http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/461-guid.html On
Mon, Sep 15, 2008 at 11:35 AM, Kumiko Vezina
<kumiko.vezina_at_concordia.ca> wrote:
Hello Dr. Harnad,
I was wondering, about your "Email Eprint Request" Button
used with a Closed Access article, do you know of any
institution where this feature is implemented?
I have seen your demonstration on this webpage
(
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/274-guid.html)
but I would like to see it used in a "real" context by an
academic institution or repository to point out at my
next conference on institutional repositories. Do you
know of any? Has anyone contacted you indicating that
they followed your example and are using your button?
Dear Kumiko, the blog version of the posting:
Plan B for NIH Public Access Mandate: A Deposit Mandate
contains a link to an implemented EPrints instance of the Button.
Here's another, closer to home. For a DSpace instance, see the U.
Minho Repository. To try it out for yourself, from all standpoints
(author, user, moderator), go to the DemoPrints EPrints Demonstrator
and deposit an item as Closed Access, specifying your email address
as author. (That is how I constructed the example I used.)
A Deposit Mandate (mooting all copyright concerns and immune against
publisher lobbying) plus the Button, although most people still think
they are some sort of an air-gun or flyswatter, will sooner or later
be discovered to be the killer-app that conveys the global research
community to universal OA at long last.
Just wait till the token drops...
Stevan Harnad
Thank you,
Kumiko Vézina
Electronic Resources Coordinator
Concordia University
Re: "Bill Would Block NIH Public Access Policy" (Science,
11 September)
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2008/911/1
Conyers Bill:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:h6845:
Plan B for NIH Public Access Mandate (And It's Stronger
Than Plan A!):
A Deposit Mandate
I hope the Conyers Bill, resulting from the publisher
lobby's attempt to
overturn the NIH Public Access Mandate, will not succeed.
But in case it does, I would like to recommend making a
small but
far-reaching modification in the NIH mandate and its
implementation that
will effectively immunize it against any further
publisher attempts to
overturn it on legal grounds. And this Plan B will
actually help hasten
universal OA more effectively than the current mandate:
(1) NIH should mandate deposit of the refereed final
draft of all NIH-funded
research, immediately upon acceptance for publication.
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/136-guid.html
(2) But access to that deposited draft need only be made
Open Access when
there is no publisher embargo on making it Open Access;
otherwise it may be
made Closed Access.
(3) Open Access means that the full text of the deposited
draft is freely
accessible to anyone, webwide, immediately.
(4) Closed Access means that the full text of the
deposited draft is visible
and accessible only to the depositor and the depositor's
employer and
funder, for internal record-keeping and grant-fulfillment
purposes.
(Publishers have no say whatsoever in institutional and
funder internal
record-keeping.)
(5) For all deposits, however, both Open Access and
Closed Access, the
deposited article's metadata (author, title, journal,
date. etc.) are Open
Access, hence visible and accessible to anyone, webwide.
(6) Now the essence of this strategy: NIH should also
implement the "Email
Eprint Request" Button, so that any would-be user,
webwide, who reaches a
link to a Closed Access article, can insert their email
address in a box,
indicate that a single copy of the postprint is being
requested for research
or health purposes, and click.
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/274-guid.html
(7) The eprint request is then automatically transmitted
immediately by the
repository software to the author of the article, who
receives an email with
a URL that can then be clicked if the author wishes to
have the repository
software automatically email one individual copy of that
eprint to that
individual requester.
(8) This is not Open Access (OA). But functionally, it is
almost-OA.
(9) Many journals (63%) already endorse immediate OA.
http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php
(10) Closed Access plus the Button will provide almost-OA
for the remaining
37%.
(11) That means an NIH Deposit Mandate guarantees either
immediate OA (63%)
or almost-OA (37%) for 100% of NIH-funded research.
(12) In addition, an NIH Deposit Mandate will encourage
universities in the
US and worldwide to adopt Deposit Mandates too, for all
of their research
article output, not just NIH-funded biomedical research
output.
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/369-guid.html
(13) The spread of such Deposit Mandates across
institutions and funders
worldwide will inevitably lead to universal OA for all
research output
eventually, once the mandates ensure the universal
practice of immediate
deposit.
(14) In addition, because it makes the almost-OA Button
even more powerful
and easier to implement -- NIH should stipulate that the
preferred locus of
deposit is the author's own Institutional Repository,
which can then export
the deposit to PubMed Central using the automatized SWORD
protocol.
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/repositories/digirep/index/SWORD
The fact is (and everyone will see this clearly in
hindsight) that, all
along, the online medium itself has made OA a foregone
conclusion for
research publications. There is no way to stop it
legally.
It is only technological short-sightedness that is making
publishers and OA
advocates alike imagine that the outcome is a somehow a
matter of law and
legislation. It is not, and never has been.
It is only because we have been taking an obsolete,
paper-based view of it
all that we have not realized that when authors wish it
to be so, the Web
itself has made it no longer possible to prevent authors
from freely
distributing their own writings, one way or the other.
There is no law
against an author giving away individual copies of his
own writing.
And NIH need only mandate that authors deposit their
(published research
journal) writings: giving them away for free can be left
to the individual
author. The eventual outcome is obvious, optimal and
inevitable.
I strongly urge OA advocates to united under this back-up
strategy. It will
allow us to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
Stevan Harnad
http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/
Received on Mon Sep 15 2008 - 18:40:24 BST