[GOAL] Re: Open Access Mandates: Q&A with the NIH
Stevan Harnad
harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk
Mon May 21 18:16:57 BST 2012
Dear Falk,
First, I apologize for my school-masterish tone!
On a planet which still has far too few OA mandates
and too little OA, it cannot be repeated often enough
that every single mandate is a step forward, and welcomed
by all (in the research community!)
But I hope you will agree that optimizing these first
pioneering mandates is very important too, to
provide a tested, successful model for others to follow.
This is the reason for focusing here, in this discussion
of the strengths and weaknesses of the US's NIH mandate
on the detailed breakdown of Austria's FWF mandate's
compliance rate and the formal and implementational
details that have been generating it.
You have kindly provided some very important
benchmark data in your previous postings:
The compliance rate for the FWF mandate in its
current form is 65%.
Of this, half (32.5%) is Green OA self-archiving
and half (32.5%) is from publishing in fee-based
Gold OA journals, one third of them exclusively
Gold OA (11%) and two thirds (22%) hybrid Gold
(meaning the journal is still charges subscriptions,
but authors can pay an additional fee to make their
own individual article OA -- and FWF pays that extra fee).
The global baseline rate for the annual *un-mandated*
Green OA self-archiving rate worldwide is about 20%
(although Yassine Gargouri will soon be reporting some
new results suggesting that this worldwide un-mandated
rate may have increased in the last few years).
So it has to be admitted that the FWF mandate's net gain
from raising the baseline un-mandated rate of 20%
to 32.5% for Green OA self-archiving is not very great
(and much smaller than the Green OA rate generated by
other current mandates that may be formulated and
implemented in ways that could help FWF increase its
Green OA compliance rate too).
The bulk of the OA generated by the FWF mandate
(32.5%) comes from articles published in a Gold OA
journal or in a subscription journal offering optional
Gold OA publishing; FWF hence increases by 22.55
the global Gold OA baseline rate, which is under 10%.
But this Gold OA increase, as you will agree, has been
bought at a price -- up to 3000 euros per paper. I ask
you to keep that figure in mind in some of the replies
I make, below, to the points you have raised.
It is also very important to know the discipline
breakdown for Green and Gold compliance rates,
because, as Andrew Adams has noted, PMC/UKPMC
are just for biomedical research, and, as we all know,
physicists have been self-archiving in Arxiv for over
two decades at very high rates, un-mandated. Hence
their contribution is not a result of the FWF mandate.
On 2012-05-21, at 5:41 AM, Reckling, Falk, Dr. wrote:
> - In 2006 no Austrian institution had a mandate or an IR.
> Today only some Austrian institutions have an IR
> [Institutional Repository] but no one has an OA mandate.
Austria's IR tally in 2006 and today, as well as Austria's
mandate tally in 2006 and today are roughly comparable
with those of other countries: Increase in the number of institutions
with IRs (but with those IRs remaining near-empty) and still
extremely few mandates (either from funders or from
institutions) -- although Austria does seem to be unusually
low in its number of IRs relative to its number of universities.
So the question is: What can be done to generate more
IRs and more mandates in Austria?
This is precisely where the FWF can help, in three ways:
(1) Require Green OA self-archiving of every FWF-funded
article, *whether or not it is published as Gold OA*.
(2) Designate the author's IR as the locus of the deposit
(with OpenDepot as the interim alternative locus, for
fundees whose institution has not yet created an IR.
(3) Only offer to pay for Gold OA if those two conditions
have been fulfilled.
This will ensure that FWF fundees self-archive.
It will encourage fundees' institutions to create an IR.
It will engage fundees' institutions in monitoring and
ensuring compliance with the FWF OA mandate.
It will motivate and facilitate fundees' institutions
to adopt a Green OA mandate of their own, for all
of their research output, in all disciplines, not just
FWF-funded research.
It will ensure that most of the compliance with the
FWF mandate is not just Gold OA paid for by FWF
at 3000 euros per paper.
> By organizing a nationwide network we now try to
> tackle these problems.
