STM Publisher Briefing on Institution Repository Deposit Mandates
** Apologies for Cross-Posting **
[Two members of STM have kindly, at my request, allowed me to see a
copy of the STM Briefing on IRs and Deposit Mandates. I focused the
commentary below on quoted excerpts, but before posting it I
asked STM CEO Michael Mabe for permission to include the quotes. As I
do not yet have an answer, I am posting the commentary with
paraphrases of the passages I had hoped to quote. If I receive
permission from Michael, I will repost this with the verbatim quotes.
As it stands, it is self-contained and self-explanatory.]
The International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical
Publishers (STM) has circulated a fairly anodyne briefing to its
member publishers. Although it contains a few familiar items of
misinformation that need to be corrected (yet again), there is
nothing alarming or subversive in it, along the lines of
thePRISM/pitbull misadventure of 2007.
Below are some quote/comments along with the (gentle) corrections of
the persistent bits of misinformation: My responses are unavoidably
-- almost ritually -- repetitive, because the errors and
misinformation themselves are so repetitive.
STM BRIEFING DOCUMENT (FOR PUBLISHING EXECUTIVES) ON
INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORIES AND MANDATED DEPOSIT POLICIES
[Publisher policy on IRs is concerned with how IR deposit
mandates might affect publishing and publishing revenues,
particularly in the case of refereed final drafts.]
This is a fair statement: The issues for the research community are
research access, uptake, usage, applications, impact and progress.
The issue for the publisher community is their financial bottom line.
[Publishing and distribution today is successful and
adequate. IRs publish an inferior version.]
(1) IRs do not publish: peer-reviewed journal publishers publish. IRs
provide access to their own authors' (peer-reviewed, published)
output -- for all those would-be users webwide who cannot afford
access to the publisher's toll-based proprietary version -- so as to
maximize the access, uptake, usage, applications, impact and progress
of their research output.
(2) The version of the published article that the authors deposit in
their IRs is the final, revised, peer-reviewed draft (the
"postprint"), accepted for publication, but not the publisher's
proprietary PDF. Hence deposit does have the quality controls
provided (for free) by the peer-reviewers. (If the copy-editing
should happen to detect any substantive errors -- which
isexceedingly rare! -- these too can be corrected in the deposited
postprint.)
[Publishing by IRs compromises quality, preservation and
discoverability.]
IRs are not substitutes for publishing but supplements to it,
providing access to research for access-denied would-be users, for
the sake of maximizing research progress. The deposited postprints
have undergone the essential quality-control for researchers: peer
review.
The discoverability of postprints in IRs (via search engines like
google, google scholar, citeseerx, scirus and scopus) is excellent.
No problems, and no complaints from all the would-be users webwide
who would otherwise lack access to them.
(Preservation is a red herring: Preservation of what? As supplements,
rather than substitutes, authors' self-archived postprints are not
the versions with the primary preservation burden (although IR
deposits are of course being preserved). The primary preservation
burden is on the publisher's proprietary version, the official
version of record, as it always has been.)
[Exclusive copyright transfer is essential so the
availability of alternative versions does not prevent
publishers from making ends meet. Publishers add value in
return for the exclusive rights.]
(a) In their IRs, authors deposit supplementary versions of their own
peer-reviewed publications in order to maximize their uptake, usage,
applications, and impact, by maximizing access to them.
(b) So far, all evidence is that this self-archiving has not
undermined the traditional toll-based (subscription/license) funding
model for peer-reviewed journal publishing: rather, they co-exist
peacefully.
(c) But if and when IR deposit should ever make subscriptions
unsustainable for covering the remaining essential costs of
peer-reviewed journal publishing, there is
an obvious alternative:conversion to the Gold OA publishing funding
model.
(d) What is definitely not an acceptable alternative for the research
community, however, is to refrain from maximixing research access,
uptake, usage, applications, impact and progress (by mandating IR
deposit) merely in order to insure publishers' current funding model
against any possibility that universal IR deposit might eventually
lead to a change in funding model.
