Re: Funder mandated deposit in centralised or subject based

From: Steve Hitchcock <sh94r_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 22 Feb 2010 10:20:23 +0000

A simple way to look at this is that authors, to achieve maximum flexibility with respect to open access, should work up the value chain, not down.

The value chain (upwards), based on the cost-effort invested in the respective output, in this case would be: IR-CR-publication.

The investment of cost-effort, in the traditional way of thinking, is invariably linked to restrictions to obtain a return on that investment (that is the product over service dichotomy). I place CRs in the centre of this short chain based on Robert Kiley's assertion of what UKPMC is seeking to achieve in terms of quality of production and presentation, of text and metadata.

As Robert acknowledges, if you go straight to publication there are more limitations, and perhaps less incentive, on your ability to provide OA. Similarly, a CR-first approach creates limitations and less incentive for deposit in IRs. Stevan shows that this strategy is detrimental to the wider uptake of OA by non-funder mandated authors and other institutions. It appears that Wellcome may be beginning to realise this - that it is in the centre here and is subject to the upside and downside - and could therefore benefit from a dialogue with IRs on this issue. If the will is there, so are the solutions.

Steve Hitchcock
IAM Group, Building 32
School of Electronics and Computer Science
University of Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK
Email: sh94r_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0)23 8059 7698 Fax: +44 (0)23 8059 2865

On 21 Feb 2010, at 21:21, Stevan Harnad wrote:

