On Tue, 13 Nov 2007, Michael Smith wrote:
> The practice of author payment for open access journals may work for the
> hard sciences, but it presents major difficulties for various categories
> of scholars, including:
Paying to publish journal articles presents difficulties for any author
who does not have the money to pay, regardless of field. But it is
not an obstacle to providing Open Access (OA) itself:
Although only about 10% of journals are OA journals ("Gold OA
Publishing"), over 62% of journals are "Green," meaning that they
have already given their green light to all their authors to make
their own peer-reviewed final drafts ("postprints") OA by depositing
them in their own Institutional (or Central) Repositories (IRs) upon
acceptance for publication -- and immediately making them OA ("Green
OA Self-Archiving"). Another 29% of journals endorse immediate OA
self-archiving of the pre-refereeing preprint, with embargoes of various
lengths on making the postprint OA.
http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php
http://roar.eprints.org/
(The IR software also makes it possible for all users to request and
for all authors to provide almost-instant almost-OA even for Closed or
Embargoed Access postprints on an individual Fair-Use basis by means of
a semi-automatic "Email Eprint Request" button. That means 62% instant
OA plus 38% almost-instant almost-OA.)
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/274-guid.html
OA self-archiving (Green OA) costs nothing. But it should also be
pointed out that the majority of Gold OA journals today do not charge
for publication -- and those that do, waive the fee if the author cannot
afford to pay. (The much larger number of hybrid-Gold publishers --
offering the author the option to pay for Gold OA -- do not waive the
Gold OA fee, but most of them are also Green.)
> (1) social sciences and humanities, where grants are smaller and fewer
> than in the natural and physical sciences.
All authors in the social sciences and humanities should therefore provide
Green OA (62% instant, 38% almost-instant) to all their articles now, by
depositing all their postprints in their IRs immediately upon acceptance
for publication.
> (2) graduate students and younger scholars.
All graduate students and younger scholars should therefore provide
Green OA (62% instant, 38% almost-instant) to all their articles now, by
depositing all their postprints in their IRs immediately upon acceptance
for publication.
> (3) scholars in the third world.
Scholars in the third world should therefore provide Green OA (62%
instant, 38% almost-instant) to all their articles now, by depositing all
their postprints in their IRs immediately upon acceptance for publication.
> The author-pay model puts people in the above categories (and others) at
> a serious disadvantage. It would effectively leave out an entire sector
> of scholarship in the third world. Panglossian arguments about
> convincing funding agencies to pay for author charges, or transferring
> university library budgets from subscriptions to author charges, ignore
> the current financial plight of research in most of the world today.
No need of Pangloss for OA: All authors can provide Green OA to articles
(62% immediate full OA, 38% almost-immediate almost-OA) by self-archiving
their postprints in their IRs, today.
Green OA self-archiving mandates from researchers' own institutions
and funders are now on the way worldwide. (The US congress has recently
approved a particular big NIH Green OA Mandate, in a Health Bill which
has just been vetoed by President Bush, but it may still be adopted
if the veto is over-ridden, and could be implemented by NIH and US
universities in light of congressional adoption in either case. Six
of seven UK research funding councils have already mandated Green OA
after it was recommended but not adopted by Parliament. There are
already a total of 32 funder and university mandates adopted worldwide,
and at least nine more proposed or pending.)
http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/
Once adopted globally, these Green OA mandates will immediately provide
62% OA and 38% almost-OA, and the Closed Access embargoes will soon
recede under the growing pressure from the powerful and obvious
benefits of OA to research, researchers, their institutions, their
funders, the tax-paying public that funds them, and the vast R&D industry.
(Eventually, 100% Green OA may even lead to the cancellation of non-OA
journals, thereby releasing those institutional subscription funds to
pay the much lower costs of Gold OA publishing for an institution's
researchers -- costs which reduce to just those of peer-review alone,
with all access-provision and archiving now offloaded onto the distributed
global network of Green OA IRs.)
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/399w
e152.htm
But there is no need to wait for Gold OA: Green OA can be provided right
now.
http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#31.Waiting
Stevan Harnad
AMERICAN SCIENTIST OPEN ACCESS FORUM:
http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.h
tml
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/
UNIVERSITIES and RESEARCH FUNDERS:
If you have adopted or plan to adopt a policy of providing Open Access
to your own research article output, please describe your policy at:
http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/71-guid.html
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/136-guid.html
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 an 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 own institutional repository.
http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/
http://archives.eprints.org/
http://openaccess.eprints.org/
Received on Wed Nov 14 2007 - 04:20:56 GMT