(e) Unlike trade authors, researchers transfer to the publishers of
their peer-reviewed research all the rights to sell the published
text, without asking for any royalties or fees in return. They have
always, however, exercised the right to distribute free copies of
their own articles to all would-be users who requested them, for
research purposes. In the web era, OA IRs have become the natural way
for researchers to continue that practice, in order to maximize
research access, uptake, usage, applications, impact and progress.
[It is not just publishers that think IRs pose risks;
librarian Dorothea Salo has questioned IRs' costs and
usefulness in "Innkeeper at the Roach Motel".]
(Publishers might do better to pay serious attention to the
substantive rationale and evidenceconcerning IR deposits and IR
deposit mandates, rather than to the opining of roach motel keepers.)
[It is inaccurate to speak of IR policies as "authors'
rights" policies or "open access" policies.]
IR deposit mandates are accurately described as institutional open
access policy. (But IR deposit mandates are certainly not "authors'
rights" policies.)
[Talking points in responding to the media: subscription
publishing does require exclusive copyright transfer;
perhaps OA publishing doesn't.]
This mixes up issues: The only relevant issue here for IRs and IR
deposit policies is whether or not the publisher has formally
endorsed providing open access to the peer-reviewed postprint
immediately upon acceptance for publication. (This is called
a "Green" publisher policy on OA self-archiving. It has nothing to do
with author-pays/Gold OA publishing models. And authors paying for
the "right" to deposit would be absurd and out of the question.)
[Should we endorse IR deposit? Under what conditions?]
If the publisher has formally endorsed providing open access to the
peer-reviewed postprint immediately upon acceptance for publication,
the publisher is Green. If there is no endorsement, or OA is
embargoed, the publisher is Gray.
[Should we make distinctions between preprint
repositories, unmandated IRs and mandated IRs?]
The only potential distinction is between authors' own institutional
IRs and institution-external3rd-party central repositories. Although
OA is OA (and means free online accessibility webwide, irrespective
of the locus of deposit), some publishers only endorse deposit in the
author's own IR, in order not to endorse 3rd-party free-riding by
rival publishers: This limitation is innocuous, and no problem for
OA. (In fact, there are many reasons why it is preferable for both
kinds of Deposit mandates -- those from funders as well as from
institutions -- toconverge on institutional IR deposit, from which
the metadata can then be harvested centrally.)
What would be arbitrary (and absurd, and unenforceable) would be to
attempt to endorse only voluntary IR deposit and not mandatory IR
deposit by authors!
[Should we only endorse IR deposits that are open only to
institution-internal users?]
Let there be no ambiguity about this: Such a policy would be Gray,
not Green, on OA IR self-archiving.
[Should we endorse deposits that are open webwide only
after an embargo period?]
Without an embargo, this policy would be fully Green, and neither IRs
nor OA ask for anything more. With an embargo, it would be Gray.
[Should we only allow links from IRs to final versions on
the publisher's website?]
If the posting on the publisher's website is done immediately upon
acceptance for publication, and access to it is immediately open to
all users webwide, that would be fully Green too. (For such cases,
IRs could, for internal record-keeping purposes, mandate the deposit
of the author's postprint in the IR, but in Closed Access, with the
OA link going to the publisher's freely accessible version for the
duration of the publisher's embargo on making the IR version OA too:
no problem.)
[Should we endorse deposits that are open webwide only
for a fee?]
Paying to deposit in researchers' own IRs would be absurd, and
roundly rejected as such by the research community.
[Inform the media that publishers have made journal
articles more accessible today than ever before.]
True (though thanks also to the advent of the Web). But this
literature is not yet accessible to all those would-be users webwide
whose institutions cannot afford to subscribe to the journal in which
it was published -- and no institution can afford to subscribe to all
or most peer-reviewed journals. It is in order to maximize research
access, uptake, usage, applications, impact and progress by
making all research accessible to all of its would-be users webwide
(not just those whose institutions can afford to subscribe) that the
OA movement was launched. And that is why Green OA self-archiving,
generated by funder and institutional IR deposit mandates, is
growing, to the great benefit of research, researchers, their
institutions, their funders, R&D industries, and the tax-paying
public that funds the researchers' research and institutions.
