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<TITLE>Re: [BOAI] Re: Changes in publisher policies on repository deposit?</TITLE>
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<FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'>Dear Stevan:<BR>
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I’ve been following BOAI’s various emails with interest, and appreciate all you and others are doing. As you may (or may not) remember, I had difficulty with the idea of posting my papers online since they contain copyrighted texts (Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Robert Frost, etc.).<BR>
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Since then, the President of our Institute agreed to edit the Cognitive Science section of the Social Sciences Research network ><a href="http://ssrn.com/<,">http://ssrn.com/<,</a> and I realised that what it is in effect is an online library. So I had no problem posting my articles, which are immediately accessible to all who want to read them. (I think if some publisher wanted to challenge that idea, they would be faced not only with the argument I understand Open Access’s Initiative makes about federally funded research being made available on the basis of its tax-supported funding, but with the – to me - stronger argument that this is the twenty-first century’s version of the public library.) I’ve discovered “repositories” often limit access to those outside the institution. A briar patch indeed!<BR>
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All best,<BR>
<BR>
Margaret<BR>
<BR>
Margaret H. Freeman<BR>
Myrifield Institute for Cognition and the Arts<BR>
23 Avery Brook Road<BR>
Heath, MA 01346-0132<BR>
(413) 337-4854<BR>
freemamh@lavc.edu<BR>
https://sites.google.com/a/case.edu/myrifield/<BR>
<a href="http://myrifield.wordpress.com/">http://myrifield.wordpress.com/</a><BR>
<a href="http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=84115425985">http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=84115425985</a><BR>
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You can access my papers on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) at: <a href="http://ssrn.com/author=1248859">http://ssrn.com/author=1248859</a><BR>
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On 6/2/09 9:32 AM, "Stevan Harnad" <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote:<BR>
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</SPAN></FONT><BLOCKQUOTE><FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'>On 2-Jun-09, at 8:05 AM, Peter Suber wrote:<BR>
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</SPAN></FONT><BLOCKQUOTE><FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'> </SPAN><FONT SIZE="4"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'>[Forwarding from Fred Friend via the JISC-Repositories list. --Peter Suber.]<BR>
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To all repository managers:<BR>
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Rumours are spreading that Elsevier staff are approaching UK Vice-Chancellors persuading them to point to PDF copies of articles on Elsevier's web-site rather than have the articles deposited in institutional repositories. It appears that the argument being used is that this will be a cheaper option than maintaining full-text within repositories. If these reports are true, my guess is that Elsevier are using these arguments to undermine deposit mandates. <BR>
</SPAN></FONT></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE><FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'><BR>
Here is my prediction:<BR>
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</SPAN></FONT><BLOCKQUOTE><FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'>(1) Yes, Elsevier and other publishers would be happier if researchers did <I>not</I> deposit their final drafts in their institutional repositories, and if their institutions and funders did <I>not</I> mandate that they do so. Hence it is not at all surprising that they may be trying to persuade UK VCs to link to PDFs at Elsevier's website instead of having their researchers deposit their own final drafts in their own institutional repositories.<BR>
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(2) But UK VCs presumably still have some autonomy and judgement of their own. So whereas they will understand why it might be in publishers' interest if universities' research output were held at publishers' websites rather than in the university's own repository, they will also see quite clearly why this would not be in the interest of their universities, or their researchers, or research assessment, or research itself. <BR>
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(3) So the attempt at persuasion will prove unpersuasive.<BR>
</SPAN></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE><FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'><BR>
So please let us not again stir up groundless and distracting anxieties about this. Let publishers try to persuade whomever they wish of whatever they wish. The interested parties will make their own decisions, according to their own interests.<BR>
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What UK VCs should be (and are) doing is persuading their own researchers to provide Open Access to their own research output, in their own repositories, by adopting university Open Access self-archiving mandates <a href="http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/"><http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/></a> , as 83 institutions and funders worldwide have already done. UK has the world's highest concentration of these mandates, and two more are about to be announced (stay tuned).<BR>
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Elsevier (and the majority <a href="http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php"><http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php></a> of other publishers), despite their efforts at VC persuasion, and despite the familiar doomsday scenarios <a href="http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#32.Poisoned"><http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#32.Poisoned></a> to the contrary, remain on the side of the angels <a href="http://blogsearch.google.ca/blogsearch?hl=en&num=100&c2coff=1&safe=active&ie=UTF-8&q=%2522side+of+the+angels%2522+blogurl%253Ahttp%253A%252F%252Fopenaccess.eprints.org%252F&btnG=Search+Blogs"><http://blogsearch.google.ca/blogsearch?hl=en&amp;num=100&amp;c2coff=1&amp;safe=active&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;q=%2522side+of+the+angels%2522+blogurl%253Ahttp%253A%252F%252Fopenaccess.eprints.org%252F&amp;btnG=Search+Blogs></a> insofar as OA self-archiving is concerned, endorsing authors depositing their final drafts in their institutional repositories.<BR>
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Let us concentrate on accelerating OA mandate adoption and not worry about how publishers might be trying to decelerate it: The outcome is optimal (for research, researchers, their institutions, and the tax-paying public that funds them) -- and inevitable.<BR>
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</SPAN></FONT><BLOCKQUOTE><FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><FONT SIZE="4"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'>If Vice-Chancellors are persuaded to adopt this policy, it would only give repository access to an unsatisfactory version (PDFs will not enable re-use for research purposes) and access on Elsevier's terms. If this is Elsevier's strategy it would seem to negate their "green" status. Previous correspondence on this list has indicated a harder line on repository deposit by Wiley-Blackwell, and if Elsevier are also hardening their policy, mandates for repository deposit could lose much of their potential effectiveness in increasing access to research content. <BR>
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There is no hardening of policies, the PDF issue is a red herring <a href="http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/460-guid.html"><http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/460-guid.html></a> , and green continues to be green. <BR>
</SPAN><FONT SIZE="4"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'> <BR>
</SPAN></FONT></FONT><BLOCKQUOTE><FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><FONT SIZE="4"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'> It would be wise for repository managers to brief their senior university management on this issue. The threat to repository deposit also adds to the need for authors to be briefed on the use of a licence to publish retaining certain rights rather than ceding all control over their work to the publisher.<BR>
</SPAN></FONT></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE><FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'><BR>
There is no threat to repository deposit; a green light to deposit a postprint <a href="http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#What-is-Eprint"><http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#What-is-Eprint></a> is sufficient for green OA and green OA mandates, irrespective of whether the postprint is the author's final draft or the publisher's PDF. <BR>
</SPAN><FONT SIZE="4"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'> <BR>
</SPAN></FONT></FONT><BLOCKQUOTE><FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><FONT SIZE="4"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'> Any publishers reading this message should understand that dialogue on the issues above will be welcome, in particular clarification of any change in publisher policies. <BR>
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What is needed is not (still more!) dialogue with publishers but self-archiving of postprints by the researchers -- and postprint self-archiving mandates by researchers' institutions and funders.<BR>
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Repository managers do far more for OA if they focus on helping their institution to adopt self-archiving policies rather than if they focus on how publisher may be trying to maximise their interests by delaying or distracting from them.<BR>
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Stevan Harnad<BR>
</SPAN><FONT SIZE="4"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'> <BR>
</SPAN></FONT></FONT><BLOCKQUOTE><FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><FONT SIZE="4"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'> Fred Friend (not writing on behalf of any organisation or institution) <BR>
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