Before organizing a nationwide network instead of
adopting the mandate conditions that induce institutions to
create their own IRs, it would be well to look at the
experience of France's HAL, which is a nation-wide
repository just as empty as individual IRs that have
not mandated deposit: http://bit.ly/HALoa
Years more can be lost travelling down that garden
path...
> (b) At the same time, we noted that a lot of Austrian
> scholars were/are voluntarily willing to deposit their
> articles in central disciplinary repositories like arxiv,
> Repec, SSRN, Citeseer or PMC.
I have already replied about the profound denominator
error you are making here. http://bit.ly/oaDenFal
The un-mandated deposit rate for central disciplinary
repositories is just as low as the un-mandated deposit
rate for institutional repositories. The crucial factor is
not the repository but the mandate.
And convergent, collaborative mandates (from both
institutions and funders) designating the author's IR as
the locus of deposit will generate far more institutional
mandates than divergent, conflicting ones, for the many
reasons described.
One also has to be careful how one counts one's
central repositories: Arxiv, as noted, is one of the
prominent exceptions to the global un-mandated
Green OA self-archiving rate. Physicists self-archive
in Arxiv, un-mandated, at a much higher rate than other
disciplines.
In over two decades, however, the only other discipline
that seems to have followed the example of physicists
un-mandated self-archiving) is mathematics.
It would seem to be a strategic mistake to wait yet another
two decades for un-mandated self-archiving to generalize
to other disciplines, rather than just go ahead and
mandate it.
And there is a third prominent exception to the global
un-mandated self-archiving rate (20% overall, but
much closer to 100% for physics and maths, in Arxiv)
and that is computer science, which has been doing
high rates of Green OA self-archiving without needing
to be mandated to do so -- but they have not been
depositing" in Citeseer (which is not a repository at all,
but a harvester):
Computer scientists have been self-archiving
on their own institutional websites (since long before
IRs were invented). But their admirable un-mandated
practice has not generalized in over two decades either.
Citeseer does provide a good case in point, though,
for the power and efficacy of central harvesting,
navigation and search across distributed local deposits.
Google and Google Scholar are further examples of
the power and functionality of central harvesting
across webwide distributed contents: one does not
deposit centrally in google.
There are more examples of central harvesting and
navigation/search over distributed content.
But there is no point in further developing the potential
of metadata harvesting and functionality while OA
content is still so sparce.
That, again, is what OA mandates are for -- and why it
is so important to optimize them, so they maximize
compliance and OA.
> (c) With BMC, PLoS and others the need for covering
> APC arose. And we found it useful to support an
> alternative business model, as other renown institutions
> did, see: http://www.oacompact.org/ ,
Paying the additional costs of Gold OA article processing
charges (APCs) is fine, if one has already done what is
needed to maximize *all* OA generated by one's OA mandate
(and one has the spare cash).
But (it seems to me), it is very far from fine to spend all that extra
money without first having done what is needed to maximize
all OA generated by the mandate.
> (d) I do not agree with your position that Gold OA is costly and
> Green OA is nearly for free. In practice, Green OA costs a lot
> of time and money for creating repositories, establishing
> mandates, having well-informed supporting staff, interpreting
> publishers policies, advising researchers, depositing papers, e.g.
I would be very grateful to see what actual costs
you have in mind. Like the denominator fallacy, it is
crucial here to compare like with like. Gold OA costs
are from 500-3000 euros *per paper*.
IR software casts nothing, server space costs next to
nothing, IR one-time set-up time is a few days of sysad
work, and annual IR maintenance is a few more days of
sysad work, per year. IRs are set up for a variety of reasons,
not just OA, but let us pretend as if the IR costs are just
OA costs: How much do you think that adds up to, per paper
deposited? (And bear in mind that adopting a mandate
costs nothing, and greatly increases the number of papers
deposited, hence decreases the cost per paper.)
Yes, extra money can be spent, and is being spent, on
"having well-informed supporting staff, interpreting publishers
policies, advising researchers, depositing papers [in place
of authors]".
