<div dir="ltr"><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">Physicists have been spontaneously self-archiving in Arxiv since </span><a href="http://arxiv.org/show_monthly_submissions" style="color:rgb(0,51,102);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">1991</a><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">, but most other disciplines have not followed suit, despite the </span><a href="http://opcit.eprints.org/oacitation-biblio.html" style="color:rgb(0,51,102);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">demonstrated benefits</a><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"> of providing open access in terms of research uptake, usage and impact. </span><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
<br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">It is for this reason that research funders and institutions worldwide are (at last) beginning to </span><a href="http://roarmap.eprints.org/" style="color:rgb(0,51,102);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">mandate</a><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"> (i.e., require) that their fundees and faculty self-archive. </span><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
<br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">For open access mandates to work, however, it has to be possible to systematically </span><a href="https://www.google.ca/?gws_rd=cr&ei=M1SDUuP5HsuMyAGsyYCwDw#q=(%22open+access%22+OR+OA)+mandates+monitor+compliance+harnad+" style="color:rgb(0,51,102);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">monitor and verify compliance</a><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">. </span><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
<br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">Not all research is funded (and there are many different research funders); but virtually all research comes from institutions (universities and research institutes), most of which now have </span><a href="http://roar.eprints.org/" style="color:rgb(0,51,102);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">institutional repositories</a><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"> for their researchers to self-archive in. </span><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
<br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">Institutions are hence the natural (and eager) partners best placed to fulfill the all-important role of </span><a href="https://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&lr=&q=harnad%20OR%20Harnad%20OR%20archivangelism+blogurl:http://openaccess.eprints.org/&ie=UTF-8&tbm=blg&tbs=qdr:m&num=100&c2coff=1&safe=active#c2coff=1&hl=en&lr=&q=(monitor+OR+verify)+compliance+blogurl%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fopenaccess.eprints.org%2F&safe=active&tbas=0&tbm=blg" style="color:rgb(0,51,102);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">monitoring and ensuring compliance</a><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"> with the requirements of their own researchers' grant requirements, via their own institutional repositories. (This also gives institutions the incentive to adopt open access self-archiving mandates of their own, for all their research output, funded and unfunded, in all disciplines.) </span><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
<br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">Researchers, in turn, should only need to deposit their articles once, institutionally -- not willy-nilly, and multiply, in diverse institution-external repositories.</span><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
<br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">The solution is simple, since all open access repositories are interoperable, meaning they share the same core metadata-tagging system, and hence each institution's repository software can automatically export its metadata to any other institution-external repository desired. </span><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
<br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">That way researchers need only deposit once, in their own institutional repository; institutional and funder open access mandates are</span><a href="https://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&lr=&q=harnad%20OR%20Harnad%20OR%20archivangelism+blogurl:http://openaccess.eprints.org/&ie=UTF-8&tbm=blg&tbs=qdr:m&num=100&c2coff=1&safe=active#c2coff=1&hl=en&lr=&q=convergent+blogurl:http%3A%2F%2Fopenaccess.eprints.org%2F&safe=active&tbm=blg" style="color:rgb(0,51,102);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">convergent and cooperative</a><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"> rather than divergent and competitive; and mandate compliance can be reliably and systematically ensured by the author's institution.</span><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
<br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">So </span><a href="http://biorxiv.org/" style="color:rgb(0,51,102);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">Biorxiv</a><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"> is a welcome addition to the growing list of </span><a href="http://roar.eprints.org/view/type/subject.html" style="color:rgb(0,51,102);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">disciplinary repositories</a><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"> for centralized search and retrieval, but deposit in Biorxiv should not be direct: researchers should export to it from their institutional repositories. (Biorxiv can also harvest from institutional repositories, just as Google and Google Scholar do.)</span><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
<br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">Biologists and biomedical scientists, unlike physicists, do not have a culture of spontaneous self-archiving. Hence open access mandates from funders and institutions are needed if there is to be open access to their research. And those mandates have to be readily complied with; and compliance has to be readily verifiable.</span><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
<br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">So let us not lose another quarter century hoping that biologists will at last do, of their own accord, what Arxiv users have already been doing, unmandated, since 1991. In 1994 there was already a "</span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subversive_Proposal" style="color:rgb(0,51,102);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">Subversive Proposal</a><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">" -- unheeded -- that all disciplines should do as the Arxivers had done. Harold Varmus made a </span><a href="http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/272404/" style="color:rgb(0,51,102);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">similar proposal</a><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"> ("e-biomed") in 1999, likewise unheeded.</span><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
<br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">Let us start getting it right in 2013, the year that funders in the US, EU and UK have begun concertedly mandating open access, along with a growing number of institutions worldwide. But let us </span><a href="http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2013/10/22/swan-eu-open-access-policy/" style="color:rgb(0,51,102);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">harmonize</a><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"> the mandates, to ensure that they work: </span><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
<br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">Arxiv has certainly earned the right to remain the </span><a href="http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/print/2013/aug/01/the-reality-of-open-access" style="color:rgb(0,51,102);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">sole exception</a><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">, insofar as direct deposit is concerned, being the only institution-external repository in which authors have already been faithfully self-archiving, unmandated, for almost a quarter century: </span><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
<br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">For Arxiv, institutional repositories can import instead of export. But for the rest: Deposit institutionally, export centrally.</span><br>
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