Hang on, deposit is not an `arbitrary hoop' that the publisher can
jump through as and when they are bothered. It is a condition of the
contract between the Wellcome and the publisher. If a publisher
accepts Wellcome's money to make a paper Gold OA then one of the
conditions of the contract between them is that the publisher does
the deposit. It is exactly one of the services that the Gold
publisher is being paid to publish (irrespective of whether or not
its part of the definition of Gold OA.).
You may not agree with the strategy, but let's not get confused about
what is being paid for.
____________________________________________________________________________
From: American Scientist Open Access Forum
[mailto:AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG]
On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad
Sent: 25 June 2009 22:22
To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Subject: Funder Grant Conditions, Fundee/Institutional Compliance,
and 3rd-Party Gobbledy-Gook
There is a very simple fix for the (self-created) problem of
"noncompliant" publishers -- i.e., those who are paid for Gold OA by
funders like Wellcome and then fail to deposit the paid-up article:
Gold OA fees are paid for Gold OA. That means the publisher makes the
article OA on his own website (and, of course, since all Gold OA
journals are also Green, also endorses immediate Green OA
self-archiving by the author in any repositories he chooses).
Let us not castigate publishers if they do not immediately also jump
through the arbitrary hoop of further depositing their Gold OA
article in some designated repository or other on behalf of the
author or the funder. That is an extra (and as far as I know, it is
not part of the definition of Gold OA publication, nor the service
that the Gold OA publisher is being paid to provide).
So if not the publisher, who is at fault if the article is not
deposited?
(I pause to let you reflect a few moments.)
Well of course the fault is the absurd, again-not-thought-through
mandate requiring fundees to make their articles OA, but relying on a
3rd party (unfunded by the funder, and merely paid to make the
article OA) to do the deposit!
Not only does that make no sense at all for Gold OA articles, but it
also makes compliance and grant fulfillment a gratuitously
complicated overall affair, complicated to comply with, even more
complicated to monitor compliance with:
http://bit.ly/3oxWHy
For articles published in non-OA journals, the fundee must do the
deposit; for articles published in Gold OA journals (or only those
that are paid-OA? or only those whose paid-OA is paid by the funder?)
the publisher must do the deposit.
I truly hope that the sensible reader will see at once that the
sensible way for a funder to mandate deposit is to put the onus for
compliance eclusively on the grantee and the grantee's institution,
as with all other funding conditions, not to offload it willy-nilly
onto non-grantee 3rd parties (whose services may be paid for, but who
certainly are not being paid for repository deposit but for Gold OA
publishing).
And while we're at it, this is yet another reason why the default
repository specified by the funder should be the grantee's own
institutional repository and not, again, institution-external
repositories. For with local, one-stop deposit, the institution can
collaborate, as usual, in ensuring compliance with grant fulfillment
conditions, by monitoring the deposits in its own repository, making
sure that every grant-funded article has been deposited, regardless
of whether it happens to be published in a Gold or non-Gold journal.
(And, as a bonus, the institution is then also more likely to go on
to adopt an IR deposit mandate of its own, for the rest of its
research output, in all fields, whether or not funded by that
funder.)
Chasing after 3rd parties -- whether publishers or
institution-external repositories -- creates gratuitous complications
for absolutely no extra gain, only needless extra pain.
Is there any hope at all that funders who have committed to these
dysfunctional and counterproductive stipulations will be enlightened
enough to fix them at this point (it's easy) rather than (as I fear),
just digging in deeper with a "harrumph" and "we know what we're
doing" and "mind your own business"...
With a sigh of resignation,
Your weary archivangelist.
PS If you want to find the origin of much of this easily remedied
confusion, look again at that mixed blessing, the well-meaning,
timely, welcome and highly influential -- but relentlessly
unreflective -- ebiomed proposal
http://www.nih.gov/about/director/ebiomed/com0509.htm and its
subsequent incarnations across the years...
On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 6:42 AM, Sally
Morris<sally_at_morris-assocs.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> Isn't it the case that it's only in the case of articles published
Open
> Access, and where the fee is paid by Wellcome, that there is any
requirement
> on the publisher to do the depositing?
>
> Many other journals/publishers have a Wellcome-compliant policy for
> self-archiving of the accepted version, but they are not paid
anything nor
> are they required to do anything, as far as I am aware
>
>
> Sally
>
>
> Sally Morris
>
> 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 Alma Swan
> Sent: 25 June 2009 07:04
> To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
> Subject: Re: The Beginning of Institutional Repositories
>
> 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 Fri Jun 26 2009 - 20:08:29 BST