(The publishing industry has to remind itself that the reason
peer-reviewed research is conducted, peer-reviewed and published
is not in order to fund the publishing industry, but in order to
maximize research access, uptake, usage, applications, impact and
progress.)
[Online refereed journals are crucial for funders,
universities, authors, and authors' careers.]
Correct. And both the research itself, and the peer review, are
provided by the research community, free of charge, to the publishing
community, in exchange for the neutral 3rd-party management of the
peer review, and the certification of the outcome with the journal's
name and track-record. The publishing community is compensated for
the value it has added by receiving the exclusive right to sell the
resultant joint product (and no need to pay authors royalties from
the sales of their texts).
But that does not mean that researchers cannot and will not continue
to give away their own peer-reviewed research findings also to those
would-be users who cannot afford to buy the resultant joint product.
Nor does it mean that researchers' institutions and funders cannot
and will not mandate that they do so, in order to maximize research
access, uptake, usage, applications, impact and progress for the
benefit of research, researchers, their institutions, their funders,
R&D industries, and the tax-paying public that funds the researchers'
research and institutions.
[Depositing in an IR is not equivalent to journal
publishing, with its editing, peer review, and other
added values.]
Correct. And individual authors depositing the final, peer-reviewed
drafts of their published articles in their IRs is not publication
but supplementary access provision, for those would-be users who
cannot afford paid access to the publisher's proprietary version.
[IRs might provide a lower quality option that makes
publishers unable or unwilling to perform their
value-added services.]
This is merely the repetition of the same point made earlier:
No, IR deposits of peer-reviewed postprints of published articles are
not publishing, nor substitutes for publishing, they are author
supplements, provided for those would-be users who cannot afford paid
access to the publisher's proprietary version:
(a) In their IRs, authors deposit supplementary versions of their
own peer-reviewed publications in order to maximize their uptake,
usage, applications, impact, by maximizing access to them.
(b) So far, all evidence is that this self-archiving has not
undermined the traditional toll-based (subscription/license) funding
model for peer-reviewed journal publishing: rather, theyco-exist
peacefully.
(c) If and when IR deposit should ever make subscriptions
unsustainable for covering the remaining essential costs of
peer-reviewed journal publishing, there is
an obvious alternative:conversion to the Gold OA publishing funding
model.
(d) What is definitely not an acceptable alternative for the
research community, however, is to refrain from maximixing research
access, uptake, usage, applications, impact and progress (by
mandating IR deposit) in order to insure publishers' current funding
model against the possibility that universal IR deposit might
eventually lead to a change in funding model.
(e) Unlike trade authors, researchers transfer to the publishers
of their peer-reviewed research all the rights to sell the published
text, without asking for any royalties or fees in return. They have
always, however, exercised the right to distribute free copies of
their own articles to all would-be users who requested them. In the
web era, OA IRs have become the natural way for researchers to
continue that practice, in order to maximize research access, uptake,
usage, applications, impact and progress.
[IRs cost money and should only be created if they have a
distinct goal rather than just parallel publishing and
access-provision]
IRs are undertaken by universities and research institutions -- i.e.,
the research community. It is not at all clear why the publishing
community is providing this advice to the research community on its
undertaking...
[Researchers should be advised of the damage IRs could do
to research publication and dissemination.]
Researchers can and should be fully briefed about the already
demonstrated benefits to research, researchers, their institutions,
their funders, R&D industries, and the tax-paying public that funds
the researchers' research and the researcher's institutions -- the
benefits generated by maximizing research access, uptake, usage,
applications, impact and progress through Green OA self-archiving and
IR deposit mandates.
Researchers need this full briefing on research benefits, because it
is based on actual facts and experience.
But is the publishing community suggesting that -- in addition to
these empirical and practical facts -- researchers should also be
briefed on publishers' speculations about how Green OA self-archiving
might conceivably induce an eventual change in publishers' funding
model?
