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From: Stevan Harnad <amsciforum_at_GMAIL.COM>
Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2009 21:04:53 -0500

Responses below to both Klaus Graf and Thomas Krichel:
Klaus Graf wrote:
 
      (1) Please consider that most universites worldwide
      doesn't have IRs.


(a) Each is some free software, some space on a linux server, and a
couple of days' worth of sysad set-up time from having and IR.

(b) To motivate universities to do that is one of the reasons for
funder IR deposit mandates.

(c) To motivate universities to mandate the deposit of the rest of
their research is the other reason.

(d) IR deposit should be stipulated as the preferred option by funder
mandates. Interim repositories like DEPOT can be the interim option
till the fundee's university sets up its IR.

      (2) Please take into account that thousands of scholars
      have NO
      university affiliation. (I cannot see that my idea to
      open IRs for
      alumni research has get any feedback.)


(e) The optimal model for the millions of scholars that are
affiliated to the tens of thousands of universities on the planet
should not be determined by the minuscule minority of unaffiliated
exceptions.

(f) IRs can and should (and do) host papers for unaffiliated
scholars.
 
      (3) IR managers can take all eprints from
      institution-affiliated
      scholars which are libre OA (under CC-BY or CC-BY-NC/ND)
      and available
      on a publisher's website or in a CR/TR. This is one
      reason why gratis
      OA isn't enough.


(g) The 85% of research that is not yet even gratis OA worldwide is
not helped in the least by the back-harvesting into IRs of the
minuscule minority of research that is already libre OA.

Thomas Krichel wrote:

              Arthur Sale:

              I totally disagree that researchers should be
      free to deposit where they will.


      This one of the basic tennants of academic fredom.
      Instititutional

      mandates reduce that freedom. That's why I, and many
      other

      academics, oppose mandates.


(h) The issue is not freedom to deposit: Researchers are free to
deposit wherever else they will. 

(i) The issue is locus-of-deposit for the 85% of researchers who
would otherwise (i.e., unmandated) not deposit anywhere at all.

(j) That is what Institutional (and funder) mandates are for.

(k) If "freedom" is at issue, academics are, and remain, free to
not-publish, to not-submit their publications for performance review
(by depositing them in their IRs), to not-read and not-respond to
their email (if they choose only to hew to the telephone and the
post), and, for that matter, to not-teach, if they wish to exercise
their freedoms not-to.

(Academic freedom refers to the freedom to research (just about)
whatever one wishes, and to report (just about) whatever one finds
and concludes therefrom. It is not -- and never was -- the freedom to
do or not-do whatever one likes, and expect to get paid, promoted and
funded for it.)

Stevan Harnad
Received on Fri Feb 06 2009 - 02:08:23 GMT