[BOAI] U. Edinburgh: Scotland's 6th Green OA Mandate, UK's 22nd, Planet's 67th

[Stevan Harnad]

** Apologies for Cross-Posting **

(Thanks to Peter Suber's Open Access News.) Note that Edinburgh's is the
optimal ID/OA<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/494-guid.html>Mandate.
(Let us hope they will also implement the automatized Request
a Copy Button<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/274-guid.html>for
Embargoed or Closed Access Deposits!)University
of Edinburgh (UK*
<goog_1236391046899>*institutional-mandate<goog_1236391046899>
*)<http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?inst=University%20of%20Edinburgh>
 http://www.ed.ac.uk/
Institution's/Department's OA Eprint Archives*[growth
data<http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.era.lib.ed.ac.uk%2F%3Cbr%3E>
]* http://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/
<http://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/%3Cbr%3E>http://www.publications.lib.ed.ac.uk/
<http://www.publications.lib.ed.ac.uk/%3Cbr%3E>
Institution's/Department's OA Self-Archiving Policy
http://www.acaffairs.ed.ac.uk/Committees/Senate/Meetings/200809/20090127/C4-OpenAccess.pdf

<http://www.acaffairs.ed.ac.uk/Committees/Senate/Meetings/200809/20090127/C4-OpenAccess.pdf%3Cbr%3E%3Cbr%3E>The
University of Edinburgh has adopted an OA mandate. Here's an excerpt from
the Open Access Publications Policy (January 27 - February 4, 2009), the
proposal which the university's Electronic Senate approved on February 18,
2009:

This... Publications Policy... requires researchers to deposit their
research outputs in the Publications Repository, and where appropriate in
the Open Access Edinburgh Research Archive in order to maximise the
visibility of the University’s research....

This policy will be implemented [i.e. become mandatory] from January 2010,
and in the meantime, researchers are encouraged to deposit outputs....

The Publications Repository (PR) is a closed repository for use only within
the University of Edinburgh and is an internal University tool for research
output management, while Edinburgh Research Archive (ERA) is a public open
access repository, making content available through global searching
mechanisms such as Google.

This policy requires each researcher to provide the peer reviewed final
accepted version of a research output to deposit. The policy encourages the
deposit of an electronic copy of nonpeer reviewed research, particularly
where this may be used for national assessments. Researchers (or their
proxies, eg research administrators) will deposit these research outputs in
the PR, and at the same time provide information about whether the research
output can be made publicly available in ERA. It will then be automatically
passed into ERA, where this is allowable, with no further input from the
researcher or their agent....

There are several strong reasons for pursuing the requirement for the
deposits of such research outputs at the moment:

1.  The impact of research is maximized because there is growing evidence
that research deposited in Open Access repositories is more heavily used and
cited

2. The deposit of outputs in ERA will support compliance with Research
Council and other funding agency requirements that research outputs are
available openly.

3. This will ensure that each research output has consistent metadata and
ensures longevity which, for example, a researcher’s own website does not.

4. Items which are already in Edinburgh Research Archive are well used. The
average number of times each item was downloaded during 2008 was 228, with
the top countries downloading Edinburgh research being: United States,
United Kingdom, Australia, China, Iran and India.

5. Researchers, research groups or Schools can use the PR to provide
automatically generated output for their own websites, or for their
curriculum vitae.

6. Future possible metrics based research assessment will require us to
ensure that Edinburgh’s research be cited as much as possible, and this
means that it must be as visible as possible....

9. This will become a competitive tool for Edinburgh’s research by enhancing
its reputation and branding as a good place to carry out research....

11. The world of scholarly communication is changing—adopting this policy in
Edinburgh will help us move forward within this changing environment. Other
universities require their researchers to deposit research outputs. Harvard
University, Stirling University—the first in the UK to do so, and very
recently the University of Glasgow, have adopted institutional requirements
for such deposit.

12. Such a deposit requirement is in line with other UoE policies on
knowledge exchange, public accountability and serving the public good....

Since this initiative requires changed patterns of work from researchers,
there will be many questions some of which are addressed in this section....

-- What happens if I don’t want to make the research output public? There
will always be a variety of circumstances where it is not possible to
deposit, for example where a researcher does not wish to go public with
their research immediately, because they wish to publish further, or where
commercial reasons exist or where there are copyright 
issues (considered
below). In these cases the research output should be deposited but only the
metadata will be exposed in the PR the item will not be passed into ERA
until permission is given.

-- What happens if the publisher does not agree? You should try to avoid
assigning the copyright to the publisher or granting them an exclusive
license. Rather, you should aim to grant a nonexclusive licence which leaves
you with the ability to deposit the work in the University Repositories and
possibly make it available in other digital forms.

-- How should I communicate this with the publisher? There will be advice
and guidance on how to achieve this and template forms to show how you can
amend Publisher copyright forms.

-- What about research outputs which are not journal articles? The PR and
ERA can accept most research output types including books, book chapters,
conference proceedings, performances, video, audio etc. In some cases – for
example books not available electronically – the PR/ERA will hold only
metadata, with the possibility of links to catalogues so that users can find
locations....

-- What about my research data? Data supporting research outputs is also
required by RCs to be made available? and this can be included where
requested. IS is establishing a working group to consider research data
issues....

-- I would like to publish in an author-pays Open Access journal. Does this
mean that I also have to deposit?  Yes, please deposit the research output
in the normal manner....
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