Peter Suber's Talk at Harvard's Berkman Center: "What Can Universities Do to Promote Open Access?"
Peter Suber's Talk at Harvard's Berkman
Center: "What Can Universities Do to Promote
Open Access?"
SUMMARY: Seven comments on Peter Suber's excellent talk
on "What Can Universities Do To Promote Open Access?" at
Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
(1) Journals vs. books: OA is only about author give-away
work. Peer-reviewed journal articles are all, without
exception, author give-aways, but most scholarly books
are not. OA can only be mandated for give-away work.
(Once OA for journal articles prevails, more authors will
undoubtedly want the same for their monographs too.)
(2) Versions and Citability: The canonical version of a
journal article is the final, peer-reviewed, accepted
version (the "postprint"). That is what researchers need,
but not necessarily in the form of the publisher's PDF.
What is cited is always the published work. Researchers
are infinitely better off if those who cannot afford the
publisher's official PDF can always access the author's
self-archived postprint.
(3) First OA Self-Archiving Mandate: Queensland
University of Technology's was the world's first
university-wide OA self-archiving mandate but the very
first OA self-archiving mandate of all was that of
the School of Electronics and Computer Science at
Southampton University.
(4) Prior Evidence of Probability of Compliance With OA
Self-Archiving Mandates: Swan & Brown's author
surveys found that 95% of authors would comply with an OA
self-archiving mandate (over 80% willingly) but authors
were not asked whether they would comply with a
copyright-retention mandate. The same is true of Arthur
Sale's data on actual mandate compliance rates.
(5) Deposit Mandates vs. Copyright-Retention
Mandates: NIH's is not a copyright-retention mandate. It
is a no-opt-out deposit mandate plus a no-opt-out
requirement to negotiate with the 38% of journals who
don't endorse immediate OA to be able to make the deposit
OA within a year. Harvard's is a copyright-retention
mandate, with opt-out.
(6) Mandate Implementation Mechanisms: There are no
non-compliance sanctions on deposit mandates but there
are administrative incentives and contingencies: The IR
is made the official locus for submitting publications to
be considered for performance review.
(7) Peer Review, Journals and Repositories: Journals
provide peer review; IRs provide access to peer-reviewed
postprints. The issue of IRs providing peer review is a
red herring.
____________________________________________________________________________
Peter Suber gave an excellent talk at Harvard's Berkman Center for
Internet and Society entitled: "What Can Universities Do to Promote
Open Access?" and the discussion was very interesting too. The video
and powerpoints are here.
I append seven comments:
(1) Journals vs. books: For the OA movement it is ever so important
to clearly separate the case of journal articles from the case of
books. The reason is simple: OA is and has to be only about author
give-away work. Peer-reviewed journal articles are all, without
exception, author give-aways, written only for uptake, usage and
impact, not for royalty revenues.
Now although this may also be true of some scholarly books, it
definitely is not true of all or most of them now. Hence not only can
OA not be mandated for non-give-away books, but, at a time when OA
itself is still so widely misunderstood, it is important to treat the
clearcut, exception-free give-away case of peer-reviewed journal
articles first, and separately, rather than to conflate it with the
complicated hybrid case where the majority of the content is not
author give-away at this time.
Once OA for journal articles prevails, more authors will undoubtedly
want the same for their monographs too.
(2) Versions and Citability: The problems raised during the question
period concerning the versions and citability problem are mostly a
matter of misunderstanding:
First, we are talking about journal articles only.
The canonical version of a journal article is the final,
peer-reviewed, accepted draft (the "postprint"). That is what
researchers need, not necessarily the publisher's PDF.
What is cited is always the published work (unless one is explicitly
and deliberately referring to unrefereed, unpublished prior drafts
[preprints] or corrected, revised postpublication updates [which we
could call "post-postprints"]). The version and citation issue
pertains only to the specific case where one deliberately wishes to
cite either an unpublished draft or an unpublished revision.
