On Tue, Oct 9, 2012 at 8:20 AM, Jan Velterop <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:velterop@gmail.com" target="_blank">velterop@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div style="word-wrap:break-word"><span style="font-size:13px">Fred,</span><div><br></div></div></blockquote><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div style="word-wrap:break-word">
<div style="font-size:13px">... It is a matter of interpretation, of course, but I don't think the Finch Report (HM Gov't) "blocks" the use of institutional repositories. I don't read that in the report, and it is an interpretation I fail to see as obvious or inevitable. </div>
</div></blockquote><div><br></div></div><blockquote style="margin:0 0 0 40px;border:none;padding:0px"><div class="gmail_quote"><div>"The [Green OA] policies of neither research funders nor universities themselves have yet had a major effect in ensuring that researchers make their publications accessible in institutional repositories… [so] the infrastructure of subject and institutional repositories should [instead] be developed [to] play a valuable role complementary to formal publishing, particularly in providing access to research data and to grey literature, and in digital preservation [no mention of Green OA]…"</div>
</div></blockquote><div class="gmail_quote"><div><br></div><div><a href="http://www.researchinfonet.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Finch-Group-report-FINAL-VERSION.pdf">http://www.researchinfonet.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Finch-Group-report-FINAL-VERSION.pdf</a></div>
<div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div style="word-wrap:break-word"><div style="font-size:13px">But face up to it, subject repositories, such as the superb UKPMC (soon to be Europe PMC, confusing as that name may be — naming it Enhanced PMC would have been clearer and reflecting reality more closely) do present so much more in terms of usability, interoperability, internet connectivity, than most institutional repositories, that scepticism with regard to the latter as the preferred venue for open access is understandable. What I don't quite understand is why institutional repositories don't raise their game. They could, for instance, easily set up harvesting mechanisms — actually, linking would suffice — to collect articles relating to their affiliation from the limited number of subject repositories. </div>
</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Institutions should <i>back-harvest</i> their own research output, because it is deposited in (<a href="http://roar.eprints.org/cgi/roar_search/advanced?location_country=&software=&type=subject&order=-recordcount%2F-date">multiple</a>) institution-external collections rather than in the authors' own institutional repository?</div>
<div><br></div><div>Doesn't the reverse (deposit once, institutionally, and let institution-external collections import or harvest) make more sense -- and make for more effective compliance verification (for both institutional and funder mandates)?</div>
<div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div style="word-wrap:break-word"><div style="font-size:13px">And they could enhance the functionality of deposited articles, too. Just an example: UKPMC makes linking to species, diseases, chemicals, genes, proteins, and the like possible. That is, in a different way, but still, also available to content in institutional repositories by using tools such as, for instance, the freely available Utopia Documents (<a href="http://utopiadocs.com" target="_blank">utopiadocs.com</a> — which actually offers more internet connectivity for PDFs than most HTML versions have). I'm sure there are more tools available to increase the usability of repositories. Why don't repositories tell their users about them? And why don't repositories convince their depositing authors to attach a CC-BY licence to the manuscripts being deposited so that the reuse issues are resolved? If they are indeed the manuscript versions and not the formally published ones, that shouldn't be a problem.</div>
</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Research output is not used or searched at the individual repository level but at the harvester level.</div><div><br></div><div>Repositories cannot attach CC-BY licenses because most publishers still insist on copyright transfer. (Global Green OA will put an end to this, but not if it waits for CC-BY first.) </div>
<div><br></div><div>Moreover, most fields don't need CC-BY (and certainly not as urgently as they need access).</div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div style="word-wrap:break-word"><div style="font-size:13px">I haven't seen many efforts in regard of making institutional repositories work better by any of the 'green' OA advocates known to me, but maybe I'm reading the wrong lists. </div>