But the very same thing can be said about these additional
expenditures as what was just said about expenditures on
Gold OA fees: It's fine to spend this extra money if you have
the extra cash -- but not if you have not adopted a mandate
that will maximize self-archiving. Most IRs are spending all
this money *without* a mandate (since most IRs don't
have a mandate, let alone an optimized one).
So we are again speaking apples and oranges, if we try
to rationalize spending scarce cash on Gold OA instead
of optimizing our OA mandate in the direction of institutional
Green OA self-archiving on the grounds that IRs are costly:
If the costs of Green OA and Gold OA are compared on a per-paper
basis (as they need to be, to make sense), there is no contest:
Green OA is incomparably cheaper, and Green OA mandates
generate incomparably more OA.
> That might give you some reasons why we find, for example,
> that UKPMC offers a very good option to solve some these
> problems
UKPMC, a central repository for UK biomedical research,
populated mostly by funder mandates, does not even address
the matter at hand here, which is about ways to optimize those
funder mandates so that they will generate more OA.
The UK too, like Austria (and the US) would benefit from
much greater funder mandate compliance and would also
generate many more complementary institutional mandates
were it to:
(1) Require Green OA self-archiving of every FWF-funded
article, *whether or not it is published as Gold OA*.
(2) Designate the author's IR as the locus of the deposit
(with OpenDepot as the interim alternative locus, for
fundees whose institution has not yet created an IR.
(3) Only offer to pay for Gold OA if those two conditions
have been fulfilled.
This will ensure that fundees self-archive.
It will encourage fundees' institutions to create an IR.
It will engage fundees' institutions in monitoring and
ensuring compliance with tfunder OA mandate.
It will motivate and facilitate fundees' institutions
to adopt a Green OA mandate of their own, for all
of their research output, in all disciplines, not just
funded research.
It will ensure that most of the compliance with the
funder mandate is not just Gold OA paid for
at 3000 euros per paper.
> Finally, we see no contradiction to support both Green
> and Gold the same time, but we think in the end a change
> of the business model should be envisaged.
Green OA self-archiving has to be made universal first,
by both funder and institutional mandates, both designating
institutions as the locus of deposit. That will generate
100% (Green) OA. That, in turn, will eventually make
subscriptions unsustainable, reduce costs, and induce
a conversion to Gold OA, while also freeing institutional
subscription funds to pay for it.
All the best,
Stevan Harnad
>
>
> Von: goal-bounces at eprints.org [goal-bounces at eprints.org]" im Auftrag von "Stevan Harnad [amsciforum at gmail.com]
> Gesendet: Sonntag, 20. Mai 2012 21:06
> An: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
> Cc: SPARC Open Access Forum; BOAI 10 meeting, post
> Betreff: [GOAL] Re: Open Access Mandates: Q&A with the NIH
>
> Dear Falk,
>
> I profoundly hope that you are communicating with us on GOAL open-mindedly, with a view to gaining information you perhaps did not have, and with a readiness to revise policy if a valid case can be made for the fact that it would help.
>
> Because all too often, I have alas found, those who come to OA policy-making tend to make some initial judgments and decisions, implement them, and then when either practical experience itself, or those who have more and longer experience in OA and OA policy, call into question those initial judgments and decisions, the response is: "My mind's made up, don't annoy me with facts!" and the initial policy simply becomes more and more firmly entrenched, regardless of the consequences.
>
> It is too early for such rigidity, Falk. And Andrew and I (and many others) are trying to explain to you what is amiss with both the FWF policy and the rationales that you are voicing here.
>
> You wrote:
>
> On Sun, May 20, 2012 at 8:43 AM, Reckling, Falk, Dr. <Falk.Reckling at fwf.ac.at> wrote:
>
> Stevan, Andrew,
>
> a) [1] an IR has to exist and that is often not the case. [2] And if an IR exists it is often not used, [3] mandate or not. [4] Here some central disciplinary respositories are much more successfull as PMC/UKPMC.
