[GOAL] Re: Open Access Priorities: Peer Access and Public Access

[Stevan Harnad]

On 2012-04-30, at 7:16 AM, Peter Murray-Rust wrote:

> The idea that there is a set of "researchers" in Universities who
> deserve special consideration and for whom public funds must
> be spent is offensive.

The idea is to find reasons why those researchers should provide
OA (80% of them are not doing it)  and why their institutions and 
funders should mandate that they do it.

Peer access is a credible, practical reason, pertains to all
research and researchers, and is based on their own self-interest.

Public access is worthy, desirable, and automatically comes along
with OA, but on its own it is not a credible, practical reason, 
pertaining to all research and researchers, and based on their 
own self-interest. 

That is the practical, strategic reason why peer access needs to be
primary and public access secondary, in promoting rationales
for providing and mandating OA.

> I fall directly into SH's category of "the general public",

Not at all. PM-R is a researcher, whether retired or not.
He falls squarely in the category of peer access rather
than public access.

> I am a supporter of publicly funded Gold OA and of domain repositories.
> I am not prepared for these to be dismissed ex cathedra.

Eighty percent of researchers are not providing OA. That's why OA
mandates are needed, from researchers' institutions and funders. 

Gold OA publishing cannot be mandated, only Green OA self-archiving
can be.

Only some research is funded, but all research comes from institutions.
Hence funder mandates and institutional mandates need to  be
convergent and mutually reinforcing rather than divergent and competitive:

The locus of mandatory deposit should be institutional: domain repositories
can then harvest the data or metadata.

None of this is ideological or ex cathedra. These are considerations
of direct practical strategy, to get us out of the 20% OA where we have been
stalled for a decade, to 100% OA. through institutional and funder mandates.

> I have personally not many scientists who are highly committed to Green OA 

Quite. Only about 20% of researchers provide OA unmandated (about 2/3 of
that via Green OA self-archiving and 1/3 via Gold OA publishing).

That's why the mandates are needed from institutions and funders.

Ideology and exhortations alone will not do the trick,

> There is an increasing amount of scholarship taking place outside Universities
> and without the public purse.

Does it result in peer-reviewed publications? Then it falls under the strategic
discussion about priorities that is underway here. Otherwise not.

> Wikipedia is, perhaps, the best example of this and could - if minds were open -
> act as an interesting approach to respositories.

Wikipedia is unrefereed and explicitly excludes primary research.

What needs to be open is access to refereed, published research -- and 
it is evident that for 80% of that, effective mandates will be needed.

> It's notable that uptake of publication-related tools such as WP, Figshare, Dryad,
> Mendeley, etc. is high, because people actually want them. I would like to see
> effort on information-saving and sharing tools that people need and community
> repositories.

There is so far no evidence at all that OA is being provided by researchers,
via these tools, unmandated, at a rate any higher than the unmandated 
OA baseline (20%).

So we are still left with the practical, strategic challenge of getting OA mandated
and hence provided.

Stevan Harnad