FW: Nature's Offer To "Let Us Archive It For You": Caveat Emptor

From: Hecker, Lydia <Lydia.Hecker_at_FCCC.EDU>
Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2008 09:12:50 -0400

After reading this article, I was a bit confused as to what a "proxy
deposit in an Institutional Repository" is.  Could you please
explain?

 

Thanks.

 

Lydia

 

Lydia Hecker, ILL Tech

Talbot Research Library  (PAUICR, QRH)

Fox Chase Cancer Center

333 Cottman Avenue

Philadelphia, PA  19111

 

Phone:  215-728-2710

Fax:  215-728-3655

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: American Scientist Open Access Forum
[mailto:AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG]
On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad
Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2008 12:32 AM
To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Subject: Nature's Offer To "Let Us Archive It For You": Caveat Emptor

NOTE: Since this posting, Peter Suber has informed me that Nature had
informed him that they were willing to do proxy deposit in
Institutional Repositories too, immediately upon acceptance (if it
can be done in batch). If that is true, then I withdraw all but one
of my criticisms, with apologies for having impugned Nature's
motives. However, the one remaining criticism stands: Nature would do
OA a lot more good by dropping its access embargo than by
saving Nature authors a few minutes worth of keystrokes.
[trojan.serendipityThumb.JPG]


____________________________________________________________________________


SUMMARY: Nature Publishing Group has offered its authors a proxy
archiving service that would:
     (1) help lock in embargoed deposit instead of immediate deposit
     (2) help lock in central deposit (which does not scale) instead
of institutional deposit (which does).
     (3) help lock out IDOA/DDR mandates and the embargo
tide-over Button (again, to Nature's advantage, not OA's)
     (4) help keep deposit in publisher's hands instead of
author/institution hands, encouraging authors to remain passive
instead of proactive about OA
     (5) give the misleading impression that Nature (and other
publishers that make such offers) are acting in OA's interests rather
than their own. 

If Nature really wants to help OA, then dropping its access embargo
would be a lot more helpful than saving authors from having to do a
few keystrokes.


____________________________________________________________________________


Nature has circulated the following Press Release:

NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP TO ARCHIVE ON BEHALF OF AUTHORS

Nature Publishing Group (NPG) is pleased to announce the initiation
of a free service, launching in 2008, to help authors fulfill funder
and institutional mandates. 

NPG has encouraged self-archiving, including in PubMed Central, since
2005.

No, as of 2003, Nature gave its green light to author self-archiving
of the author's final refereed draft till, in 2005 Nature withdrew
its green light and imposed a 6-month embargo in anticipation of
NIH's announcement in 2005 that it would allow an embargo of 6-12
months on its OA self-archiving recommendation. The NIH
recommendation became a mandate 3 years later, but NIH continues to
impose a 6-month embargo. I would not call that "encouraging
self-archiving." I would call that Nature trying to make the best of
what it considers a bad but now inescapable bargain.

Later in 2008, NPG will begin depositing authors' accepted
manuscripts with PubMed Central (PMC) and UK PubMed Central (UKPMC),
meeting the requirements for authors funded by the Howard Hughes
Medical Institute (HHMI), the National Institutes of Health (NIH),
The Wellcome Trust, the Medical Research Council and a number of
other major funders in the US, the UK and Canada who mandate
deposition in either PMC or UKPMC. NPG hopes to extend the service to
other archives and repositories in future.

In other words, now that there is no choice but to comply with these
biomedical funder mandates (all clones of one another, and all
pertaining only to biomedical research, and all specifying PubMed
Central as the locus of the deposit and allowing an embargo of 6-12
months), Nature is trying to retain maximal control over the
remaining degrees of freedom, by "relieving" authors of the burden of
doing the deposit (i.e., taking deposit out of the author's hands),
by ensuring that the deposit does not occur before the embargo
occurs, and by ensuring that the locus of deposit is PubMed Central
rather than the author's institutional repository.

The result of this co-opting of self-archiving is:

      (1) The self-archiving practice is made less likely to
      generalize beyond non-NIH/biomedical research.

      (2) The self-archiving practice is less likely to be done
      in the author's institutional repository.

      (3) The self-archiving is less likely to be immediate
      (rather than after an embargo).

      (4) It is less likely that the institutional repository's
      "email eprint request" button will be able to tide over
      research usage needs during any embargo.

      (5) In general, this proxy-archiving in an external
      repository makes it less likely that institutions will
      converge on institutional self-archiving mandates like
      Harvard's and Stanford's.

In other words, while appearing to be doing OA a service,
this Nature policy is actually doing Nature a service and only giving
OA the minimal due that is already inherent in the NIH and kindred
mandates.

