[BOAI] HEFCE/REF Adopts Optimal Complement to RCUK OA Mandate

[Stevan Harnad]

There are two essential components to an effective "Green" OA mandate
(i.e., one that generates as close to 100% compliance, as soon as possible):

*(1)* The mandate must uncouple the date of deposit from the date the
deposit is made OA, requiring *immediate*deposit, with no exemptions or
exceptions. How long an OA embargo it allows is a separate matter, but on
no account must date of deposit be allowed to be contingent on publisher OA
embargoes.

This is exactly what the *New HEFCE policy for open access in the post-2014
Research Excellence Framework
<http://www.hefce.ac.uk/news/newsarchive/2014/news86805.html>* has done.

*(2)* Eligibility for research assessment (and funding) must be made
conditional on immediate-deposit (date-stamped by the journal acceptance
letter). Again, this is in order to ensure that deposits are not made
months or years after publication: no retrospective deposit

The deposit requirement for eligibility for research assessment and funding
is not itself an OA requirement, it is merely a procedural requirement: For
eligibility, papers must be deposited in the institutional repository
immediately upon acceptance for publication. Late deposits are not eligible
for consideration.

This engages each university (always extremely anxious to comply fully with
REF, HEFCE and RCUK eligibility rules) in ensuring that deposit is timely,
with the help of the date-stamped acceptance letter throughout the entire
6-year REF cycle, 2014-2020.

These two conditions are what have yielded the most effective of all the
Green OA mandates to date (well over 80% compliance rate and growing)
at University
of Liege <http://roarmap.eprints.org/56/> and
FRS-FNRS<http://roarmap.eprints.org/850/> (the
Belgian Francophone research funding council); other mandates are upgrading
to this mandate model; Harvard FAS <http://roarmap.eprints.org/75/> has
already adopted immediate-deposit as one of its conditions. And now
RCUK<http://roarmap.eprints.org/671/>--
thanks to HEFCE/REF -- will reap the benefits of the immediate-deposit
condition as well (see ROARMAP <http://roarmap.eprints.org/>)

OA embargoes are another matter, and HEFCE/REF is wisely leaving that to
others (RCUK, EU Horizon2020, and university mandates) to stipulate maximal
allowable embargo length and any allowable exceptions. What HEFCE/REF is
providing is the crucial two components for ensuring that the mandate will
succeed: (1) immediate deposit as a (2) condition for REF-eligibility.

But let me add something else that will become increasingly important, once
the HEFCE/REF immediate-deposit requirement begins to propagate worldwide
(as I am now confident it will: UK is at last back in the lead on OA again,
instead of odd-man-out, as it has been since Finch):

The immediate-deposit clause and the contingency on eligibility for
research assessment and funding also ensures that the primary locus of
deposit will be the institutional repository rather than
institution-external repositories. (Deposits can be exported automatically
to external repositories, once deposited and once the embargo has elapsed;
they can also be imported from extrenal repositories, in the case of the
physicists and mathematicians who have already been faithfully depositing
in Arxiv for two decades,)

But besides all that, many of the eprints and dspace institutional
repositories already have -- and, with the HEFCE mandate model propagating
almost all of them will soon have the email-eprint-request Button:

This Button makes it possible for users who reach a closed access deposit
to click once to request a copy for research purposes; the repository
software emails an automatic eprint request to the author, who can click
once to comply with the request; the repository software emails the
requestor the eprint. (Researchers have been requesting and sending
reprints by mail -- and lately by email -- for decades, but with
immediate-deposit and the Button, this is greatly accelerated and
facilitated. So even during any allowable embargo period, the Button will
enhance access and usage dramatically. I also predict that
immediate-deposit and the Button will greatly hasten the inevitable and
well-deserved demise of publisher OA embargoes.)

Sale, A., Couture, M., Rodrigues, E., Carr, L. and Harnad, S. (2014) Open
Access Mandates and the "Fair Dealing"
Button<http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/18511/>.
In:*Dynamic Fair Dealing: Creating Canadian Culture Online
<http://www.utppublishing.com/Dynamic-Fair-Dealing-Creating-Canadian-Culture-Online.html>*
(Rosemary
J. Coombe & Darren Wershler, Eds.)

Let me close by noting another important feature of the new HEFCE/REF
policy: The allowable exceptions do not apply to the immediate-deposit
requirement! They only apply to the allowable open-access embargo. To be
eligible for REF2020, a paper must have been deposited immediately upon
acceptance for publication (with a 3-month grace period).

(No worries about HEFCE's optional 2 year start-up grace period either:
Institutions will almost certainly want their REF procedures safely and
systematically in place as early as possible, so everything can go simply
and smoothly and there is no risk of papers being ineligible.)

------------------------------

*Postscript*. Expect the usual complaints from the usual suspects:

(i) "*This is a sell-out of OA! It's just Green Gratis OA, not Libre OA:
What about the re-use rights? And if it's embargoed, it isn't even Green
OA!*"

*Reply*: Relax. Patience. A compromise was needed, to break the log-jam
between the Finch/Wellcome Fool's-Gold profligacy and publisher embargoes
on Green OA. The HEFCE immediate-deposit compromise is what will break up
that log jam, and it's not only the fastest and surest (and cheapest) way
to get to 100% Green Gratis OA, but also the fastest, surest and cheapest
way to get from Green Gratis OA to Libre Fair-Gold OA.

(ii) "*This is a sell-out to publishers and their embargoes*."

*Reply*: Quite the opposite. It will immediately detoxify embargoes (thanks
to the Button) and at the same time plant the seeds for their speedy
extinction, by depriving publishers of the power to delay access-provision
with their embargoes. It is also moots the worries of the most timorous or
pedantic IP lawyer.

It thereby provides a mandate model that any funder or institution can
adopt, irrespective of how it elects to deal with publisher OA embargoes.

And a mandate that can be simply and effectively implemented and monitored
by institutions to ensure compliance.
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