>
> 1. Many, many institutions have repositories, and those that do not yet have one are merely a free piece of software and a server sector away form having one.
>
> 2. Yes, almost all existing repositories are unused (at least 80% of annual institutional refereed research output is not deposited). But *that is the point*! That's precisely why deposit mandates are needed.
>
> 3. It is an enormous factual error, however, to say that institutional repositories are unused whether or not they have a mandate. Again, that is the whole point. There is abundant evidence that institutions that mandate deposit are not near 80% empty but near 80% full! (And especially when they have adopted the optimal ID/OA mandate of U. Liege.)
>
> 4. It is also an enormous factual error to state that central repositories like PMC/UKPMC are exceptions to the 20/80 rule (i.e., that only 20% of total research output is deposited un-mandated). The total research output of an institution is all the refereed journal articles, in all disciplines, that its authors publish each year. The total research output of a central discipline-based repository is all the refereed journal articles published each year *by all authors in that discipline, in all institutions worldwide.* To imagine otherwise is to fall into the denominator fallacy --http://bit.ly/oaDenFal :
>
> The annual percentage use of a repository is the annual ratio of deposited articles to all target articles within its ambit. For an institution, the denominator is obvious, and easily estimated. For an entire discipline, it is far from obvious, but it too can be estimated. And I can assure you that the un-mandated Bio-Medical Research content of PMC/UKPMC is no higher than the global 20% baseline for all other disciplines. What gives the illusion that it is otherwise is two things, one trivial, one nontrivial:
>
> The trivial reason for this profound error and misconception is the simple fact that disciplines are much bigger than institutions. So the absolute number of articles in a disciplinary repository is much bigger than those in any institutional repository, even though their un-mandated content is just 20% in both cases.
>
> The nonrivial reason for this profound error is the fact that much of PMC/UKPMC content is *mandated* (by NIH, MRC, Wellcome Trust), and for that subset the percentage deposit is of course much higher -- *exactly as it is with institutional mandated content*.
>
> So the overall error is to conflate central repository content and mandated content, and incorrectly (and misleadingly) deduce that central repositories are doing better than institutional repositories because they are bigger and have more deposits.
>
> Reflection will show that it is *mandates* that generate deposits, not centrality or disciplinarity (irrespective of whether the mandates are institutional mandates or funder mandates).
>
> (The Physics Arxiv is the sole exception, where un-mandated deposits are close to 100%, and have been for two decades: But two decades is far too long to keep waiting in the hope that the physicists' spontaneous, un-mandated self-archiving practices would generalize to other disciplines: they have not. That's why the OA movement has moved toward supporting mandates.)
>
> And as several of us have now stated, the functionality of a central repository for navigation and search (which is certainly incomparably better than the functionality of any single institutional repository, where no one would ever dream of doing navigation and search) is fully preserved if the central repository harvests the metadata and links to the full-text from institutional repositories.
>
> The point being made here about the importance of ensuring that both institutional and funder mandates collaborate and converge on institutional deposit instead of diverging and competing is that it makes a huge practical difference -- both to the burden on authors and to the probability of persuading institutions (who are the universal providers of all refereed research, funded and funded, in all disciplines) to adopt deposit mandates of their own -- whether funders mandate institutional deposit or institution-external deposit: http://bit.ly/OAloc
>
> But Falk, you do not seem to be hearing this in these exchanges so far: you seem instead o return over and over to funding Gold OA fees rather than mandating Green OA. Is there any hope of drawing your attention to this much more fundamental and urgent question, on which the prospects of OA growth in upcoming years hinges?
>
> b) We believe that OA is better supported by the Gold road and therefore a change of the business model is needed. That means costs should be covered by APCs or institutions or mixed models.
>
> It is a great pity if you are rigidly committed to this belief, which is not only erroneous (for the many reasons we have been describing) but costly, because of the premature, pre-emptive focus on getting OA by paying Gold OA fees instead of by mandating Green OA -- and designating institutional repositories as the locus for direct deposit.
>
> If funders do that, institutions (the universal providers) will mandate Green OA too, and we will have 100% OA (Green). That will already solve the research accessibility problem, completely.
