[Posted anonymously, with permission]
Dear [identity deleted]:
Thank you for forwarding the remarkably convoluted (and revealing -- and
familiar) reply you received from the permissions person of a Gray
journal publisher when you asked whether they endorse deposit in
your Repository. (Anonymized appended after this reply.)
What follows is the correct institutional strategy for depositing
articles published in Gray and Pale-Green journals in your institutional
repository.
http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php
Your university should adopt an Immediate-Deposit/Optional-Access
(IDOA) mandate: that will cover all of these options without any
copyright worries:
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/71-guid.html
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/136-guid.html
(1) All authors deposit the *postprint* -- the peer-reviewed, revised final
draft immediately upon acceptance for publication (without exception).
(2) If the author wishes (e.g., for a gray or pale-green journal
article), set access to that postprint as Closed Access, which means
only the metadata (author, title, date, journal, abstract, references)
are visible and accessible webwide; the postprint itself is accessible
only to the author.
(3) Make sure the Institutional Repository has implemented the "Email
Eprint Request" button. It will provide almost-instant, almost-OA
during any publisher embargo.
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/274-guid.html
[(4) In addition, optionally, if the author wishes, any pre-refereeing
preprint can be deposited and made OA before submission, regardless
of whether the publisher is green, pale-green or gray. This is not
a substitute for the postprint, but a supplement. The publisher has no
say over access to it.]
That covers all cases, provides immediate OA to the 62% of articles in
Green (or Gold) journals and provides almost-instant/almost-OA to the
remaining 38% pale-green and gray journal articles. (Once IDOA is widely
mandated, embargoes will die their well-deserved natural death, and
journals will all turn green -- perhaps even gold.) But do not delay
adopting IDOA!
May I have permission to post a fully anonymized version of this
(removing the University and publisher identifiers) publicly, so all
institutions can know the strategy to use for such cases?
Best wishes,
Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum
http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.h
tml
On Wed, 21 Nov 2007, [identity deleted] wrote:
> I just had to pass on this publisher response to a permission request
> for depositing a paper onto [deleted] University's institutional
> repository.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [publisher name deleted]
> Sent: 20 November 2007 19:05
> To: [university repository manager name deleted]
> Subject: FW: Copyright Permission: [deleted] University's Research Archive
>
> Dear [deleted]
>
> Your memo about posting content from [deleted] journal was forwarded to me
> for reply. Please answer the following questions so we can respond to
> your request to post a faculty publication on the [deleted] University
> Research Repository, an institutional, open-access Web archive.
>
> Who will have access to the repository? Does the university intend now
> or in the future to sell access to people outside the university
> community? Does the university currently subscribe to our journals, and
> will the institution give us fair assurance that those institutional
> subscriptions will not be canceled as a result -- now or in the future?
> Is the repository willing to link to the content on our site, rather
> than posting the content independently?
>
> Depending on the answers received, we generally do give permission,
> subject to an embargo which increasingly is 12 months. We are
> considering licensing access to the content for a set period, subject to
> review and renewal if the repository's policies and procedures have not
> changed. This is in response to some anticipation on the part of
> publishers that institutions will at some point begin to charge for
> access to cover costs of maintaining the repository. If commerce enters
> into the picture, the publishers should be part of that revenue stream.
>
> This approach might appear to be complicated, but institutional
> repositories pose a risk to the survival of nonprofit association
> journal publishers. The risk is currently small but growing, and there
> may come a tipping point when librarians are confident that they can
> obtain access to enough content to comfortably give up subscriptions.
> Then small, nonprofit publishers that have maintained moderate journal
> pricing for our institutional customers will be in serious trouble; the
> researchers in our disciplines then risk losing the community where they
> share ideas and the publications they rely on for peer review
> certification and dissemination of their research.
>
> Best regards,
> [deleted]
>
> From: [university repository manager name deleted]
> Sent: Wednesday, November 07, 2007 12:28 PM
> To: [publisher permissions person name deleted]
> Subject: Copyright Permission
>
> To whom it may concern
>
> I am contacting you with regard to a journal article written by an
> academic at [deleted] University in the journal [deleted] published by
> [deleted]
>
> The paper in question is as follows:
>
> [deleted]
>
> [deleted] University has set up an institutional,
> open-access web repository... We would like to include
> the above paper in our repository and would be grateful to know
> whether this is acceptable to you.
>
> I would also be grateful to know whether we can take any agreement as
> applying to all articles published in this journal, written by [deleted]
> academics, and if you place any restrictions on the format of the
> article we can display? For example do you require us to use a
> particular PDF version?
> All items included in the repository include full acknowledgement of the
> original published source.
>
> If you would like to know more about [deleted]'s institutional repository
> project, or have any questions, please contact me via email or on the
> number below. Alternatively, visit the repository's website at
> [Deleted]
>
> Many thanks for your help; I look forward to hearing from you soon.
[deleted]
Received on Wed Nov 21 2007 - 16:38:12 GMT