> On Sun, Feb 21, 2010 at 8:55 AM, Kiley ,Robert <r.kiley_at_wellcome.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>> we want to avoid a situation where a researcher is required to
>> deposit papers in both an IR (to meet their institutions mandate) and a
>> central repository, like PMC and UKPMC, (to meet the needs of a funder
>> such as the Wellcome Trust).
>
> It is so gratifying to hear that the Wellcome Trust -- the very first
> research funder to mandate OA self-archiving -- is looking into
> resolving the problem of multiple deposit (IRs and multiple CRs,
> Central Repositories)..
>
> The solution will have to be bottom-up (IRs to CRs) not top-down (CRs
> to IRs) for the simple reason that the Institutions are the providers
> of *all* research, not just funded research, and the solution has to
> be one that facilitates universal institutional deposit mandates, not
> just funder mandates.
>
> IRs and CRs are interoperable. So, in principle, automatic
> import/export could be from/to either direction.
>
> But since Institutions are the universal providers of all research
> output, funded and unfunded, across all disciplines, it is of the
> greatest importance that the solution should be systematically
> compatible with inducing all institutions to mandate self-archiving.
>
> For an institution that has already mandated self-archiving, the
> capability of automatically back-harvesting some of its own research
> output is fine (but, if you think about it, not even necessary). If it
> has already mandated self-archiving for all of its output,
> back-harvesting is redundant, since forward harvesting (IR to CR) is
> the only thing that's still left to be done.
>
> For an institution that has *not* yet mandated self-archiving, however
> (and that means most institutions on the planet, so far!) it makes an
> *immense* difference whether funders mandate IR deposit or CR deposit.
>
> If funders mandate CR deposit (even with the possibility of automatic
> back-harvesting to the author's IR), institutions that have not yet
> mandated self-archiving are not only left high and dry (if they aren't
> mandating local self-archiving for any of their research output, they
> couldn't care less about back-harvesting the funded subset of it); but
> the synergistic opportunity for funder mandates to encourage the
> institutions to mandate self-archiving for the rest of their research
> output is lost -- unless funders systematically mandate IR deposit.
> For funder-mandated IR deposit launches and seeds IRs, and makes the
> adoption of an institutional mandate for the rest of the institutional
> research output all the more natural and attractive.
>
> Funder mandates requiring institute-external deposit (even if they
> offer an automatic back-harvesting option) not only fail to encourage
> institutional deposit and institutional deposit mandates, but they
> increase the disincentive, and in two ways:
>
> (1) Authors, already obliged to deposit funded research
> institution-externally, will resist all the more the prospect of
> having to do institutional deposit too (whether for funded or unfunded
> research); hence they will be less favorably disposed toward
> institutional mandates rather than more favorably (as they would be if
> they were already doing their funder deposits institutionally);
> consequently their institution's management too will be less favorably
> disposed toward adopting an institutional mandate.
>
> (2) Worse, some funder mandates (including, unfortunately, the
> Wellcome Trust mandate) allow fulfillment to be done by *publishers*
> doing the (central) deposit instead of authors. That adds yet another
> layer of divergent confusion to deposit mandates (apart from making it
> all the harder for funders to monitor compliance with their mandates),
> since fundee responsibility for "compliance" is offloaded onto
> publishers, who are not only not fundees (hence not bound by the
> mandate), but not all that motivated to deposit any sooner than
> absolutely necessary. (This is also, of course, a conflation with Gold
> OA publishing, where the funders are paid for the OA.)
>
> The natural, uniform, systematic and optimal solution that solves all
> these problems -- including the funders' problem of systematically
> monitoring compliance with their mandate -- is for *all*
> self-archiving mandates -- institutional and funder -- to stipulate
> that deposit should be in the author's IR (convergent deposit). That
> way institutions are maximally motivated to adopt mandates of their
> own; authors have only one deposit to make, for all papers, in one
> place, their own IRs; institutions can monitor funder mandate
> compliance as part of grant fulfillment, and the automatic harvesting
> can be done in the sole direction it is really needed: IR to CR.
>
> Robert mentions two other points below: publisher resistance to CR
> deposit and the question of XML:
>
> (a) In the OAI-compliant, interoperable age, there is no need for the
> full-texts to be located in more than one place (except for
> redundancy, back-up and preservation, of course). If the full-text is
> already in the IR, all the CR needs to harvest is the metadata and the
> link.
>
> (Besides, once universal OA mandates usher in universal Green OA,
> everything will change and optimize even further, But for now, the
> real hurdle is getting to universal Green OA, and the retardant is
> institutional sluggishness in mandating self-archiving. That is what
> makes convergent reinforcement -- instead of divergent competition --
> from funder mandates so crucial at this time.)
>
> (b) Not so long from now, authors will all be providing XML. What is
> urgently missing today is those all-important refereed-article
> full-texts (final refereed drafts), not XML. It would be exceedingly
> short-sighted to put needless hurdles in the path of getting that
> urgently needed full-text OA content today, because we are in such an
> unnecessary hurry for XML!
>
> (Again, once we have universal Green OA, all kinds good of things will
> happen, and happen fast, as a matter of natural course. But right now,
> we are needlessly -- and very short-sightedly -- over-reaching for
> non-necessities like XML, and central full-texts (and, for that
> matter, authors' addenda and Gold OA) at the cost of year upon year
> failing to do the little it would take to usher in universal Green
> OA.)
>
>> To... simply use the SWORD protocol to move content from repository
>> A to repository B... does not address the rights issues....some publishers
>> ... allow authors to self-archive papers in an IR, but... NOT [in a CR]
>
> But the question we need to clear-headedly ask ourselves about this
> fact is: So what?
>
> What we need now is universal Green OA, regardless of locus. There is
> no particular rush for CR full-texts, and Green publishers have
> already blessed immediate IR deposit. Why balk at that, and needlessly
> insist on more, only to get much less? (This is *precisely* what has
> been going on year after year now, with the counterproductive
> divergence of funder mandates from institutional mandates.
>
>> In addition to the rights-management problem, there are other issues we
>> need to address such as how a manuscript, ingested from an IR, could be
>> attached to the relevant funder grant, and how a researcher could be
>> motivated to "sign-off" the version of the document in PMC/UKPMC, given
>> that they would have already deposited in the IR. [As you may be aware,
>> every author manuscript in PMC and UKPMC is converted to XML. To ensure
>> that no errors are introduced through this exercise, authors are
>> required to sign-off the conversion before it can be released to the
>> public archive.]
>
> But why, why all this? There's an urgent need for the full-texts.
> There's no urgent need for the XML. There's an urgent need for an OA
> version *somewhere*, but no urgent need that it must be in a CR. The
> CR need merely harvest the metadata. Nothing to sign off. Nothing to
> convert. And the eager institutions will be only too happy to monitor
> and ensure compliance both for deposit (which should be immediately
> upon acceptance of the final refereed draft for publication) and for
> setting access to the deposit as OA (whenever the allowable embargo,
> if any, elapses).
>
> Unnecessary pseudo-problems are being allowed to get in the way of
> powerful practical possibilities in these complicated and arbitrary
> self-imposed criteria. (Let us not forget that this has all been
> improvised in the past 6 years; we are not talking about longstanding
> canonical criteria here!)
>
>> In view of these issues our preferred approach is to encourage
>> researchers to deposit centrally, and then provide IR's with a simple
>> mechanism whereby this content can be ingested into their repository.
>> Of course, even with the UKPMC to IR approach there may be rights
>> management issues to address.
>>
>> This development work has only just begun but I will keep you (and this
>> list) abreast of progress.
>
> I hope some thought will be given to the many reasons that the
> proposed solution (CR deposit and automatic IR import capability) is
> needlessly far from being the optimal solution, which is the simple,
> pragmatic alternative that would deliver far more OA at no loss
> whatsoever: both funders and institutions mandate IR deposit and CRs
> harvest the metadata from the IRs.
>
> Stevan Harnad
>
>> Robert Kiley
>> Head of Digital Services
>> Wellcome Library
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Repositories discussion list
>> [mailto:JISC-REPOSITORIES_at_JISCMAIL.AC.UK]
>> On Behalf Of Garret McMahon
>> Sent: 18 February 2010 12:05
>> To: JISC-REPOSITORIES_at_JISCMAIL.AC.UK
>> Subject: Funder mandated deposit in centralised or subject based
>> repositories
>>
>> Dear All,
>>
>> I have a general query regarding funder requirements that stipulate
>> deposit into a centralised or subject based repository such as PubMed
>> Central. Is anybody meeting such a requirement by developing processes
>> that incorporate the institutional repository as the primary point of
>> ingest and subsequently uploading content to the centralised service?
>> I'm particularly interested in two aspects of this question. Firstly,
>> how an institutional policy supporting the home repository does not find
>> itself at variance with funder deposit policies that specify a
>> preference for locus of deposit external to the institution. Secondly,
>> what is critical to the home and centralised repositories in terms of
>> service design in any such collaboration.
>>
>> Kind Regards,
>>
>> Garret McMahon
>> Institutional Repository Content Manager - www.tara.tcd.ie Systems
>> Office Ussher Library Trinity College Dublin 2 Ireland
>> Tel: +353 1 896 1646
>> email:garret.mcmahon_at_tcd.ie
Received on Mon Feb 22 2010 - 12:09:42 GMT