[BOAI] Is a Different OA Strategy Needed for Social Sciences and Humanities? (No)

[Stevan Harnad]

On 2011-11-06, at 1:28 PM, Jean-Claude Guédon wrote:

The primary target information of the OA movement is refereed research
> results in whatever form, articles, books, etc. They are written for
> research uptake, and even though some research monographs may entail
> symbolic royalties, they are not published for this reason. As a result,
> they should not be distinguished from the rest, especially because they
> constitute the dominant symbolic currency of the humanities and the social
> sciences. The OA movement also deals with the humanities and the social
> sciences.


A distinction can and must be made between what authors want to give away
free for all and what they do not want to give away free for all.

Underlying this is the all-important underlying distinction between what
institutions and funders can mandate (require) to be made OA and what they
cannot.

Books are always welcome as OA, of course, but only articles can be
mandated to be made OA because they are the only ones that are, without
exception, written by their authors solely for research uptake, usage and
impact, not for royalty revenue.

It is a great strategic mistake to conflate the exception-free subset with
the exception-ridden supraset,


> The situation is not so rosily green (!!!) in the humanities and social
> sciences, and it is far worse in the case of monographs.


For monographs, see above.

Among the 60% of all journals that are already green on immediate green OA
self-archiving by their authors, the only systematic discipline difference
I know of for sure is chemistry, because of the ACS's regressive policy.
All the large international, multidisciplinary green publishers (CUP,
Elsevier, John Wiley, Kluwer, Springer) include social science and
humanities (SSH) journals among their titles.

Is there evidence that among all SSH journals the proportion of green
journals differs significantly from 60%? (This may be true for some
national journals and non-English-language journals; I do not know,
although one hears the reverse: that national and non-English language
journals have a higher, not a lower proportion of gold journals (which are,
a fortiori, also green), and even gold journals that do not charge
pay-to-publish fees.)

In any case, this matter is irrelevant for mandates, because what can be
universally mandated, without exception, in all fields, is immediate
deposit in the author's institutional repository, whether or not the
journal is green (i.e., whether or not it endorses making deposits OA
immediately, or instead insists on a Closed Access embargo period of
various -- sometimes infinite -- length).

In principle, one could also mandate deposit of all monographs too,
allowing the option of Closed Access, exactly as with non-green journal
articles -- and I personally think this would be a wonderful idea.

But, practically speaking, considering all the misunderstandings that
abound, slowing the adoption even of journal-article mandates, I would
again recommend accomplishing the latter first, without inviting trouble
and opposition by over-reaching for books too. (They will all come once we
have at long last had the sense to do the doable, which is to mandate green
for all articles, first.)

This is important to avoid discriminating against the humanities and the
> social sciences, once again.


There is no discrimination against SSH! Authors are free to self-archive
their books too. But it is their articles that they *must* self-archive.

[Regarding mandating the deposit of the author's refereed, corrected,
> accepted final draft is the refereed journal article]...
> I agree with this, but must point out, once more, that the humanities and
> social sciences do not limit themselves to citing articles; they also quote
> from these articles, and this requires page numbers. if the version made
> accessible in a repository is not paginated in the same way as the final,
> publisher's version, it can be read and cited, but not quoted in the usual
> manner. This situation creates obstacles to researchers.


Please, please let us not air this all again! What is at issue is which
version is within immediate reach, with minimal publisher constraints, and
that version is the author's final draft. That is the one for which deposit
can and must be mandated. And that is the one that means the difference
between night and day for those who wish to access, read, cite *and quote*
it, if otherwise their institutions cannot afford subscription access to
the publisher's version of record at all.

Yes, the absence of the pagination is a slight scholarly inconvenience. But
what is the size of this inconvenience, compared to no access at all? And
the locus of a quoted passage can be indicated in a perfectly rigorous,
effective and scholarly way by citing the section name and paragraph number
in place of the page number. (It's even more specific!)

And what is the point? Since far more publishers are green on immediate OA
for the author's final draft than for the publisher's paginated version of
record, why are we talking about the need of page numbers to quote from the
publisher's version of record when most institutions have not yet even
mandated the self-archiving the author's final draft?

Why even mention the unreachable "more," when we have not even bothered to
grasp the vast benefits of the "less" that is fully within reach?

It is more like the difference between night and early dawn. The "night and
> day" result happens when only citing is needed. In cases where quoting is
> also needed, it is more difficult to achieve (hence the dawn, rather the
> day). In poorer countries, I suspect it is close to being impossible.


Jean-Claude, I cannot see the point that is being made here. But I think it
has been made, and answered, so many times in this Forum that there is
nothing new to be learned.

Yes, I myself keep repeating the mandating point too, but that is something
that is practically feasible, and has been for some time. The idea is to
get people to at least do that, at long last, rather than to continue
dwelling on how it falls short of the ideal...

I agree with all of this, but I must point out that in some countries,
> including the US, the "email eprint request" must be designed very
> carefully so as not to run afoul of copyright legislation. An automatic
> sending of the article by the repository simultaneously with the sending of
> the email request to the author, even though the author may have given a
> blanket release on his article, may be assimilated to illegal publishing in
> some jurisdictions, especially if the author has signer all of her rights
> away to a publisher. The best way is to have a letter go to the author and
> have the author send directly the article to the person requesting. This
> will protect the repository from possible litigations.


The latter, not the former, is precisely how the Button works. The IR does
not send out copies automatically. What it does is relay eprint requests
from would-be users (paste  name and email in a box and click once) to the
author, who receives an email requesting the eprint and can authorize the
emailing with one click.

Sale, A., Couture, M., Rodrigues, E., Carr, L. and Harnad, S. (2012) Open
Access Mandates and the "Fair Dealing"
Button<http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/18511/>.
In: *Dynamic Fair Dealing: Creating Canadian Culture Online* (Rosemary J.
Coombe & Darren Wershler, Eds.) http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/18511/
*ABSTRACT:* We describe the "Fair Dealing Button," a feature designed for
authors who have deposited their papers in an Open Access Institutional
Repository but have deposited them as "Closed Access" (meaning only the
metadata are visible and retrievable, not the full eprint) rather than Open
Access. The Button allows individual users to request and authors to
provide a single eprint via semi-automated email. The purpose of the Button
is to tide over research usage needs during any publisher embargo on Open
Access and, more importantly, to make it possible for institutions to adopt
the "Immediate-Deposit/Optional-Access" Mandate, without exceptions or
opt-outs, instead of a mandate that allows delayed deposit or deposit
waivers, depending on publisher permissions or embargoes (or no mandate at
all). This is only "Almost-Open Access," but in facilitating exception-free
immediate-deposit mandates it will accelerate the advent of universal Open
Access.

Amitiés,
Stevan
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