</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Try reading <a href="mailto:eprints-tech@ecs.soton.ac.uk">eprints-tech@ecs.soton.ac.uk</a> and <a href="mailto:dspace-general@lists.sourceforge.net">dspace-general@lists.sourceforge.net</a></div>
<div><br></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 style="word-wrap:break-word"><span style="font-size:13px">It is crystal clear that one strategy to achieve open access won't yield 100% success in the foreseeable future. That's why both 'gold' and 'green' are needed. 'Gold', of course, includes 'green', and 'green' doesn't include 'gold', but that doesn't mean in any way that 'green' should be disregarded. It isn't by most 'gold' advocates I know and not dismissed as 'gold' seems to be by 'green' advocates, unfortunately. And different fields have different needs that are more likely to be satisfied by one strategy than the other. In the data-rich physical sciences, 'gold' (CC-BY) is more likely to give the best results; for the social sciences and humanities it may well be 'green'. </span></div>
</blockquote><div><br></div><div>Green mandates don't exclude Gold: they simply allow but do not <i>require</i> Gold, nor paying for Gold.</div></div><div><br></div><div>Stevan Harnad</div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div style="word-wrap:break-word"><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><div style="font-size:13px"><br></div><div style="font-size:13px">Jan Velterop</div></font></span><div><div class="h5"><div style="font-size:13px">
<br></div><div><br><div><div>On 9 Oct 2012, at 11:40, Frederick Friend wrote:</div><br><blockquote type="cite">
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<div dir="ltr">
<div style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Calibri'">
<div>I am grateful to Robert Kiley for clarification of Wellcome’s policy in a
message which – with his permission – is reproduced below:</div><font face="Times New Roman">
<div><br>”Can I just make it clear that though the Trust requires publishers to
deposit content which has attracted an APC fee directly in PMC (which is then
mirrored to UKPMC/Europe PMC) we do not pay any extra for this service?
Publishers charge the Wellcome (via the grant holders and their institutions)
the published APC fee. In terms of the fee paid to publishers, we currently
spend around £4m pa on OA publication fees -- this figure includes publication
fees levied by both hybrids and full OA journals. Compliance with our OA policy
is around 60 per cent. Calculations continue to show that if all WT-funded
research was routed via the gold route, and assuming that the Trust picked up
100 per cent of OA costs (even though most WT funded research has another funder
supporting the research), at current levels of APC, the cost to the Trust would
be between 1.25 percent and 1.5 percent of our annual research spend.<br>Hope
this helps. Robert.”</div>
<div> </div>
<div><font face="Calibri">What this extra information tells me is that the payment
by Wellcome has never been a payment to meet the cost of deposit but a payment
to the publisher for access and re-use rights, just as an APC does. Wellcome had
every right to begin to make such payments but the issue remains whether this
model – which Wellcome have the money to pay for – is suitable for transfer into
policies paid for from the national funds for research administered by the RCs.
Spending 1.5% of RCUK funds on APCs may have a very different effect upon other
national research priorities than spending 1.5% of Wellcome research funds on
APCs has upon Wellcome’s priorities, and we do not even know whether 1.5% of
RCUK funds will pay for all RC-funded UK research outputs. I am still left with
the impression that the Wellcome model has been accepted without question by the
Finch Group and then by HM Government. </font></div>
<div><font face="Calibri"></font> </div>
<div><font face="Calibri">One question which needs to be asked – if this situation
is carried through into all UK research outputs - is what happens to the 40% of
articles not gathered in by this route? The UKPMC deposit rate of 60% is clearly
higher than UKPMC was achieving through author-deposit alone, but open access
statistics show that one open access model on its own cannot ensure that 100% of
research content is made open access. In fact to date the repository deposit
model has been more successful than OA journal publication in increasing the
volume of open access. In blocking the use of institutional repositories for
access to and re-use of current research output, HM Government has given us a
situation where we may be paying more for less open access. </font></div>
