[BOAI] Re: Harnad Comments on Proposed HEFCE/REF Green Open Access Mandate

[Stevan Harnad]

On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 5:12 AM, Andy Powell <andy.powell at eduserv.org.uk>wrote:


> Supposing this Proposed HEFCE/REF Green Open Access Mandate leads to a
> situation where we achieve 100% immediate deposit of the final
> peer-reviewed draft of journal articles to an institutional repository but
> where we also see a ‘publisher norm’ emerging of a 12-month embargo period?
> ****
>
> ** **
>
> Firstly, is that an unrealistic expectation of where this policy might get
> us?****
>
> ** **
>
> If so, would we consider this situation to have significantly advanced the
> OA cause?****
>
> ** **
>
> I agree that the separation of ‘immediate deposit’ from ‘embargo period’
> is important but I also worry that doing so effectively becomes a way for
> publishers to stifle progress towards true OA but setting lengthy embargo
> periods? Further, there seems to be nothing in this policy that mitigates
> against this happening?****
>
> ** **
>
> Or am I misunderstanding the situation?
>

Please read the comments, not just the Executive Summary, as they
explicitly answer your question.

Meanwhile, here is the answer to your question, put in a different way, in
response to: *RCUK fails to end ‘green’ embargo
confusion*<http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/rcuk-fails-to-end-green-embargo-confusion/2002538.article>
" *THE* 14 March 2013:

*
KEYSTROKE MANDATES
*

What a mess! With publishers eagerly pawing at the Golden Door, and RCUK
hopelessly waffling at Green embargo limits and their enforcement.

But relief is on the way! HEFCE has meanwhile quietly and gently proposed a
solution that will moot all this relentless cupidity and stupidity.

HEFCE has proposed to mandate that in order to be eligible for the Research
Excellence Framework
(REF)<http://www.hefce.ac.uk/media/hefce/content/news/news/2013/open_access_letter.pdf>,
the final, peer-reviewed drafts of all papers published as of 2014 will
have to be deposited in the author's institutional
repository<http://roar.eprints.org/> immediately
upon publication: no delays, no embargoes, no exceptions -- irrespective of
whether the paper is published in a Gold OA journal or a subscription
journal, and irrespective of the allowable length of the embargo on making
the deposit OA: The deposit itself must be immediate.

This has the immense benefit that while the haggling continues about how
much will be paid for Gold OA and how long Green OA may be embargoed, all
papers will be faithfully deposited -- and deposited in institutional
repositories, which means that all UK universities will thereby be
recruited, as of 2014, to monitor and ensure that the deposits are made,
and made immediately. (Institutions have an excellent track record for
making sure that everything necessary for REF is done, and done reliably,
because a lot of money and prestige is at stake for them.)

And one of the ingenious features of the proposed HEFCE/REF Green OA
mandate is the stipulation that deposit may not be delayed: Authors cannot
wait till just before the next REF, six years later, to do it. If the
deposit was not immediate, the paper is ineligible for REF.

And, most brilliant stroke of all, this ensures that it is not just the 4
papers that are ultimately chosen for submission to REF that are deposited
immediately -- for that choice is always a retrospective one, made after
looking over the past 6 years' work, to pick the four best papers. Rarely
will this be known in advance. So the safest policy will be to deposit all
papers immediately, just in case.

This is precisely the compliance assurance mechanism the RCUK mandate so
desperately needs in order to succeed, but the RCUK policy-makers have not
yet had the wit to conceive and adopt. Well, HEFCE/REF have done it for
them, bless them.

But immediate-deposit is not immediate-OA you say? Indeed it is not. It
does, however, overcome OA's most formidable hurdle, which is getting all
those papers into the institutional repositories, and right away:
keystrokes. It is just those keystrokes that have stood between the
research world and OA for over over two decades now.

Once the institutional repositories are reliably being filled to 100%, does
anyone with the slightest imagination doubt what will follow, as nature
(and human nature) takes its course?

First, the repositories will facilitate sending reprints to those who
request a single copy for research purposes, with one click each. Sending
reprints is not OA; researchers have been doing it for a half century. But
they used to have to do it by reading *Current Contents* or scanning
journals' contents lists, mailing reprint requests, and then waiting and
hoping that authors would take the time and trouble and expense to mail
them a reprint, as requested (and many did). But now the whole transaction
is just one click each, and almost immediate, if the papers have been
deposited and both parties are at the wheel.

But that's still just Almost-OA. Once immediate-deposit is mandated,
however, about 60% of those deposits can be made immediately OA, because
about 60% of journals already endorse immediate, unembargoed Green OA.
(RCUK has already succeeded is dragging down that figure to somewhat closer
to 50/50 with its perverse preference for Gold, inspiring hybrid Gold
publishers to offer Gold and increase Green embargo lengths to try to force
UK authors to pick paid Gold over cost-free Green).

Now that's about half immediate-OA plus half Almost-OA to tide over
researcher needs during the embargo. But does anyone have any doubt about
what will happen next? As OA and Almost-OA grow, and the research community
tastes more and more of what it's like to have half immediate-OA and half
Almost-OA, all the disciplines that have not yet had the sense to do it
will begin to do what almost 100% of physicists have already been doing for
20 years now without so much as a moment's hesitation or a "by your leave":

That last remaining keystroke, once a paper is written, revised, accepted
and deposited -- the keystroke that makes the paper OA -- will be done
sooner and sooner, more and more, until the embargoes with which publishers
are trying to hold research hostage will all die their natural and
well-deserved deaths as the research community learns to do the obvious,
optimal and inevitable, in the online era.

(Nor will peer-reviewed journal publishing die, as publishers keep warning
menacingly: It will simply convert to Gold OA -- but only after the
pressure from Green OA has forced journals to phase out all obsolete
products and services and their costs: that means phasing out the print
version and the online version, and offloading all access-providing and
archiving onto the global network of Green OA institutional repositories.
Then, instead of double-paying for Gold OA, as Finch folly and RCUK
recklessness would have us do -- subscriptions plus Gold OA fees --
post-Green Gold OA will just be a fee for the peer review service, at a
fair, affordable and sustainable price, paid for out of a fraction of
institutions' annual savings from subscription cancellations instead of out
of scarce research funds, over and above subscriptions, as now. Pre-Green
Gold is Fool's Gold: Post-Green Gold is Fair Gold.)
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/pipermail/boai-forum/attachments/20130314/8d97a88c/attachment-0001.html