[BOAI] Re: New Report: Publishers allow more than authors think

[Stevan Harnad]

This report is welcome for strongly confirming what was already known from
the Romeo <http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php> directory of publisher
self-archiving policies (SHERPA/Nottingham, with an author-oriented
rendering at EPrints/Southampton): The majority of journals (over 90%)
endorse the immediate, unembargoed author self-archiving of some version of
the article (63% for the refereed version).
It is also quite correct that:

(1) Most publishers endorse only the immediate, unembargoed self-archiving
of the author's refereed, revised, accepted final draft, not the publisher's
proprietary PDF.

(2) Most publishers endorse immediate, unembargoed self-archiving only on
the author's institutional website, not on a 3rd-party website, such as a
central or subject-based repository.


Both of these limitations are just fine and in no way limit or compromise
the provision of (Green, gratis) Open Access. What would-be users worldwide
who do not have subscription access to the publisher's proprietary PDF
urgently need today is access to the refereed research itself, and that is
what depositing it into the author's Institutional repository provides.

Although the word "print" is somewhat misleading in the online era, because
most eprints are not printed out at all, but consulted only in their online
version, the preprint/postprint distinction is perfectly coherent: a
preprint is any draft preceding the author's final, accepted, refereed
version, and a postprint is any draft from the author's final, accepted
refereed version onward (including the publisher's PDF). Preprint/postprint
marks the essential OA distinction: There is no need to use the complicated
NISO terminology instead.

The PRC Report is quite right that authors are still greatly under-informed
about Open Access, Self-Archiving, and Rights. Universities need to master
the essential information and then convey it to their researchers.

See:

"Too Much Ado About
PDF<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/460-guid.html>
"
"Waking OA's Slumbering Giant: Why Locus-of-Deposit Matters for Open Access
and Open Access
Mandates<http://blogsearch.google.ca/blogsearch?hl=en&num=100&c2coff=1&safe=active&ie=UTF-8&q=locus+of+deposit++blogurl%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fopenaccess.eprints.org%2F&btnG=Search+Blogs>
"
"What is an Eprint?<http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#What-is-Eprint>
"


Stevan Harnad

On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 5:22 AM, Publishing Research Consortium <
info at publishingresearch.net> wrote:

>  *Publishers’ agreements are more liberal than journal authors think, but
> do not allow self-archiving of the published PDF*
>
>
>
> The Publishing Research Consortium has published another in its series of
> reports:  *Journal Authors’ Rights:  perception and reality* (Summary
> Paper 5).
>
>
>
> Using re-analysis of the recently published ALPSP report *Scholarly
> Publishing Practice 3* (which looks at the practice of 181 publishers,
> representing 75% of all articles), and a new survey of 1163 authors, the
> report compares what publishers actually allow authors to do with the
> different versions of their manuscript, and what they want to do and believe
> they are permitted to do.
>
>
>
> For both the submitted and the accepted version of their manuscript, the
> majority of publishers’ agreements (as calculated by the number of articles
> they publish) allow authors to provide copies to colleagues, to incorporate
> into their own works, to post to a personal or departmental website or to an
> institutional repository, and to use in course packs;  just under 50% also
> permit posting to a subject repository.  However, far fewer authors think
> they can do any of these than are in fact allowed to do so.
>
>
>
> The published PDF version is the version that authors would prefer to use
> for all the above purposes;  again, publishers’ agreements exceed authors’
> expectations for providing copies to colleagues, incorporating in subsequent
> work, and use in course packs.  However, the picture is turned on its head
> when it comes to self-archiving;  more than half of authors think that
> publishers allow them to deposit the final PDF, whereas under 10% of
> publishers actually permit this – probably because of serious concerns about
> the long-term impact on subscriptions.
>
>
>
> Why do authors have such a poor understanding of publishers’ agreements?
> The PRC concludes that publishers need to do much more to make sure that
> their terms are crystal clear, but also suggests that the ambiguous term
> ‘preprint’ may mislead authors, and should be dropped in favour of the
> recommended NISO terminology.
>
>
>
> ·        Full report:  Sally Morris, *Journal Authors’ Rights:  perception
> and reality* (PRC Summary Paper 5), PRC 2009 (PDF)
> http://www.publishingresearch.net/documents/JournalAuthorsRights.pdf
>
> ·        Summary of findings:  *Journal Authors’ Rights:  perception and
> reality – a preliminary report*, PRC 2009 (PPT)
> http://www.publishingresearch.net/documents/SummaryforAPE-final.ppt
>
> ·        Author survey summary:  *Author Rights Copyright Project*, GfK
> Business 2008 (PPT)
> http://www.publishingresearch.net/documents/PRC2008v2.ppt
>
> ·        John & Laura Cox, *Publishing Practice 3*, ALPSP 2008 (PDF)
> http://www.alpsp.org/ngen_public/article.asp?id=200&did=47&aid=24781&st=&oaid=-1
>
> ·        *Journal Article Versions (JAV): Recommendations of the
> NISO/ALPSP JAV Technical Working Group*, NISO l 2008 (PDF)
> http://www.niso.org/publications/rp/RP-8-2008.pdf
>
> * *
>
> *The Publishing Research Consortium (http://www.publishingresearch.net) is
> a group of associations and publishers, which supports global research into
> scholarly communication in order to enable evidence-based discussion.  Our
> objective is to support work that is scientific and pro-scholarship.
> Overall, we aim to promote an understanding of the role of publishing and
> its impact on research and teaching.*
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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