<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: verdana; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; "><i>In response to Alma Swan's <a href="http://optimalscholarship.blogspot.com/2009/05/multiplying-mandates.html" style="color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: underline; ">graphic demonstration</a> (posted yesterday and partly reproduced below) of the accelerating growth rate of Green Open Access Self-Archiving <a href="http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/" style="color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: underline; ">Mandates</a> (now including <a href="http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?inst=National%20Institutes%20of%20Health%20%28NIH%29" style="color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: underline; ">NIH</a>, <a href="http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?inst=Harvard%20University%3A%20Faculty%20of%20Arts%20and%20Sciences" style="color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: underline; ">Harvard</a>, <a href="http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?inst=Stanford%20University%3A%20School%20of%20Education" style="color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: underline; ">Stanford</a>and <a href="http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?inst=Massachussetts%20Institute%20of%20Technology%20%28MIT%29" style="color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: underline; ">MIT</a>), Richard Poynder has posted some some very useful <a href="http://poynder.blogspot.com/2009_05_01_archive.html" style="color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: underline; ">comments and questions</a>. Below are some comments by way of reply:</i><blockquote>
<a href="http://optimalscholarship.blogspot.com/2009/05/multiplying-mandates.html" style="color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: underline; "><img class="serendipity_image_center" width="500" height="304" src="http://openaccess.eprints.org/uploads/almamandgrowth.png" alt="" style="border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px; "></a><br>
<br><b>FIGURE: Accelerating Growth Rate in Worldwide Adoptions of <a href="http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/" style="color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: underline; ">Green Open Access Self-Archiving Mandates</a> (2002-2009, in half-year increments) by Research Funders, Institutions, and Departments/Faculties/Schools (<a href="http://optimalscholarship.blogspot.com/2009/05/multiplying-mandates.html" style="color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: underline; ">Swan 2009</a>)</b><hr>
</blockquote><b>(1)</b> The latest and fastest-growing kinds of <a href="http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/" style="color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: underline; ">Green Open Access Self-Archiving Mandates</a> are not only self-chosen by the researchers themselves, but they are department/faculty/school mandates, rather than full university-wide mandates. These are the "<a href="http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january07/sale/01sale.html" style="color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: underline; ">patchwork mandates</a>" that Arthur Sale already began recommending presciently back in 2007, in preference to waiting passively for university-wide consensus to be reached.<br>
<br>(The option of <a href="http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/364-guid.html" style="color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: underline; ">opting out</a> is only useful if it applies, not to the the deposit itself [of the refereed final draft, which should be <a href="http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/494-guid.html" style="color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: underline; ">deposited, without opt-out</a>, immediately upon acceptance for publication], but to whether access to the deposit is immediately set as Open Access.)<br>
<br><b>(2)</b> Another recent progress report for Institutional Repositories, following <a href="http://listserver.sigmaxi.org/sc/wa.exe?A2=ind09&L=american-scientist-open-access-forum&D=1&O=D&F=l&S=&P=44333" style="color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: underline; ">Stirling</a>'s, is <a href="http://listserver.sigmaxi.org/sc/wa.exe?A2=ind09&L=american-scientist-open-access-forum&D=1&O=D&F=l&S=&P=45880" style="color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: underline; ">Aberystwyth</a>'s, which reached 2000 deposits in May.<br>
<br><b>(3)</b> Richard asks: <i>"Will the fact that many of the new mandates include opt-outs affect compliance rates? (Will that make them appear more voluntary than mandatory?)"</i><br><br><a href="http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11006/" style="color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: underline; "><img class="serendipity_image_right" width="300" height="225" src="http://openaccess.eprints.org/uploads/comply1.jpg" alt="" style="float: right; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px; "></a>According to Alma Swan's <a href="http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11006/" style="color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: underline; ">international surveys</a>, most authors report they would comply willingly with a self-archiving mandate. The problem is less with achieving compliance on adopted mandates than with <em>achieving consensus on the adoption of the mandate in the first place</em>. (Hence, again, Arthur Sale's sage advice to adopt "patchwork" department/faculty/school mandates, rather than waiting passively for consensus on the adoption of full university-wide mandates, is the right advice.) <br>
<br>And the principal purpose of mandates themselves is to <i>reinforce</i>researchers' already-existing inclination to maximise access and usage for their give-away articles, not to <i>force</i> researchers to do something they don't already want to do. <br>
<br>(Researchers need to be reassured that their departments or institutions or funders are indeed fully behind self-archiving, and indeed expect it of them; otherwise researchers remain in a state of "<a href="http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12094/" style="color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: underline; ">Zeno's Paralysis</a>" about self-archiving year upon year, because of countless groundless worries, such as <a href="http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#10.Copyright" style="color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: underline; ">copyright</a>, <a href="http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#32.Poisoned" style="color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: underline; ">journal choice</a>, and even how much <a href="http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10688/" style="color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: underline; ">time</a> self-archiving takes.)<br>
<br><b>(4)</b> Richard also asks: <i>"What is full compliance so far as a self-archiving mandate is concerned?"</i> <br><br>Full compliance is of course 100% compliance, and the longer-standing mandates are climbing toward that, but their biggest boost will come not only from time, nor even from the increasingly palpable local benefits of OA self-archiving (in terms of <a href="http://opcit.eprints.org/oacitation-biblio.html" style="color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: underline; ">enhanced research impact</a>), but from the global growth of Green OA Self-Archiving Mandates that Alma has just <a href="http://optimalscholarship.blogspot.com/2009/05/more-multiplying-mandates.html" style="color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: underline; ">graphically demonstrated</a>.<br>
<br><b>(5)</b> <i>"What other questions should we be asking?"</i> <br><br>We should be asking what university students and staff can do to accelerate and facilitate the adoption of mandates at their institution. (See "<a href="http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/17298/" style="color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: underline; ">Waking OA’s “Slumbering Giant”: The University's Mandate To Mandate Open Access</a>.")<br>
<br>And the right way to judge the success of a mandate is not just by reporting the growth in an institution's yearly deposit rates, but by plotting the growth in deposit rate as a percentage of the institution's yearly output of research articles, for the articles actually published in that same year.<br>
<br><b><a href="http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/" style="color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: underline; ">Stevan Harnad</a></b><br><a href="http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html" style="color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: underline; ">American Scientist Open Access Forum</a><br>
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