[BOAI] Re: More Finch Fallout: "The Royal Society welcomes leading institutions to its Open Access Membership Programme"

[Stevan Harnad]

The following posting from Marc Couture spells out very explicitly the two
ways in which the new RS policy on Green OA can  be interpreted. (This, for
those who missed the subtlety, is precisely why I wrote "perhaps" in: "But
now -- perhaps -- the RS seems to have adopted a 12-month embargo on Green
OA...")

*RE: *On 2013-07-18, at 7:39 AM, Marianne Haska <
> marianne.haska at royalsociety.org> wrote:

Replies below from a much objective Graham Triggs to Stephen Harnad

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Couture Marc <marc.couture at teluq.ca>
Date: Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 11:01 AM
Subject: [GOAL] Re: [sparc-oaforum] Re: More Finch Fallout: "The Royal
Society welcomes leading institutions to its Open Access Membership
Programme"
To: "Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)" <goal at eprints.org>

A “much objective” Graham Triggs (says Marianne Haska from the Royal
Society) wrote:

“According to that resource [probably talking of
http://royalsocietypublishing.org/site/authors/licence.xhtml] they [RS]
have exactly the same policy that covers loading / depositing the postprint
to any online resource - personal website, institutional website ore
repository. The only distinction they make is that you can use the
postprint internally, or email to colleagues without embargo. All online /
systematic distribution is limited by the embargo period.”

I’m sorry, and at the risk of being considered not so “much objective” by
certain parties involved, I found that Triggs’ description of the
permissions applying to postprints is only one possible interpretation of
the terms of the licence.

If I simply reformat the relevant part of the licence, without changing a
word, it reads:

“You are free to:

- post [the author generated postprint] on Your (personal OR institutional)
web site;

AND

- load it onto an (institutional OR not for profit) repository no earlier
than 12 months from the date of first publication...”

According to this formatting, one concludes that the embargo applies to
repositories but not to websites, which raises exactly the inconsistency
Harnad points out.

As a general rule, when I’m faced with two possible, equally valid
interpretations of the terms of a licence, I feel perfectly at ease to
choose the one that suits me best. In this case, as long as the text of the
license remains what it is now, I wouldn’t hesitate to post a postprint on
any website hosted by my university at (or before) the date of publication.

As to Harnad’s argument that an institution’s repository is a (personal or
institutional) website by another name, I think it applies where there is a
functional integration of these websites and the institutional repository.
This is the case in Southampton, as Harnad mentions, but also, as I found
out, at Liège, where a hyperlink to the faculty member’s papers in the
repository seems to appear automatically in faculty home pages (see, for
instance, https://my.ulg.ac.be/MyULg/TR_xt/trombi.do?mode=view&key=U030247).

This is in fact one of the arguments used to convince researchers to
deposit their papers in the institution’s repository: no more need to
maintain a publication list on one’s website or home page, as it’s
automatically taken in charge by the repository software.

Marc Couture
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