Technical and Economic
Aspects, chapter 8. Chandos.
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12094/
Stevan Harnad
http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html
Received on Fri May 04 2007 - 12:44:02 BST