On Sun, Oct 17, 2010 at 10:08 PM, Peter Suber <peter.suber_at_gmail.com> wrote:
>
> [Forwarding from the Council of Australian University Librarians. --Peter Suber.]
>
> 18 October 2010
>
> CAUL STATEMENT ON OPEN SCHOLARSHIP
>
> In September 2004 the Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL)
> announced its commitment to the goals of open access as a "system of
> academic publishing and communication that would enable the rapid and
> affordable dissemination of the outcomes of research and scholarship,
> and assist with the preservation of the scholarly record for the future"
> (CAUL Statement on Open Access, September 2004
> <http://archive.caul.edu.au/scholcomm/> ). Since then support for Open
> Access has come of age in Australian universities. All of the 83% of
> Australian universities that responded to a recent survey now have at
> least one institutional repository, 85% mandate deposit of at least some
> types of scholarly publications and nearly 40% hold greater than 10,000
> records in their repositories.
>
> In early 2010, CAUL established the CAUL Open Scholarship Initiative
> (COSI) to assist members with advocacy, collaboration, the sharing of
> good practice and the development of knowledge and skills in this
> important area. One of the first outcomes of this initiative is the
> revision of the Statement on Open Access to a new Statement on Open
> Scholarship, which reaffirms CAUL's commitment in this area. The change
> in emphasis recognises the increasingly open nature of access to
> information in many different formats across all disciplines, research
> and scholarly collaboration, and the sharing and re-use of research
> data. CAUL is pleased to release this new Statement during Open Access
> Week <http://www.openaccessweek.org/> , 18-24 October 2010. This global
> event encourages learning, sharing and development of all aspects of
> open access.
>
> For more information on the CAUL Open Scholarship Initiative please
> contact:
>
> Maxine Brodie maxine.brodie_at_mq.edu.au +612 9850 7546 Judy Stokker
> j.stokker_at_qut.edu.au +617 3138 1642
>
> http://www.caul.edu.au/caul-programs/open-scholarship
t is gratifying and welcome that CAUL is increasingly warming to the
principle of Open Access.
But, alas, endorsing the principle of Open Access in 2010 takes us
back to the old days of the Bethesda Statement and the Berlin
Declaration. We have since had a decade of endorsement of the
principle in multiple forms.
But what we need need now is the practical provision of OA. And if
this decade has taught us anything beyond the fact that endorsing
principles is ineffectual, it is that waiting for voluntarism is
futile. The providers of the target content, the content for which we
seek OA, will not provide OA for all, most, or even much of it, of
their own accord. Spontaneous, self-selective OA continues to hover
somewhere between 5 and 25 %.
In contrast, mandated OA jumps to 60% almost immediately, and climbs
toward 100% within a few years of adopting the mandate.
So nothing short of mandating OA, or calling for mandating OA, amounts
to anything but words, I regret to say, especially this late in the
day.
The CAUL Statement on OA says: "of the 83% of Australian universities
that responded to a recent survey… 85% mandate deposit of at least
some types of scholarly publications…": Australia does have 5
institutional mandates, a departmental mandate, and two funder
mandates, plus 17 thesis mandates -- but the thesis mandates are a bit
of a fudge factor here, justifying saying "at least some types of
scholarly publications," while losing sight of the reality -- which is
that apart from its (commendable) 5/1/2
institutional/departmental/funder mandates, for most of Australia's
target content OA is definitely *not* mandated, and it is not being
made OA unmandated. This is just as true in Australia as it is in the
rest of the world (though it is likely that Australia -- along with
the UK and Finland -- is among the countries with the highest
percentage of *mandated* OA).
The upshot is ever so simple, and there's no point mincing words:
Australia will have the OA it says it wants if and when all of its
institutions (reinforced by its funders) mandate it.
Till then it will not, no matter how fervently it keeps endorsing the
principle of OA. (It would be helpful if these endorsements at least
said that, straight-forwardly: then we would know where we stand, and
exactly what we need to do to go where we purport to want to go!)
Amen,
Your weary archivangelist
PS Dilating on the degree of openness one desires -- raising the
goalpost from gratis OA to libre OA, and throwing in the desiderata of
copyright reform and perhaps Gold OA to boot -- does not get us one
bit closer to the goal of 100% OA -- instead of today's 15%...
Received on Mon Oct 18 2010 - 03:15:35 BST