How to Upgrade Sweden's New UCB Open Access Policy to a Green OA Mandate

From: Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 14:53:34 -0400

First, let me heartily congratulate University College of Boras
(UCB) on having adopted an Open Access policy, and for registering it
in ROARMAP! This is Sweden's fourth open access policy. (The other
three are Lund's, Stockholm's and KB's).


But UCB's policy is so excruciatingly close to being a
picture-perfect Green OA mandate -- and could so easily be
transformed into one (which would make it the planet's 42nd OA
mandate, and Sweden's 1st) -- that I can't resist again playing the
preacher. All the essential elements are in place. It's just that the
current wording needlessly loses the opportunity to make full use of
the components of the policy, and of what is legally open to UCB. 


The pertinent current passages are these:

      3. All employees at the University College of Boras
      must register their publications in BADA.



      5. Scientific journals often have a policy stating that
      manuscript of articles (with certain restrictions) also
      can be published in an open digital archive. All
      employees at the University College of Boras are
      recommended to deposit manuscripts to BADA according to
      the rules and regulations of the journal, and if such
      rules and regulations are lacking the author should
      request permission to publish the article in BADA.


The all-important distinction UCB has failed to make is the one
between (a)depositing a document and (3) making it Open Access. 


The full text of a document can always be deposited in
an Institutional Repositoryand made Closed Access, which means that
no one can access it except the author and the webmaster. No legal
restrictions can be placed on such internal institutional
record-keeping for an institution's own research output. The metadata
are accessible and visible webwide, but the full text is not.


Then there is the option to make the deposit Open Access. This can be
done in accordance with the journal's copyright policy. 62% of
journals already endorse immediately making the deposit Open Access.
(See Romeo [n.b, it is momentarily malfunctioning!])


For the remaining 38%, I strongly recommend that UCB implement
the "email eprint request" Button, which makes it possible for
authors of Closed Access Deposits to provide individual copies to
eprint requesters semi-automatically during any embargo period.


All that needs to be done is to change the word "register" in clause
3 above to "deposit".


In clause 5, the word should not be "published" but again "deposit"
in the first sentence; and then replace "deposit manuscripts to BADA"
"make the deposited manuscript Open Access" according to... etc.

      3. All employees at the University College of Boras
      must deposit their publications in BADA.



      5. Scientific journals often have a policy stating that
      manuscript of articles (with certain restrictions) also
      can be deposited in an open digital archive. All
      employees at the University College of Boras are
      recommended to make the deposited manuscript Open
      Accessaccording to the rules and regulations of the
      journal, and if such rules and regulations are lacking
      the author should request permission to publish the
      article in BADA.


With the above changes the UCB policy not only becomes a mandate
(which has been demonstrated by Professor Arthur Sale in Australia to
work successfully to generate 100% OA within about 2 years) rather
than just a request or invitation, which has repeatedly been
demonstrated to fail. But such a policy would be in conformity with
the unanimous recommendation of the Council of the European
University Association, representing 791 universities in 46
countries. It would also be in line with the policy of the European
Research Council and the flagship of the European universities' Open
Access mandate: University of Liege, of which the Rector, Professor
Bernard Rentier, is also founder and director of EurOpenScholar,
which is dedicated to promoting OA mandates all over Europe. 


I urge UCB to make the few small changes required to make UCB's
current policy into the model Immediate-Deposit/Optional-Access
((DOA) mandate, the optimalOA policy for UCB, a model for the rest of
Scandinavia, and the 42nd Green OA mandate worldwide.


Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum
Received on Tue Apr 15 2008 - 19:55:01 BST