Stevan's comments raise more questions I think:
1. Stevan says, "Full compliance is of course 100% compliance, and
the longer-standing mandates are climbing toward that".
On my blog Bill Hooker asks, "Where could I find data to show this?"(
http://poynder.blogspot.com/2009/05/open-access-mandates-judging-success.ht
ml#comments).
I too would be interested to know if and where these data can be
found.
2. Responding to my question about mandate opt-outs Stevan cites the
results of Alma Swan's international surveys in which, "most authors
report they would comply willingly with a self-archiving mandate."
Can we be confident that voluntary departmental commitments to
self-archive will attract the same compliance rates as a mandate
requiring researchers, as a condition of their employment, to
self-archive? (And thus can we be confident that Alma Swan's surveys
answer my question?)
Stevan says, "Researchers need to be reassured that their departments
or institutions or funders are indeed fully behind self-archiving,
and indeed expect it of them."
Is that what's happening with some of the new voluntary mandates?
For instance, the Gustavus Adolphus College Library Faculty recently
published an OA pledge
(
http://gustavus.edu/academics/library/Pubs/OApledge.html). Amongst
other things, the Library Faculty promise, "to make our own research
freely available whenever possible by seeking publishers that have
either adopted open access policies, publish contents online without
restriction, and/or allow authors to self-archive their publications
on the web."
It adds, "Librarians may submit their work to a publication that does
not follow open access principles and will not allow self archiving
only if it is clearly the best or only option for publication;
however, librarians will actively seek out publishers that allow them
to make their research available freely online and, when necessary,
will negotiate with publishers to improve publication agreements."
On ACRLog, the Chair of the Gustavus Adolphus Library Department
Barbara Fister says, "we haven't had the time or money to start up an
institutional repository. We also, quite frankly, don't have a
terribly sophisticated grasp of all the OA arguments, the copyright
issues, and the color choices. (Green? Gold? What about mauve?) We've
also very, very busy trying to wrap up a big project, working with
departments to make enough cuts that we can balance our budget next
year - without scuttling our commitment to undergraduate research."
(
http://acrlog.org/2009/05/17/how-were-walking-the-oa-walk/).
How relevant are Alma Swan's findings when predicting the likely
outcome of such a pledge, or indeed many of the other recent
departmental commitments to OA, many of which include opt-outs?
Nine years ago the founders of Public Library of Science organised an
open letter to publishers. As a result 34,000 researchers from 180
countries made a pledge not to submit papers to any journal that
refused to make the articles it published "available through online
public libraries of science such as PubMed Central" 6 months after
publication.
Only a handful of publishers complied, but researchers ignored their
own pledge and carried on publishing in those journals.
Richard Poynder
From: American Scientist Open Access Forum
[mailto:AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG]
On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad
Sent: 23 May 2009 20:25
To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Subject: The Accelerating Worldwide Adoption Rate for Green Open
Access Self-Archiving Mandates
In response to Alma Swan's graphic demonstration (posted yesterday
and partly reproduced below) of the accelerating growth rate of Green
Open Access Self-Archiving Mandates (now
including NIH, Harvard, Stanfordand MIT), Richard Poynder has posted
some some very useful comments and questions. Below are some comments
by way of reply:
[almamandgrowth.png]
FIGURE: Accelerating Growth Rate in Worldwide Adoptions of Green Open
Access Self-Archiving Mandates (2002-2009, in half-year increments)
by Research Funders, Institutions, and Departments/Faculties/Schools
(Swan 2009)
____________________________________________________________________________
(1) The latest and fastest-growing kinds of Green Open Access
Self-Archiving Mandates are not only self-chosen by the researchers
themselves, but they are department/faculty/school mandates, rather
than full university-wide mandates. These are the "patchwork
mandates" that Arthur Sale already began recommending presciently
back in 2007, in preference to waiting passively for university-wide
consensus to be reached.
(The option of opting out is only useful if it applies, not to the
the deposit itself [of the refereed final draft, which should
be deposited, without opt-out, immediately upon acceptance for
publication], but to whether access to the deposit is immediately set
as Open Access.)
(2) Another recent progress report for Institutional Repositories,
following Stirling's, is Aberystwyth's, which reached 2000 deposits
in May.
(3) Richard asks: "Will the fact that many of the new mandates
include opt-outs affect compliance rates? (Will that make them appear
more voluntary than mandatory?)"
[comply1.jpg] According to Alma Swan's international surveys, most
authors report they would comply willingly with a self-archiving
mandate. The problem is less with achieving compliance on adopted
mandates than with achieving consensus on the adoption of the mandate
in the first place. (Hence, again, Arthur Sale's sage advice to adopt
"patchwork" department/faculty/school mandates, rather than waiting
passively for consensus on the adoption of full university-wide
mandates, is the right advice.)
And the principal purpose of mandates themselves is
to reinforceresearchers' already-existing inclination to maximise
access and usage for their give-away articles, not
to force researchers to do something they don't already want to do.
(Researchers need to be reassured that their departments or
institutions or funders are indeed fully behind self-archiving, and
indeed expect it of them; otherwise researchers remain in a state of
"Zeno's Paralysis" about self-archiving year upon year, because of
countless groundless worries, such as copyright, journal choice, and
even how much time self-archiving takes.)
(4) Richard also asks: "What is full compliance so far as a
self-archiving mandate is concerned?"
Full compliance is of course 100% compliance, and the longer-standing
mandates are climbing toward that, but their biggest boost will come
not only from time, nor even from the increasingly palpable local
benefits of OA self-archiving (in terms of enhanced research impact),
but from the global growth of Green OA Self-Archiving Mandates that
Alma has just graphically demonstrated.
(5) "What other questions should we be asking?"
We should be asking what university students and staff can do to
accelerate and facilitate the adoption of mandates at their
institution. (See "Waking OA's "Slumbering Giant": The University's
Mandate To Mandate Open Access.")
And the right way to judge the success of a mandate is not just by
reporting the growth in an institution's yearly deposit rates, but by
plotting the growth in deposit rate as a percentage of the
institution's yearly output of research articles, for the articles
actually published in that same year.
Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum
Received on Tue May 26 2009 - 11:00:12 BST