On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 10:14 AM, Klaus Graf<klausgraf_at_googlemail.com> wrote:
> (1) "request" or "require" is only a play on words.
So is "may" vs. "must." And "recommended" vs. "obligatory."
But words matter, when it comes to formulating official institutional policy.
And they matter all the more in an area that is still very new and
unfamiliar to most researchers, hence still rife with confusion and
misunderstanding, as is OA.
"What's in a Word?"
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/605-guid.html
> (2) You cannot compare a funder madate (NIH) with an university mandate.
You certainly can -- and must, if you are to formulate effective OA
policies. The two kinds of mandates are complementary.
"How To Integrate University and Funder Open Access Mandates"
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/369-guid.html
> Request in a funder mandate means: "May be there will be disadvantages
> if I don't selfarchive"
Funder mandates (like NIH) never specified those disadvantages, but
when the NIH policy was a request there was 5% compliance after 2
years:
http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/action/nih-public-access-policy-update-request-for-letter.shtml
...whereas within a year of upgrading it to a requirement compliance
had already exceeded 60% within a year:
http://www.libraryjournal.com/info/CA6581624.html#news1
(The obvious disadvantage is that grantees may not receive their next
NIH grant if they fail to comply with the prior grant's official
requirements -- but not necessarily the grant's "requests" or
"recommendations.")
> Request in a university mandate means: "Nothing will happen if I do so".
To get a more realistic idea, please have a look at those university
mandates that are procedurally tied to the official mechanism for
submitting articles for university performance review -- for example,
the U. Liege mandate, to which the Rector has already drawn your
attention in a previous reply to
"Yesterday, Klaus Graf reacted rather strongly to the announcement of
the Liège University repository mandate, stating [in the American
Scientist Open Access Forum] that its 'practice and legal framework is
nonsense.'
"It seems to me that perhaps he may have missed a few essential
aspects of this mandate, essentially the way it is handled in
practice, the legal wherewithal and the reasons for imposing it....
Excerpt from Liege Mandate: "...starting October 1st, 2009, only those
references introduced in ORBi will be taken into consideration as the
official list of publications accompanying any curriculum vitæ in all
evaluation procedures 'in house' (designations, promotions, grant
applications, etc.)."
(Hence the obvious disadvantage here is that if faculty fail to comply
with the official submission requirements for performance evaluation,
their articles will fail to be evaluated. This is rather like a
requirement to submit a digital draft, or even a draft in a particular
digital format. Note also that the university has a stake in its
faculty complying with funder requirements...)
>Harvard-style: "I can get all waivers I need".
The jury is still out on what will be the compliance rate with the
Harvard-style mandates (with their option of opting out).
(I think the Harvard-style mandates should be upgraded to an
immediate-deposit mandate with no waiver option for the deposit
itself, just for whether or not to adoption of the author addendum.
Right now, this is not part of the Harvard mandate, just part of the
Harvard FAQ; but I still have hopes that the Harvard mandate will be
upgraded to include to make deposit itself mandatory, with no opt-out:
"Harvard Mandate Adds ID/OA to its FAQ"
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/545-guid.html )
"Which Green OA Mandate Is Optimal?"
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/494-guid.html
> (3) I cannot see any proof that the very few documented high deposit
> rates after a mandate have the mandate as causa instead of the
> readiness of a faculty/university to deposit.
Well it would be a surprising coincidence indeed if the difference
between the (many, many) institutional repositories with low deposit
rates ( <15%) differed and the few that have high deposit rates (>60%)
were the fact that the latter happen to have faculty with a "readiness
to deposit" -- rather than the more obvious difference, which is that
they require deposit!
(If the real causal difference is a local "readiness to deposit"
rather than the requirement to deposit, perhaps we should be looking
at what the faculty are eating at those universities, so we can add it
to the diet of the faculty at all those other universities whose
faculty do not yet seem to have this estimable "readiness to
deposit"...)
Stevan Harnad
Received on Mon Aug 31 2009 - 21:38:05 BST