[GOAL] The need to integrate funder and institutional OA mandates

[Stevan Harnad]

Fred Friend has once again incisively said it all.

The following data support the point Fred makes. The figure illustrates
that Green OA mandates can do at least as well as Wellcome's 60% OA deposit
rate, without any extra payment whatsoever to publishers for Gold OA (and
hence without using 1.5% of scarce UK research funds to double-pay for
publication,):

*Finch Fiasco in
Figures<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/905-Finch-Fiasco-in-Figures.html>
*

.

What is needed is a sensible, affordable, scalable and sustainable RCUK OA
mandate, with:

(1) *Compliance Verification*. An effective Green OA *compliance-verification
mechanism* is imperative in order to ensure that deposit rates -- *by
fundees* -- are at least as high as the rates in the above figure. (Such
compliance verification mechanisms are completely absent from both the old
RCUK mandate and the new one.).

*How to Integrate University and Funder Open Access
Mandates<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/369-guid.html>
*


*Integrating Institutional and Funder Open Access Mandates: Belgian
Model<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/864-.html>
*


(2) *Free choice of Green or Gold*. Free choice by UK authors as to whether
they wish to comply with RCUK's OA mandate via cost-free Green
self-archiving or via paying publishers for Gold is also essential for the
success of the RCUK OA mandate. Mandating that the deposit be done in
institutional IRs rather than institution-externally is a core component of
a successful compliance-verification mechanism. (And on no account should
publishers -- who are, after all, not RCUK fundees -- rather than RCUK
fundees be doing the depositing.)

*On Robert Kiley (Wellcome Trust) on Finch Report and RCUK
Mandate<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/916-.html>
*

*
*

*On the Wellcome Trust OA Mandate and Central vs. Institutional
Deposit*<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/673-.html>


(As to the recent JISC-Repositories subscriber's posting requesting an end
to double-posting of GOAL messages to JISC-Repositories because this
subscriber was "getting bored" with the discussion of Green vs Gold: May I
suggest that this subscriber use the delete key to assuage his boredom,
rather than urging that UK repository managers be deprived of information
highly pertinent to the future of their domain -- or that they be obliged
to subscribe to a second list that also carries a good deal of content that
is not pertinent to the future of their domain -- in order to assuage this
subscriber's boredom?)

Stevan Harnad

On Tue, Oct 9, 2012 at 6:40 AM, Frederick Friend <ucylfjf at ucl.ac.uk> wrote:

  FRED FRIEND: I am grateful to Robert Kiley for clarification of
> Wellcome’s policy in a message which – with his permission – is reproduced
> below:
>
> ROBERT KILEY: ”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.
>> Hope this helps. Robert.”
>
>
> FRED FRIEND: 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.
>
> 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.
>
> Fred Friend
> Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL
> http://www.friendofopenaccess.org.uk
>
>
>
> *From:* Frederick Friend <ucylfjf at UCL.AC.UK>
>  *Sent:* Monday, October 08, 2012 1:01 PM
> *To:* JISC-REPOSITORIES at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
> *Subject:* Europe PubMed as a home for all RCUK research outputs?
>
>
>> *PAUL JUMP/MARK THORLEY: “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. *
>
> **
> FRED FRIEND: 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> Fred Friend
> http://www.friendofopenaccess.org.uk
>
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