[BOAI] Guide for the Perplexed (about how to inspire institutions to adopt Green OA self-archiving mandates)

[Stevan Harnad]

On 22-Mar-10, at 6:07 AM, Charles Christacopoulos wrote:

> Stevan Harnad said the following on 22/03/2010 on jisc-repositories:
>
>> (1) You want to fill your repository? Mandate deposit.
>> (2) You want a repository that is not a "mess"? Mandate deposit.
>> (3) You want your work to be maximally visible to google? Deposit  
>> it in your repository.
>> (4) You want it on your website too? Export it from your repository.
>> (5) You want to generate a CV? Generate it from your repository.
>> (6) You want to generate annual reports? Generate them from your  
>> repository.
>> (8) You want rich usage and impact metrics? Generate them from your  
>> repository.
>> (9) You want to keep repositories empty? Rely on harvesting their  
>> contents from google.
>> (10) You want grounded advice on how to fill a repository? Ask  
>> someone who has done it, and knows.
>
> Useful comments (for us anyhow) as we are going through similar  
> issues to Newcastle.  However the OP was asking about writing a  
> paper for their research committee, i.e. trying to convince the  
> management of the need for a repository.  So what is the evidence  
> that is required to convince the management to mandate etc?
>
> I can only think of 2-3 things which do not go that far in convincing.
>
> * Research Excellence Framework (REF).  A repository may provide  
> some small increase of citations (by publishing earlier, by  
> increasing exposure).
> * REF again.  A full repository could make easier the selection of  
> "the best 3-4" outputs.
> * Research Council requirements for outcomes of their funded projects.


First, let me suggest that you consult EOS http://www.openscholarship.org 
  and OASIS http://www.openoasis.org/ for help in inspiring your  
university to adopt a mandate. Those two sites are created and updated  
by experienced and knowledgeable experts who really know what they are  
talking about, when it comes to IRs and IR mandates.

Let me also add, by way of supplement, a few other points:

(1) About the relation between mandated vs. unmandated repository  
deposit rates, there are Arthur Sale's studies -- http://eprints.utas.edu.au/view/authors/Sale,_AHJ.html

Sale, AHJ (2006) Comparison of IR content policies in Australia. First  
Monday, 11 (4). http://eprints.utas.edu.au/264/

http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Temp/sale1.gif
http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Temp/sale2.gif
http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Temp/sale3.gif

and our own recent study:

Gargouri, Y., Hajjem, C., Lariviere, V., Gingras, Y., Brody, T., Carr,  
L. and Harnad, S. (2010) Self-Selected or Mandated, Open Access  
Increases Citation Impact for Higher Quality Research. PLOS ONE  
(submitted) http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/18493/

http://www.crsc.uqam.ca/yassine/SelfArchiving/SelfArch_files/img3.gif

They both confirm that the unmandated (i.e. spontaneous, self- 
selected) deposit rate is about 15% (of annual published article  
output) whereas within about 2 years of adoption the mandated deposit  
rate is 60% and rising. (For the 4 longest-standing mandates --  
Southampton ECS, QUT, Minho and CERN -- it's actually higher, but our  
studies were based on just the Thompson/Reuters WoS-indexed subset,  
and what could be robot-harvested from the web, so these are actually  
conservative under-estimates of mandated deposit rate, but could they  
could thereby be compared with matched estimates of unmandated deposit  
rate).

Our study also confirms the widely reported OA citation advantage, and  
shows that it is not, as some have tried to argue, an artifact of self- 
selection (selective self-archiving of better -- hence more citeable  
-- articles, by better authors).

Mandates themselves vary, somewhat, depending on how they treat  
embargoes, and whether or not they allow an opt-out waiver. The  
strongest mandates are immediate-deposit + immediate-OA or immediate- 
deposit + optional OA (which allows a delay not in when the deposit is  
made but in when access to that deposit is made OA in case of a  
publisher embargo). Such mandates are the fastest and most effective  
in filling repositories (especially when the repository itself is made  
the mechanism for submitting publications for annual performance  
review, as in the Liege mandate, for example). Delayed-deposit  
mandates, and mandates allowing opt-outs or waivers are weaker, and  
their success rate is not yet documented.