<div><font face="Calibri"></font> </div>
<div><font face="Calibri">Fred Friend</font></div>
<div><font face="Calibri">Honorary Director Scholarly Communication
UCL</font></div>
<div><font face="Calibri"><a href="http://www.friendofopenaccess.org.uk/" target="_blank">http://www.friendofopenaccess.org.uk</a>
</font></div>
<div><font face="Calibri"></font> </div>
<div><font face="Calibri"></font> </div>
</font><div><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Calibri"></font><br></font>
<div style="font-size:small;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;font-family:'Calibri';display:inline;font-weight:normal"><b>From:</b>
<a title="ucylfjf@UCL.AC.UK" href="mailto:ucylfjf@UCL.AC.UK" target="_blank">Frederick Friend</a>
</div>
<div style="FONT:10pt tahoma">
<div style="BACKGROUND:#f5f5f5">
<div><b>Sent:</b> Monday, October 08, 2012 1:01 PM</div>
<div><b>To:</b> <a title="JISC-REPOSITORIES@JISCMAIL.AC.UK" href="mailto:JISC-REPOSITORIES@JISCMAIL.AC.UK" target="_blank">JISC-REPOSITORIES@JISCMAIL.AC.UK</a>
</div>
<div><b>Subject:</b> Europe PubMed as a home for all RCUK research
outputs?</div></div></div>
<div> </div></div>
<div style="font-size:small;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;font-family:'Calibri';display:inline;font-weight:normal">
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<div style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Calibri'">
<div><strong>“Admitting that RCUK was "thinking about" mandatory repository
deposit, Mr Thorley said that one idea was to expand the Europe (formerly UK)
PubMed Central repository, which currently covers only biomedicine, to encompass
all subjects to help publishers automate deposits.” Mark Thorley of RCUK quoted
in an article by Paul Jump in “Times Higher Education” of 4 October 2012.
</strong></div>
<div><strong></strong> </div>
<div>I wonder whose idea this was! I can make one or two guesses, but whoever
suggested it, it is a bad idea! I welcomed the development of UK PubMed Central,
until the point when Wellcome Trust started to pay some publishers to make the
deposit on behalf of authors and funders. I do not know whether Wellcome will
disclose the sums paid to publishers, but my impression is that whatever is
being paid more than covers the cost of making the deposit and is in effect a
payment to publishers for open access and re-use rights. When people I know who
are not in academia ask me about my work and I explain that I am working for
open access to taxpayer-funded research, this is welcomed by whoever I am
speaking to – until I say that many publishers are asking to be paid by
taxpayers for making articles open access, at which point the welcome from my
listener turns to incredulity. Even more incredulity if I mention the level of
payments being requested for APCs. So, if RCUK were to go down the road of
paying publishers to deposit in Europe PubMed Central, they should be prepared
for challenges on such a mis-use of public money, especially if the deposit
payment were to be in addition to the payment of an APC. Presumably the existing
funders of UKPMC – some of them charities – would also expect a contribution
from the non-biomedical RCs towards the high cost of running Europe PMC. This
“idea” could cost a lot of money. </div>
<div> </div>
<div>I suspect that there will also be objections from subject groups who see
their repository needs as being very different from those of the biomedical
community. How many times in my long career have I heard that other such
all-embracing proposals will not work for subject x or y! UKPMC is a wonderful
service for the biomedical community, a service for which they are prepared to
pay and have the resources to pay, but its design will not fit all subjects
without major modification. Already I hear some concern about the undue
influence of the biomedical community and Wellcome in particular upon the Finch
Report and thus upon Government policy. The suspicion is that the open access
policy of the Wellcome Trust, which works very well for the Trust and for the
biomedical community, is being adopted for all UK research outputs without
consideration of the way the Trust’s open access decisions can be applied
within other very different academic structures.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>RCUK: please think again! It is good that you are considering mandatory
repository deposit, but there are other repositories which can provide better
value for the service you need. </div>
<div> </div>
<div>Fred Friend</div>
<div><a href="http://www.friendofopenaccess.org.uk/" target="_blank">http://www.friendofopenaccess.org.uk</a>
</div></div></div></div></div></div></div>
</blockquote></div><br></div></div></div></div></blockquote></div><br></div>