Re: [SOAF] In Defense of the American Psychological Association's Green OA Policy

From: <matt.hodgkinson_at_biomedcentral.com>
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2008 08:51:05 -0400

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If that publisher seeks to profit from NIH's gratuitous insistence on
institution-external deposit, by treating PMC as a 3rd-party
free-loader or rival publisher, hence legally requiring permission to
re-publish, I would say that NIH drew that upon itself.
 
Nonsense. Stevan is simply trying to opportunistically use this
unfair charge by APA as a wedge to force a change in NIH policy.
There is nothing wrong with the NIH wanting their funded research to
be deposited in PubMed Central. This is self-archiving. If
researchers want to deposit it elsewhere too - in institutional
repositories, for example - then good. All that will happen to APA
journals is that NIH funded researchers will realise that other
journals will do for free what APA is charging them $2500 to do. Then
either APA will lose credibility or it will back down.
 
Matt
-----Original Message-----
From: SPARC Open Access Forum [mailto:SPARC-OAForum_at_arl.org]On
Behalf Of Stevan Harnad
Sent: 16 July 2008 13:21
To: SPARC Open Access Forum
Subject: [SOAF] In Defense of the American Psychological
Association's Green OA Policy

                                     ** Cross-Posted **

    In Defense of the American Psychological Association's Green OA
    Policy

____________________________________________________________________________
            SUMMARY: So the American Psychological
            Association (APA) is trying to charge $2500
            per article to fulfill NIH's Green OA
            mandate by proxy-depositing in PubMed
            Central on the author's behalf? So maybe if
            NIH had sensibly mandated depositing in the
            author's own Institutional Repository (IR),
            this awkward problem wouldn't have come up?
            Like the majority of journals, APA
            journals are Green on authors self-archiving
            in their own IRs. There's still time to fix
            the NIH mandate so good sense can prevail...

____________________________________________________________________________

      Although it looks bad on the face of it -- the American
      Psychological Association (APA) charging the author's
      institution and/or research grant $2500, not for Gold OA
      publishing, but for depositing the author's refereed
      final draft in PubMed Central (PMC) on the author's
      behalf ("proxy self-archiving"), in order to fulfill
      the NIH mandate -- things are not always as they seem.

      There is no culprit in this nonsense, but if I had to
      pinpoint its provenance, it would be the foolish form in
      which the NIH -- despite relentlessly repeated advice and
      reasons to the contrary -- insisted on drafting its
      policy: 

      To cut to the quick, there is no earthly reason NIH
      should insist on direct deposit in PMC. The mandate
      should be (and should all along have been) to deposit in
      the author's own Institutional Repository (IR). PMC can
      then harvest the metadata and link to the IR-deposited
      full-text itself from there.

      APA (and the majority of other journals) -- for reasons
      they would have found it very hard to justify flouting --
      have long given their green lights to immediate deposit
      (no delay, no embargo, and of course no fee) in the
      author's own IR:

____________________________________________________________________________
            APA Policy on Posting Articles on the
            Internet

            Update effective June 1, 2002

            Authors of articles published in APA journals
            may post a copy of the final manuscript, as a
            word processing, PDF, or other type file, on
            their Web site or their employer's server
            after it is accepted for publication. The
            following conditions would prevail:
                  ? The posted article must carry
                  an APA copyright notice and
                  include a link to the APA journal
                  home page.
                  ? Further, the posted article
                  must include the following
                  statement: "This article may not
                  exactly replicate the final
                  version published in the APA
                  journal. It is not the copy of
                  record."
                  ? APA does not permit archiving
                  with any other non-APA
                  repositories.
                  ? APA does not provide electronic
                  copies of the APA published
                  version for this purpose, and
                  authors are not permitted to scan
                  in the APA published version.

____________________________________________________________________________

      To repeat, a publisher that is Green on immediate OA
      self-archiving in the author's own IR is squarely on the
      side of the angels. (If that publisher seeks to profit
      from NIH's gratuitous insistence on institution-external
      deposit, by treating PMC as a 3rd-party free-loader or
      rival publisher, hence legally requiring permission to
      re-publish, I would say that NIH drew that upon itself.
      As noted many times, that technicality does not work with
      an author's own institution.)

      And it is remediable: Simply revise the NIH mandate to
      require institutional IR deposit of the accepted final
      draft, immediately upon acceptance, with a cap on the
      permissible embargo length, if any. That is the sensible
      policy -- and nature will take care of the rest, with
      universal OA just around the corner.

            A Simple Way to Optimize the NIH Public
            Access Policy (Oct 2004)

            THE FEEDER AND THE DRIVER: Deposit
            Institutionally, Harvest Centrally (Jan 2008)

            Optimize the NIH Mandate Now: Deposit
            Institutionally, Harvest Centrally (Jan 2008)

            How To Integrate University and Funder Open
            Access Mandates (Mar 2008)

            NIH Invites Recommendations on How to
            Implement and Monitor Compliance with Its OA
            Self-Archiving Mandate (Apr 2008)

            Institutional Repositories vs Subject/Central
            Repositories (Jun 2008)


      Stevan Harnad
      American Scientist Open Access Forum

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Received on Fri Jul 18 2008 - 13:55:33 BST

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