Otherwise, all citations of the peer-reviewed article itself --
whether based on reading the author's self-archived postprint of it,
or the publisher's PDF of it -- are citations to the canonical
published work itself (and point to the bibliographic data for the
published work).
In other words: there is no special version or citation problem for
postprints.
Now, as to the separate scholarly question of whether an author can
be trusted if he says that "this draft of my published article is
indeed the refereed final draft" -- that is a matter for scholarly
practice and integrity. It is not an OA issue. It is not even a
technical issue (although there are technical ways of computationally
comparing versions to check whether and how a given draft diverges
from the published PDF or XML text).
The only relevant point is that the scholarly and scientific research
world is infinitely better off if all those scholars and scientists
who cannot access the publisher's official PDF of any given article
can always access the author's self-archived postprint of it. The
possibility that some authors may sometimes be either untruthful or
sloppy can be handled on a case by case basis if/when it ever comes
up. But that possibility is definitely no reason to call into
question the basic principle that what researchers need today is
access to the postprint. And that it is in the authors' and their
institutions' and their funders' best interests that authors should
provide access to their postprints, by self-archiving them in their
IRs. Inasmuch as self-archiving the publisher's PDF creates obstacles
to self-archiving (because the publisher does not allow it, or
because access to it is embargoed), that should definitely not be
grounds for delaying the immediate provision of the author's
postprint -- or for delaying the adoption of mandates to deposit it.
(3) First OA Self-Archiving Mandate: For the record: Queensland
University of Technology's was indeed the world's
first university-wide OA self-archiving mandate, but not the world's
first OA self-archiving mandate.
The very first OA self-archiving mandate was that of the School of
Electronics and Computer Science at Southampton University in 2003:
That was also the model for the first formal description of an OA
self-archiving mandate in the BOAI Self-Archiving FAQ and the OSI
EPrints Handbook.
(4) Prior Evidence of Probability of Compliance With OA
Self-Archiving Mandates: It is not correct to say that the Swan &
Brown author surveys found that authors would comply, and comply
willingly, with any OA mandate at all. Authors were asked
specifically about a mandate to deposit, and over 80% said they would
comply, let alone comply willingly. They were not asked about how
they would feel about a mandate to retain copyright (let alone a
mandate with an opt-out). Harvard's is the first copyright-retention
mandate, and there is no evidence at all on how many faculty would
comply, or comply willingly.
Arthur Sale's data on actual compliance rates likewise apply only to
deposit mandates, not to copyright-retention mandates.
(5) Deposit Mandates vs. Copyright-Retention Mandates: NIH's is not a
copyright-retention mandate. It is a deposit mandate. It can be
fulfilled by simply depositing the postprint of an article that was
published in any of the 62% Green journals that have endorsed
immediate OA self-archiving, or any of the remaining journals that
have endorsed embargoed access within NIH's time limit. That is a
deposit mandate -- plus a requirement (with no opt-out option) to
negotiate deposit within the embargo period for
any remaining articles, published in journals that don't endorse
immediate OA self-archiving. (Harvard's in contrast, is, in its
present form, purely a copyright-retention mandate, with an opt-out.)
(6) Mandate Implementation Mechanisms: There are no sanctions on
deposit mandates, but there are administrative incentives and
contingencies. Basically, if you wish to have your publications
considered for institutional performance review, the official
mechanism for doing so is to deposit them in your IR. (There is a
similar rationale for fulfilling the Harvard copyright-retention
mandate (for the non-opt-outs): one way to meet the condition of
transmitting the postprint to the Provost is to deposit it directly
in Harvard's IR.)
(7) Peer Review, Journals and Repositories: Very minor point: OA is
about providing OA to peer-reviewed journal articles. OA journals can
provide OA to their articles, or authors can provide OA to their
articles (by depositing them in their IR). The question of an IR
providing peer review is a bit of a red herring, encouraging people
to speculate about alternatives to journals, instead of just on
providing OA to peer-reviewed journal articles.
Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum
Received on Thu Mar 27 2008 - 22:43:46 GMT
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