<div dir="ltr"><div>On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 2:39 PM, David Wojick <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:dwojick@craigellachie.us" target="_blank">dwojick@craigellachie.us</a>></span> wrote:<br></div><div class="gmail_extra">
<div class="gmail_quote"><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div>
Stevan, what you describe sounds somewhat like the SHARE program, which
is one of the emerging proposed mechanisms for the US Public Access
program. See my
<a href="http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2013/06/26/universities-propose-to-share-federal-funding-based-articles/" target="_blank">
http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2013/06/26/universities-propose-to-share-federal-funding-based-articles/</a>
from a year ago.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>David, "SHARE" is of course much better than CHORUS because it leaves access-provision in the hands of the universities and research institutions rather than journal publishers. And "SHARE" really just means that the IRs do it rather than the publishers.</div>
<div><br></div><div>But I certainly don't agree that the following is any problem whatsoever:</div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div>
SHARE has its own specific problems, as does CHORUS. But as far as funder
identification goes, SHARE and CHORUS share the problem. This is because
the grant information that institutions get does not identify the
specific funding program. For example, in DOE the grant contract and
grant number merely say that the grant is from the Office of Science,
which funds about $5 billion a year. Which of their many programs and
sub-programs funded a given grant is not specified. So the institution
still has to get that information from the author, just as the publisher
does. And the resulting data must be uniform across all institutions,
just as with all CHORUS publishers.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>So the grant-contract-and-number does not specify the program and subprogram. But the specific funder certainly knows what the program and subprogram is. And the author-and-institution certainly knows what the program and subprogram is. So what's the problem that necessitates publishers (of all parties) to become the custodians of these data, which have nothing to do with publishers?</div>
<div><br></div><div>(a) The exact source of the grant can be disambiguated <i>top-down, </i>with the funders linking the grant-contract-and-number to the exact funding source. That seems the most obvious way to do it. Then the IR need merely include the grant-contract-and-number tag in the institutional repository metadata for each funded article.</div>
<div><br></div><div>(b) Or it can be disambiguated <i>bottom-up, </i>with the author-and-institution including an exact funding source tag in addition to the grant-contract-and-number tag in the institutional repository metadata for each funded article.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Either way, the problem is trivial, and certainly no grounds whatsoever to outsource it to publishers!</div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div>Moreover, while the publisher knows about the article, but not the
specific funder, the institution need know about neither. At present few,
if any, institutional repositories have deposit enforcement that would
meet federal standards. Most repository programs are voluntary, so an
unreliable source of ALL funded articles. And many institutions have no
repository, especially federal laboratories. So all in all the
institutions have much further to go than the publishers, as far as the
federal program goes. Keep in mind that the paradigm federal access
program at this point is PubMed Central, which works with publishers, not
institutions.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>This is why I have been urging for years that <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=institutional+central+convergent+blogurl:http://openaccess.eprints.org/&safe=active&tbas=0&tbm=blg">deposit should always be convergent</a>, not divergent, with <i>all funders and all institutions mandating <u>institutional</u> deposit</i>, not institution-external deposit. (Deposits can then be automatically exported to or harvested by any institution-external repositories desired, such as PubMed Central.)</div>
<div><br></div><div>(Institutions that don't yet have a repository are just a piece of free software, some disk-space, and some sysad time from having one. Another non-problem.)</div><div><br></div><div>Convergent deposit mandates immediately recruit institutions to monitor and ensure full and timely compliance with the funder OA mandate, whether or not the institution has an OA mandate of its own (and in fact it motivates the institution to adopt an OA mandate of its own, for all of its research output, funded and unfunded).</div>
<div><br></div><div>Again, no grounds whatsoever to outsource any of this to publishers.</div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div>This is not to say that SHARE cannot win the public access race. In fact
it is rumored that NSF may go the SHARE route, while DOE may go the
CHORUS route. NSF works solely with universities, unlike DOE. <br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Well, let's hope that DOE too sees the wisdom and practicality of taking the convergent route, with institutions instead of entrusting this funder/institution record-keeping function to a third party with a huge conflict of interest (publishers). </div>
<div><br></div><div><b>Stevan Harnad</b></div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div>
At 12:12 PM 5/30/2014, you wrote:<br>
<blockquote type="cite"><br>
On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 4:20 PM, David Wojick
<<a href="mailto:dwojick@craigellachie.us" target="_blank">dwojick@craigellachie.us</a>
> wrote:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><i>The core challenge in the US Public Access program is to precisely
identify the funders of the research that leads to a given journal
article. This sounds easy but it can be a difficult and complex process.
