A little bird-in-the-know also told Alma that although 91% of
Wellcome-funded research is published in journals compliant with the
Wellcome policy, a major reason for disappointing deposit levels in UKPMC in
the first year of the Wellcome policy (at least) was that the *publishers*
were not depositing as agreed (and as they were being paid to do).
I daresay they're shaping up by now.
Alma Swan
Key Perspectives Ltd
Truro, UK
On 24/06/2009 11:01, "Sally Morris (Morris Associates)"
<sally_at_MORRIS-ASSOCS.DEMON.CO.UK> wrote:
> That's what they told Alma. It is not, however, what they are doing so far
>
> Sally
>
>
> Sally Morris
> Partner, Morris Associates - Publishing Consultancy
>
> South House, The Street
> Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex BN13 3UU, UK
>
> Tel: +44(0)1903 871286
> Fax: +44(0)8701 202806
> Email: sally_at_morris-assocs.demon.co.uk
> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Scientist Open Access Forum
> [mailto:AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG] On
> Behalf Of Stevan Harnad
> Sent: 23 June 2009 14:13
> To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
> Subject: Re: The Beginning of Institutional Repositories
>
> On Tue, 23 Jun 2009, Sally Morris (Morris Associates) wrote:
>
>> The perceived necessity for institutional and other mandates does, in a
>> sense, reflect a failing - that researchers simply do not see 'what is in
> it
>> for them' and therefore do not, by and large, deposit voluntarily. What
>> this tells us is an interesting question
>
> It is indeed an interesting question. I think a partial answer is given
> by Alma Swan's surveys, which showed not only that 95% of researchers
> would comply with a deposit mandate, but that 81% would do so
> *willingly*, and only 14% reluctantly.
>
> To me, that suggests that researchers are inclined to deposit, but not
> inclined enough to do so without a mandate from their institutions or
> funders.
>
> The reasons most are *inclined* to do so, yet only a few actually do it
> without a mandate are multiple. I have identified at least 34 of them:
>
> Harnad, S. (2006) Opening Access by Overcoming Zeno's Paralysis, in
> Jacobs, N., Eds. Open Access: Key Strategic, Technical and Economic
> Aspects, chapter 8. Chandos. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12094/
>
> The three chief worries are about doing so are that (1) it might be
> illegal, (2) it might put their paper's acceptance for publication by
> their preferred journals at risk, and (3) it might be time-consuming.
>
> These -- and the 31 other worries -- are all groundless, and individual
> researchers can be successfully informed about this, one by one; but
> that is not a very practical route to reaching a deposit rate of 100%
> worldwide. Official institutional and funder mandates reassure researchers
> that there is nothing to worry about, their institutions and funders
> back them, everyone is doing it, and, as they quickly learn, the time
> it takes to deposit it is minuscule.
>
> Carr, L. and Harnad, S. (2005) Keystroke Economy: A
> Study of the Time and Effort Involved in Self-Archiving.
> http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10688/
>
> I am not saying that this fully resolves the puzzle of why it is taking so
> long to reach the outcome that is so obviously and demonstrably optimal
> for research and researchers, and fully within reach. We will have to
> leave that to future historians and sociologists. What is urgent now
> -- for the sake of research itself, as well as for researchers, their
> institutions and funders, and the tax-payers that fund the research --
> is that this optimal and inevitable outcome should be facilitated and
> accelerated by mandates, so we reach it at long last. For the longer we
> delay, the more research impact and progress keeps being lost, needlessly.
>
> So full speed ahead with deposit mandates now, and then we can study
> why it took so long -- and why it needed to be mandated at all -- at
> our leisure, after we have universal OA.
>
> Stevan Harnad
Received on Thu Jun 25 2009 - 11:22:51 BST