"We are announcing our intention early in the process to solicit
feedback from the community and to reassure authors that we will be
providing this service," said Steven Inchcoombe, Managing Director of
NPG. "We invite authors, funding bodies, institutions, archives and
repositories to work with us as we move forward."

Translation: "We are offering to take over the burden of doing the
few extra keystrokes that self-archiving mandates entail in exchange
for retaining control over self-archiving and its likelihood of
scaling up to universality and immediacy across disciplines and
institutions. Let's now hope that the appetite for OA stops there:
embargoed, journal-mediated central access to NIH-funded biomedical
research in PubMed Central..."

As a researcher, my response would be: "Thank you, but I'll still go
ahead and do the keystrokes myself, depositing my own final refereed
draft in my own institutional repository, immediately upon acceptance
for publication. Then my IR's eprint request Button can help me
provide almost-instant, almost-OA to fulfill the immediate-usage
needs of researchers webwide who cannot afford access toNature's paid
version and cannot afford to wait until Nature's embargo expires. For
the 63% of journals that, unlike Nature, are fully green, I can
provide immediate OA to my deposits. And at the end of
the Nature embargo, my deposits can also be exported to PubMed
Central or harvested by any other central collection that may want to
host them (but they will already by OA in my IR):

      "Optimize the NIH Mandate Now: Deposit Institutionally,
      Harvest Centrally"

      Initially, the service will be open to authors publishing
      original research articles in Nature, the Nature research
      titles and the clinical research section of Nature
      Clinical Practice Cardiovascular Medicine. NPG will then
      extend the service to society and academic journals in
      its portfolio that wish to participate.

Let's hope that authors and their institutions will be wise enough
not to once again leave their research output entirely in the hands
of publishers. In the online age, journal publishers render their
essential service in managing peer review and certifying its outcome
with their journal-name and its track-record, but there is no longer
any earthly reason why they should continue to retain exclusive
control over the access-provision process, particularly in order to
embargo it!

For eligible authors who opt-in during the submission process, NPG
will deposit the accepted version of the author's manuscript on
acceptance, setting a public release date of 6-months
post-publication. There will be no charge to authors or funders for
the service.

Deposit is only a few keystrokes, and the only place it makes sense
to deposit upon acceptance is the author's own institutional
repository, which hosts all the institution's research output (not
just biomedical research funded by NIH and held and embargoed
byNature) and makes it possible for the author to provide immediate
almost-OA during any embargo period (thanks to the Button).

"NPG is committed to serving as a partner to the scientific and
medical communities," continued Steven Inchcoombe. "We believe this
is a valuable service to authors, reducing their workload and making
it simple and free to comply with mandates from their institution or
funder. We recognise that publishing in an NPG title can be a career
high-point for researchers, and want to ensure that our authors enjoy
the best possible service from their publisher of choice."

Minus the hype, this is an offer to spare you a few keystrokes in
exchange for retaining control over access provision to your work,
blocking access for 6 months, and reducing the likelihood that
self-archiving and self-archiving mandates will scale across all
disciplines and all institutions.

NPG has been an early mover amongst subscription publishers in
encouraging self-archiving. In 2002, the publisher moved from
requesting copyright transfer for original research articles to
requesting an exclusive license to publish. In 2005, NPG announced a
self-archiving policy that encourages authors of research articles to
self-archive the accepted version of their manuscript to PubMed
Central or other appropriate funding body's archive, their
institution's repositories and, if they wish, on their personal
websites.

After a six-month embargo, rescinding in 2005 Nature's previous 2003
green light to provide immediate Green OA upon acceptance for
publication.

In all cases, the manuscript can be made publicly accessible six
months after publication.

And retaining control over that is the real motivation behind this
generous offer, along with the brakes it puts on scaling beyond NIH
(and kindred) funded biomedical research, destined for PubMed
Central, to all research, from all institutions, across all
scientific and scholarly disciplines.

NPG's policies are explained in detail at this web page.

And their consequences are explained above.

Advice to Nature authors: Accept the offer, but deposit your final
refereed draft in your IR immediately upon acceptance anyway,
allowing you and your institution to retain control of it, as well as
to provide almost-OA to it immediately. Once all researchers do this,
all access-embargos will die their well-deserved deaths of natural
causes.

(Could Nature's announcement be an attempt at damage control after
its recent ill-received attack on its competitor, Gold OA
publisher PLoS? If so, then some more critical reflection is needed
on Nature's part as to why it continues to embargo access to the
refereed final draft while it's other competitor, Science, is already
Green. [Science, in turn, might ponder why, unlike Nature, which has
abandoned it, it continues to cling to the "Ingelfinger Rule," ruling
out the self-archiving of the unrefereed preprint: This is not
strictly an OA matter, but it is dysfunctional and a distinct
anachronism.])

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum
Received on Wed Jul 09 2008 - 00:43:07 BST