No, neither the ERC Green OA Self-Archiving Mandate nor the NIHGreen OA
Self-Archiving Mandate applies to books. (Nor do theRCUK mandates, nor the
university and departmental mandates, norany of the 35 mandates adopted and
the 8 proposed worldwide sofar: http://
www.eprints.org/signup/fulllist.php.) They all applyonly to peer- reviewed
journal-articles.
Book self-archiving cannot and should not be mandated, for thecontrary of
much the same reasons peer-reviewed journal articlescan and should be.
Stevan Harnad
On 16-Jan-08, at 7:20 PM, Sandy Thatcher wrote:
> Does this apply to all "publications," including books? If so,one wonders
> how authors of these books will find any publishersfor them. I certainly
> wouldn't invest our press's money inpublishing a book that became
> available for free after sixmonths from another source. And I would worry
> a great deal ifagencies like the NEH made this a condition for all
> projects itfunds in the humanities, both books and journals. A six-month
> embargo might work for science; I think it will destroypublishing in the
> humanities.
>
> Sandy Thatcher
> Penn State University Press
>
> > As a historic matter: The European Research Council finalised its
> > Green OA Self-Archiving Mandate (and it did so 19 days before the
> > NIH mandate!):
> >
> > The ERC requires that all peer-reviewed publications from ERC-funded
> > research projects be deposited on publication into an appropriate
> > research repository where available, such as PubMed Central, ArXiv
> > or an institutional repository, and subsequently made Open Access
> > within 6 months of publication."
> >
> > http://erc.europa.eu/pdf/
> > ScC_Guidelines_Open_Access_revised_Dec07_FINAL.pdf
> > http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/
> >
> > Like the NIH mandate, the ERC mandate is also an immediate-deposit
> > mandate, with the allowable embargo applying only to the date that
> > the deposit is made OA, not to the date it is deposited (which must
> > be immediately upon publication). The ERC embargo is also shorter (6
> > months, whereas NIH is 12 months). Better still, the deposit may be
> > either institutional or central.
> >
> > The only way to improve on this nigh-optimal mandate is to require
> > that the deposit be institutional ("Deposit Institutionally, Harvest
> > Centrally") except if the grant recipient's institution does not yet
> > have an institutional repository (in which case deposit should be in
> > an interim generic repository such as the UK's DEPOT or Europe's
> > EurOpenScholar).
> >
> > Bravo to both the US and Europe. Now it is time for the other US and
> > EC funding agencies -- and, even more importantly, all the US and
> > European universities -- to follow suit with Green OA Self-Archiving
> > Mandates of their own.
> >
> > Stevan Harnad
Received on Fri Jan 18 2008 - 02:30:18 GMT