Why?
If and when IR deposit should ever make subscriptions
unsustainable for covering the remaining essential costs of
peer-reviewed journal publishing, there is
an obvious alternative:conversion to the Gold OA publishing funding
model.
What is definitely not an acceptable alternative for the research
community, however, is to refrain from maximixing research access,
uptake, usage, applications, impact and progress (by mandating IR
deposit) in order to protect publishers' current funding model from
the possibility that universal IR deposit might eventually lead to a
change in funding model.
[Researchers should stay free "to choose how and where to
publish."]
By all means. And they should continue to exercise their freedom to
supplement access to their published research by depositing their
postprints in their IRs for all would-be users webwide who cannot
afford access to the publisher's proprietary version.
[Institutions that want their employees to reserve
certain rights for their published journal articles
should collaborate with journal publishers so as not to
damage their business.]
It would be excellent if all authors reserved OA self-archiving
rights in their copyright agreements with their publishers. Then all
authors could immediately deposit all their peer-reviewed research in
their IRs, and immediately make them OA without any further ado. But
for at least 63% of journals, formally reserving that right is
already unnecessary, as those journals are already Green, so those
articles can already be made immediately OA today by self-archiving
them in the author's IR.
For the remaining 37%, their authors can likewise already deposit the
postprints in their IRs immediately upon acceptance without the need
of either copyright reservation or any formal endorsement or
permission from the publisher: if they wish, they can set access to
the deposit as "Closed Access" -- meaning only the author can access
it. Then the authors can provide "Almost OA" to those deposits with
the help of their IR's "email eprint request" button: Individual
would-be users who reach a Closed Access deposit link (led there by
the deposit's OA metadata) need merely press the Button and insert
their email address in order to trigger an immediate automatic email
to the author to request a single copy for personal research
purposes; the author receives the eprint request, which contains a
URL on which he can click to trigger an immediate automatic email to
the would-be user containing a single copy of the requested
postprint. This is not OA, but it is Almost-OA.
OA is indisputably better for research and researchers than
Almost-OA. But 63% OA + 37% Almost-OA will tide over the worldwide
research community's immediate usage needs for the time being, until
the inevitable transition to 100% OA that will follow from the
worldwide adoption of Immediate IR Deposit mandates by institutions
and funders.
This is the information on which the research community needs to be
clearly briefed. The publishing community's conjectures about funding
models are important, and of undoubted interest to the publishing
community itself, but they should in no way constrain the research
community in maximizing access to its own refereed research output in
the Web era by mandating IR deposit universally.
To repeat:
What is definitely not an acceptable alternative for the research
community is to refrain from maximixing research access, uptake,
usage, applications, impact and progress (by mandating IR deposit) in
order to insure publishers' current funding model against the
possibility that universal IR deposit might eventually lead to a
change in funding model.
The publishing industry has to remind itself that the reason
peer-reviewed research is conducted, peer-reviewed and published
is not in order to fund the publishing industry, but in order to
maximize research access, uptake, usage, applications, impact and
progress.
[It is much harder, however, for institutions to successfully achieve
consensus on adopting an IR deposit mandate at all if the mandate in
question is a copyright-reservation mandate rather than an IR deposit
mandate. And because it is even harder to ensure compliance with a
copyright-reservation mandate (because of authors' worries that the
negotiations with their publishers to reserve immediate-OA
self-archiving rights might not succeed and might instead ut at risk
their right to "choose how and where to publish"), the one prominent
institutional copyright reservation mandate (Harvard's) contains
an author opt-out clause that makes the mandate into a non-mandate.
The simple solution is to add an Immediate-Deposit requirement,
without opt-out. Even simpler still, adopt an Immediate-Deposit
mandate as the default mandate model suitable for all, worldwide, and
strengthen the mandate only if and when there is successful consensus
and compliance in favor of a stronger mandate.]
Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum
Received on Tue Jan 13 2009 - 17:05:05 GMT
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