The US Government is a vast and complex organization, with hundreds of
different offices sponsoring research. Moreover, each office can be
referred to in many different ways, creating a major name disambiguation
problem in the funder data.</i></blockquote></dd></dl></blockquote>To repeat:<br><blockquote type="cite"></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"></blockquote>It is not for publishers to do record-keeping for the government on
the articles they publish, dearly as publishers no doubt wish to hold
onto this further potential chain of control over research and
researchers' work. <br><blockquote type="cite"></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"></blockquote>Researchers' own institutions are the natural ones to do this. As I
wrote in my previous posting on this very same issue:<br></div></blockquote><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
</blockquote><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div>All authors have institutions -- either a university or a research
institution. Those institutions have a huge stake in ensuring that their
researchers comply with their funder requirements (and they already
review all grant applications). Institutions are hence the ones in the
position to monitor their own researchers' journal article output, ensure
that the funder (if any) is specified in the repository metadata for each
published article, and, most important of all, ensure that the deposit is
done within the required time-frame (see BOAI recommendation above). <br><br></div></blockquote><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
Repository deposits are time-stamped. Researchers can even be asked
to deposit the journal's acceptance letter (in closed access) alongside
the final refereed draft, for record-keeping and compliance monitoring
purposes. The institution can thereby systematically monitor and ensure
timely compliance with funder (and institutional) deposit mandates. (The
repository software and the Copy Request Button can then handle any
allowable publisher embargo periods in a simple, straightforward way
--via the Button till the embargo elapses, and then the deposit
automatically becomes OA.)</blockquote><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"> </blockquote><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div><blockquote type="cite"><dl><dd><i>CHORUS and FundRef are attacking this funder identification problem
using a standardized menu of funder names and DOIs. The basic idea is
that the submitting author will pick out the standard names of all the
offices that contributed to the research that underlies the submitted
article. Again this sounds simple but it is not, because building a
comprehensive taxonomy of all possible funders is far from simple.</i></dd></dl></blockquote></div></blockquote><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div><blockquote type="cite" class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;border-right-width:1px;border-right-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-right-style:solid;padding-left:1ex;padding-right:1ex">
</blockquote>Far from simple -- and far from necessary. Authors' own institutions are
the ones that are best positioned to stay abreast of the grants that
their researchers have received (in fact they already do so), and their
repositories can automatically record what resulting articles are
published and deposited, and when.<br><blockquote type="cite" class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><br>
<dl>
<dd><i>To begin with they have elected to build this menu to identify all
the funders in the world, not just the US Federal funders. As a result
the menu of funders already has six thousands names and it will probably
have many thousands more before it stabilizes. The size of the funder
list alone thus creates a big discovery problem, because many funders
have similar names. </i><br></dd></dl></blockquote>Let's hope that while (all? some?) publishers are spending their time
constructing a mega-database of all their authors' potential funders
worldwide, institutions will do the much more simple and sensible thing
of constructing a database of all their own employees' funding. (Indeed,
they do it already; they need only pool this information in their IR
metadata (and their <a href="http://www.eurocris.org/Index.php?page=Video_Keith&t=1" target="_blank">CRIS</a>, if they have one).<br><blockquote type="cite" class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;border-right-width:1px;border-right-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-right-style:solid;padding-left:1ex;padding-right:1ex">
</blockquote><br><blockquote type="cite" class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;border-right-width:1px;border-right-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-right-style:solid;padding-left:1ex;padding-right:1ex">
</blockquote>Let journal publishers just manage the peer review of the papers
submitted to them and stop trying to create a monopoly over everything
else. The research community is perfectly capable of doing its own
record-keeping, thank you very much!<br><blockquote type="cite" class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"></blockquote>
<br><blockquote type="cite" class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
<dl>
<dd><i>Then there is the hierarchy problem, especially within the vast US
Government complex. Funding offices occur at many different scales, which
are arranged within one another in the tree-like organization chart. For
example in the US Energy Department there may be five or more layers of
funding offices. Saying which layer should be named in the funding data
for a given article is not simple. Moreover if offices in different
layers are named for different articles, then the resulting data will
have to somehow be aggregated by layer in order to be useful. To make
matters worse there are also cross cutting programs that involve multiple
offices. In short any taxonomy of US Federal funding offices is going to
be a complex system, not a simple listing.</i><br><br></dd></dl></blockquote>Needless pseudo-complications. The researcher receives a grant. The grant
has an agency and number. That agency and number is one of the metadata
tags on all articles arising from that funding that are deposited in the
IR.<br><blockquote type="cite" class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"></blockquote><blockquote type="cite" class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
<dl>
<dd><i>Given these complexities it may be better to have an editor name the
funders based on the acknowledgements section of the article, rather than
presenting the author with a complex taxonomy of possible funders. There
seems to be some experimentation in this direction, but it is a labor
intensive solution. The question is also whether the resulting data would
be accurate enough for agency purposes; given that acknowledgement has
been a relatively informal process. There is also the question of when to
collect this funder data, given the labor involved. Should it be upon
submission or after acceptance?"<br></i></dd></dl></blockquote>The above metadata are enough. Let those who wish to harvest it do so,
and do with it, as they will. Publishers have nothing to do with any of
this.<br><blockquote type="cite" class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;border-right-width:1px;border-right-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-right-style:solid;padding-left:1ex;padding-right:1ex">
</blockquote><br><blockquote type="cite" class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;border-right-width:1px;border-right-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-right-style:solid;padding-left:1ex;padding-right:1ex">
</blockquote>And a reminder: We are talking about monitoring and ensuring compliance
with Green OA self-archiving mandates here.<br><blockquote type="cite" class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;border-right-width:1px;border-right-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-right-style:solid;padding-left:1ex;padding-right:1ex">
</blockquote><br><blockquote type="cite" class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;border-right-width:1px;border-right-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-right-style:solid;padding-left:1ex;padding-right:1ex">
</blockquote>How funders plan to handle billing and documentation for any Gold OA
publishing charges that they may be foolish enough to cover out of scarce
research money while the money for Fair-Gold OA is still locked into
subscription journals is not what we are discussing here (and certainly
not my concern.)<br><blockquote type="cite" class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;border-right-width:1px;border-right-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-right-style:solid;padding-left:1ex;padding-right:1ex">
</blockquote><br><b>
Stevan Harnad</b></div>
</blockquote></div><br></div></div>