Re: Elsevier Again Confirms Its Position on the Side of the Green OA Angels

From: Stevan Harnad <amsciforum_at_GMAIL.COM>
Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2008 15:46:07 -0500

On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 2:53 PM, Hunter, Karen A (ELS-NYC) <k.hunter
-- elsevier.com> wrote:

       As much as Elsevier appreciates praise for its policies,
      we also want to prevent misunderstanding.

      We are grateful that Colin Smith, Research Repository
      Manager of the Open University, approached us with a
      question on our author posting policy.  Mr. Smith had
      noticed that for some journals an early "accepted
      manuscript" version of an author's paper was available on
      ScienceDirect and he wanted to know if authors could
      download it and deposit it to their institutional
      repositories.  As our longstanding policy permits authors
      to voluntarily post their own author manuscripts to their
      personal website or institutional repository, we
      responded that we would not object to an author
      downloading this version.

      However, our broader policy prohibits systematic
      downloading or posting. Therefore, it is not permitted
      for IR managers or any other third party to download
      articles or any other version such as articles-in-press
      or accepted manuscripts from ScienceDirect and post them.
      To the extent that Colin Smith's message could be read as
      encouraging IR managers to download, it is a
      misinterpretation of our position.


Karen Hunter's response is very fair, and Elsevier's policy on author
self-archiving is both very fair and very progressive -- indeed a
model for all Publishers that wish to adopt a Green OA policy.

I know there will be extremists who will jump on me for having said
this, and I am sure nothing I say will be able to make them realize
how unreasonable they are being -- and how their extremism works
against OA.

Green OA self-archiving provides the opportunity for achieving
universal OA precisely because it is author SELF-archiving. Thus is
it is perfectly reasonable for Green publishers to endorse only
self-archiving, not 3rd-party archiving, to endorse self-archiving in
the author's own institutional repository, but not in a 3rd-party
repository, and to endorse depositing the author's own final draft,
not the publisher's draft.

The fact that we do not yet have universal Green OA is not
publishers' fault, and certainly not Green publishers' fault. The
only thing standing between us and universal Green OA is keystrokes
-- authors' keystrokes. And the way to persuade authors to perform
those keystrokes -- for their own benefit, as well as for the benefit
of the institutions that pay their salaries, the agencies that fund
their research, and the tax-paying public that funds their
institutions and their funders -- is for their institutions and
funders to mandate that those keystrokes are performed.

It would not only be unjust, but it would border on the grotesque, if
the punishment for publishers who had been progressive enough to give
their official green light to their authors to perform those
keystrokes  -- yet their authors couldn't be bothered to perform the
keystrokes, and their institutions and funders could not be bothered
to mandate the keystrokes -- were that their green light was
construed as permission to automatically harvest from the publisher's
website the drafts that their own authors could not be bothered or
persuaded to deposit in their own institutional repository.

No. Open Access is a benefit that the research community needs to
provide for itself. The only reasonable thing to ask of publishers is
that they should not try to prevent the keystrokes from being
performed. It would be both unreasonable and unfair to demand that
publishers also perform the keystrokes on the authors' behalf,
through automated downloads, for that would be tantamount to
demanding that they become Gold OA publishers, rather than just
endorsing Green OA.

What is needed is more keystroke mandates from institutions and
funders, not more pressure on Green publishers who have already done
for Green OA all that can be reasonable asked of them.

Stevan Harnad
Received on Wed Nov 26 2008 - 20:49:42 GMT