The optimal compromise mandate is immediate-deposit (i.e., deposit of  
the refereed final draft immediately upon acceptance for publication),  
with any opt-out/waiver applicable only to whether and when access to  
the deposit is set as OA rather than Closed Access, not whether and  
when it is deposited. (That way, the repositories' "Fair Dealing"  
Button allows users to request  single copies from the author semi- 
automatically during any publisher embargo period:

Sale, A., Couture, M., Rodrigues, E., Carr, L. and Harnad, S. (2010)  
Open Access Mandates and the "Fair Dealing" Button. In: Dynamic Fair  
Dealing: Creating Canadian Culture Online (Rosemary J. Coombe & Darren  
Wershler, Eds.) http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/18511/

(2) There are download stats for IR usage. EPrints IRs, for example,  
have IRstats: http://irstats.eprints.org/irstats-cadair

(3) There is a relation between download statistics and other  
indicators of research usage and impact. (In particular, early  
download rates predict later citation rates (see references below)

(4) As the number of mandates grows, we will set up a comparator  
between the ROAR registry of IRs and the ROARMAP registry of IR  
mandates, to compare the growth rate of mandated and unmandated IRs  
explicitly, both in terms of deposit rates and usage rates. (Of course  
the real test is the relative usage and citation rate for OA and non- 
OA articles, not just IRs, because deposited articles may be harvested  
and mirrored at other cites too, such as Citeseer.)

Stevan Harnad

Bollen, J., Van de Sompel, H., Hagberg, A. and Chute, R. (2009) A  
principal component analysis of 39 scientific impact measures in PLoS  
ONE 4(6): e6022 http://arxiv.org/abs/0902.2183v1

Brody, T., Harnad, S. and Carr, L. (2006) Earlier Web Usage Statistics  
as Predictors of Later Citation Impact. Journal of the American  
Association for Information Science and Technology (JASIST) 57(8)  
1060-1072. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10713/
Gentil-Beccot, Anne; Salvatore Mele, Travis Brooks (2009) Citing and  
Reading Behaviours in High-Energy Physics: How a Community Stopped  
Worrying about Journals and Learned to Love Repositories http://arxiv.org/pdf/0906.5418v1

Harnad, S. (2008) Validating Research Performance Metrics Against Peer  
Rankings . Ethics in Science and Environmental Politics 8 (11) doi: 
10.3354/esep00088 The Use And Misuse Of Bibliometric Indices In  
Evaluating Scholarly Performance http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15619/

Harnad, S. (2009) Open Access Scientometrics and the UK Research  
Assessment Exercise. Scientometrics 79 (1) Also inProceedings of 11th  
Annual Meeting of the International Society for Scientometrics and  
Informetrics 11(1), pp. 27-33, Madrid, Spain. Torres-Salinas, D. and  
Moed, H. F., Eds. (2007) http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/17142/

Lokker, C., McKibbon, K. A., McKinlay, R.J., Wilczynski, N. L. and  
Haynes, R. B. (2008) Prediction of citation counts for clinical  
articles at two years using data available within three weeks of  
publication: retrospective cohort study BMJ, 2008;336:655-657 http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/336/7645/655

Moed, H. F. (2005) Statistical Relationships Between Downloads and  
Citations at the Level of Individual Documents Within a Single  
Journal. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and  
Technology 56(10): 1088- 1097

O'Leary, D. E. (2008) The relationship between citations and number of  
downloads Decision Support Systems 45(4): 972-980 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dss.2008.03.008

Watson, A. B. (2009) Comparing citations and downloads for individual  
articles Journal of Vision 9(4): 1-4 http://journalofvision.org/9/4/i/