>
> But it is also the fastest and surest way to eventually convert journals to Gold OA (and liberate the subscription money to pay for it.)
>
> Solving the research access problem does not immediately solve the journal affordability problem too -- but does make it into a far less urgent, life/death matter (since with 100% Green OA, all users have access, whether or not journals are afforded or cancelled.)
>
> I profoundly hope you will set a good example for other policy-makers, by showing some open-mindedness, flexibility and reflection on these crucial questions.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Stevan
>
>
> ________________________________________
> Von: Andrew A. Adams [aaa at meiji.ac.jp]
> Gesendet: Sonntag, 20. Mai 2012 14:11
> An: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci); Reckling, Falk, Dr.
> Betreff: Re: [GOAL] Re: Open Access Mandates: Q&A with the NIH
>
> >
> > We think thatthe most important action right now is the national as well international coordination:
> >
> > a) A lot of Austrian research institutions and universities have notyet established an OA policy, repositories or publication funds for OA publishing. Therefore, together with other institutions wecurrently try to organise an Austrian network which implements and coordinates such activities.
> >
> > b) UKPMC is working hard to extend the consortium to evolve towards PMC Europe.
> >
> > c) For ScienceEurope (the new umbrella organisation of all major European research funders and research performing agencies) OA is one of the key topics.Therefore, a working group is established which will formulate recommendations for common actions (standards for funding APCs, incentives for high-level OA journals, OA for research data, e.g.)
> >
> > The OA movement was characterized by institutional or country based examples and experiments so far, which was in the sense of trial and error very important. But to accelerate the development and to reach the tipping point, we think it now needs more international cooperation and common standards.
>
> Falk,
>
> As the previous two UK administrations (Blair and Brown) found to their
> (political and UK taxpayers financial) immense cost, large centralised
> databases are very hard to develop, maintain and populate. If we consider the
> UK's NHS IT systems we see that a decade of attempts to put in place a single
> overall system has been precisely worse than useless. The main project
> delivered nothing of significant value and impeded local efforts because
> either they weren't started (why do something local when one is promised that
> something national is on the way) or because they were done but tried to keep
> up with the ever-moving chimera of the NPfIT.
>
> Institutional repositories are the natural scope for university-based
> research. The technology (eprint and dspace) is there, as is the
> interoperability (SWORD et al). The relatively smaller number of
> non-university researchers have options of the opendepot for non-affiliated
> researchers or the option of implementing the same technology as universities
> for other institutions (individually or as consortia). The side benefits to
> running one's own repository in terms of efficiency of promoting the
> institutions' research output, monitoring the output of staff (for promotion,
> funder mandate compliance and other purposes) should more than outweigh the
> costs of supporting a local repository, which are not large compared to the
> other systems that most universities operate (student registration databases,
> scientific computation services...).
>
> The vast majority of papers produced by any government research-body-funded
> research have at least one co-author at a research university or similar
> academic institution.
>
> The obvious move is to mandate local deposit, with compliance a requirement
> on the institution and the individual researcher (primarily the PI) who can
> be motivated by a requirement on future funding - as with the Liege model
> internally, only papers deposited full-text in the repository under an ID/OA
> setting can be considered as formal outputs and used to justify future
> funding applications.
>
> Central deposit can be automated using SWORD and a simple set of keywords
> (UKPMC for anything that should be deposited in there, for example).
>
> I find it strange that the simple logic of this escapes anyone considering
> how to move forward with OA from the funder side. Fund IRs instead of
> pre-emptive Gold/Hybrid fees and mandate local deposit (enforced by final
> report and future funding applications only being allowed to refer to IR
> deposited papers). Promote whatever central harvesting is useful for
> particular fields (medical research) automatically by simple keyword match.
>
>
> --
> Professor Andrew A Adams aaa at meiji.ac.jp
> Professor at Graduate School of Business Administration, and
> Deputy Director of the Centre for Business Information Ethics
> Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan http://www.a-cubed.info/
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