Re: OA in Europe suffers a setback

From: Talat Chaudhri [tac] <tac_at_ABER.AC.UK>
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2007 13:21:20 -0000

Dear Arthur, Stevan, and all,

I find advocacy working quite well here, and if you asked other
repository advisors they would say the same. Seems more than a little
insulting to suggest that all of our valuable work is wasted. If you
take sensible steps like consulting the departments in order to change
working practices, and involving departmental admin staff, it does work.
If you speak to the university management and research committees, you
may get the message through to academics that archiving is required,
rather than "avoidable" work. If, however, you merely sit on your hands
and expect your publicity to work miracles alone, it will *not*. Did you
in fact ask the institutions surveyed precisely *why* their advocacy
failed? Advocacy is itself in development in this field, as repositories
themselves are. (Very few are as big as, for instance, that at
Southampton.) To say it is a failure before it has even had a chance is
merely shooting yourself in the foot. Clearly it is too early for
statistical research to show any useful results here, on such a small
basis of evidence. I suggest a multi-track approach incorporating both
advocacy *and* seeking mandates, institutional or governmental.

Do you yourselves directly approach academics and departmental
secretaries, in addition to top management? In my opinion, all of these
people need to be spoken to, whether or not a mandate is in place.
Direct action does work, while blogging on Open Access is a mixture of
preaching to the converted and arguing endlessly with people who are on
your own side, often alienating them in the process. I am not saying
that chasing academics, like any other library work, is easy. It is not,
but it pays dividends. Combined with the carrot of funding, academics
*will* listen to advocacy for OA. I reiterate that the six out of seven
major UK funding bodies introduced a voluntary code without governmental
mandate.

As I said, a mandate is useless unless people know about it and follow
it. If all academics refused to follow it, you could not refuse them all
funding (cf. speeding in cars). Though you will not apparently admit it,
advocacy will inevitably be required in the process of putting any
mandate into practice. Better to put it into practice before the event,
as well as during and after, for maximum impact. It is very easy to
argue that advocacy is wasted, since this excuses one from doing any of
the hard work required of a good repository advisor. Indeed, on
something of a grand scale, those on this list that see advocacy as a
failure do nonetheless engage in it on a political level.

Nonetheless, public initiatives and production of publicity are very
much appreciated, and for my part I thank all involved. It would be good
if we could also acknowledge the value of the various types of work that
others are doing for open access. Advocacy may be difficult and slow at
first, but it will work as OA grows. Without changing the academic
culture at the bottom, all top-down initiatives will come to nothing, as
recently happened in Brussels. People need to have the reasons for
change explained if they are to co-operate with it, mandated or not.

Finally, to be quite frank with you, you may notice that many repository
advisors choose to post on other lists rather than this one. I wonder if
you might bear my above comments in mind as you consider why this may
be. Please remember what the grass-roots are doing for our movement
before you decide that their work does not help.

Thank you for the useful and exact information, and for the corrections,
in your posts.

Best wishes,


Talat
Received on Wed Nov 28 2007 - 22:38:26 GMT