[BOAI] Harnad Evidence to BIS Select Committee Inquiry on Open Access

[Stevan Harnad]

*Evidence to BIS Select Committee Inquiry on Open Access*

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*full text:** *http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/348483/ * *

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*Stevan Harnad*

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*Executive Summary:*

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*E1.* *UK worldwide leadership in OA.* The UK has led the world OA movement
ever since the historic recommendation of the 2004 (Gibson) Select
Committee<http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/39903.htm>to
mandate Green OA self-archiving. But the new BIS/Finch
Committee recommendation<http://www.researchinfonet.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Finch-Group-report-FINAL-VERSION.pdf>to
prefer and fund Gold OA pre-emptively and unilaterally, and to
restrict
UK authors' journal choice -- and the resultant RCUK OA
policy<http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/research/Pages/outputs.aspx>-- are having
unanticipated and unintended negative consequences, both for
UK OA and for worldwide OA.


*E2.* *Unintended negative consequences.* The UK's new policy of funding
Gold OA pre-emptively and unilaterally in preference to strengthening the
UK's existing Green OA mandate model is neither affordable nor sustainable,
and the model is not being (and will not be) followed by the rest of the
world<http://sparceurope.org/analysis-of-funder-open-access-policies-around-the-world/>.
It will not only waste scarce UK research funds needlessly and provoke
resentment and non-compliance among UK researchers, but it will have
perverse effects on publisher policy worldwide, encouraging publishers to
offer hybrid Gold OA (i.e., institutional subscription plus optional author
Gold OA for an extra fee) as well as encouraging publishers to adopt or
lengthen Green OA embargoes in order to makes sure UK authors must choose
the paid Gold option.


*E3.* *Mandate and monitor immediate, unembargoed deposit.* Irrespective of
what funds the UK elects to spend on paying pre-emptively for Gold OA while
subscriptions still need to be paid, and independent of embargo policy, the
UK should (1) mandate and enforce immediate deposit of the author's
peer-reviewed final draft of every journal article in the author's
institutional repository immediately upon acceptance for publication and
(2) designate repository deposit as the sole mechanism for submitting
publications for performance review and research assessment.


*E4.* *Link compliance to funding.* Compliance with this immediate-deposit
requirement has to be systematically monitored and enforced, with
consequences for non-compliance (non-funding and non-renewal of grants), as
is now being done to reinforce Green OA mandates worldwide.


*E5.* *Preserve researchers’ journal choice.* At the same time, the UK
should merely urge strongly, rather than require, that the
immediate-deposit be made immediately OA, rather than embargoed. This
restores authors’ free choice of journal. It frees authors from having to
publish in journals they don’t want to publish in. It frees authors from
having to pay for Gold OA if they do not wish to (or can’t). It frees
authors from having to provide CC-BY if they do not wish to (or can’t). It
ensures that 100% of RCUK-funded research output is deposited.

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*E7.* *Facilitated eprint requests during embargos.* For whatever deposits
are not made immediately OA, the repositories have the automated
email-eprint-request Button that allows individual users to request — and
authors free to choose whether or not to provide — an individual eprint of
a Closed Access deposit with just one click each. (This is not OA but
“Almost-OA.”)


*E8. ID/OA mandate is globally scalable.* The ID/OA mandate allows all
funders and all institutions, all over the world, to mandate
immediate-deposit (and to provide at least Almost-OA) to all research,
irrespective of where it’s published and whether or how long it’s
embargoed. The Almost-OA Button tides over research needs during embargos.


*E9. Keystroke mandate.* Sixty percent of
journals<http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/statistics.php>already endorse
immediate Green OA. Hence ID/OA not only generates at least
60% immediate Green OA plus 40% Almost-OA, but once ID/OA is adopted
worldwide, it will usher in the inevitable and well-deserved death of all
OA embargoes, under the growing natural peer-to-peer pressure for OA among
researchers. OA is -- and always was -- just a matter of keystrokes.


*E10. Optimal and inevitable outcome.* The UK should accordingly mandate
the keystrokes, now, and the rest will take care of itself, as a natural
matter of course. Focusing instead on Gold, Gold funds, CC-BY, copyright,
and embargoes will delay for yet another decade the obvious, optimal,
inevitable (and long overdue) outcome for refereed research in the online
age that has already been within reach for decades: Free online access for
all users.


*E11. Priorities.* Free online access for all users (not just subscribers)
is urgently needed, and extremely beneficial to all research and
researchers – both authors and users -- because it puts an end to
access-denial. Text-mining, re-mix and republishing rights are very
important in a few fields and will be useful in many fields, but they are
not nearly as important or urgent as free online access is today -- and
certainly not worth paying pre-emptive Gold OA fees for.


*E12. Grasp what is already within immediate reach.* Once Green OA has
prevailed universally and induced a leveraged transition to Gold OA, as
described below, authors will be able to provide as much CC-BY as they
wish. But insisting instead on paying for CC-BY now, at the expense of
losing the cost-free Green OA that is already within reach, is simply
asking for another 10 years in the desert, lacking both free online access
and CC-BY.

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*E13. Unilateral UK Gold is the losing choice in a Prisoner’s Dilemma.* If
the UK unilaterally mandates Gold OA Publishing (with author publication
charges) today, instead of first (effectively) mandating Green OA
self-archiving (at no added cost) then the UK has made the losing choice in
a non-forced-choice Prisoner's Dilemma:




Unilateral Green (rest of world)

Unilateral Gold (rest of world)

*Unilateral Green (UK only)*

*win**/*win**

*win*/lose

*Unilateral Gold (UK only)*

*> lose*/win <

*win**/*win**



"If OA were adopted worldwide, the net benefits of Gold OA would exceed
those of Green OA. However, we are not in an OA world... At the
institutional level, during a transitional period *when subscriptions are
maintained, the cost of unilaterally adopting Green OA is much lower than
the cost of Gold OA* – with Green OA self-archiving costing average
institutions sampled around one-fifth the amount that Gold OA might cost,
and as little as one-tenth as much for the most research intensive
university. Hence, we conclude that *the most affordable and cost-effective
means of moving towards OA is through Green OA, which can be adopted
unilaterally at the funder, institutional, sectoral and national levels at
relatively little cost*." [emphasis added]


 Houghton, John W. & Swan, Alma (2013) Planting the green seeds for a
golden harvest: Comments and clarifications on “Going for
Gold”<http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january13/houghton/01houghton.html>
*D-Lib Magazine* 19(1/2)
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