[GOAL] Re: Europe PubMed as a home for all RCUK research outputs?

[Couture Marc]

Ross Mounce writes that he is disappointed with Stevan Harnad's "wild assertions" not "backed by good evidence".

As an occasional contributor to this list, I had my own idea of what level of proof (or evidence) one has to reach when one posts something.

First, a post isn't a journal article, so one's surely not asked to back all statements with citations, or to avoid anything that resembles an opinion or an impression.

At the same time, I agree that one has a responsibility to check basic facts, and to distinguish clearly between facts and impressions or hypotheses. And one of the advantages of the ongoing discussion is that facts can be corrected or added by other members, impressions or hypotheses shared, supported or contested. Isn't that the goal of a forum?

As to the three statements of Harnad, described by Ross Mounce as "wild assertions" eroding his credibility, here is my contribution.

1. "most fields don't need CC-BY"

This is clearly an opinion, with which anyone can disagree, and I don't see how one could bring a definitive, or even a clear "scientific" answer on that issue. For my part, I'd rather say that most fields can benefit from CC-BY, but I haven't any idea if some fields "need" CC-BY and others need it less, or not at all.

2. "most publishers still insist on copyright transfer".

This, in contrast, can be checked, if one doesn't insist on counting all the thousands of publishers owning a single journal. And because I have a strong interest in copyright I happened to check many publishers' copyright policy (including OA publishers). I thus agree that all major publishers (Elsevier, Wiley-Blackwell and the like), and even most of those OA publishers which don't use CC-BY licences, either ask for copyright transfer or, and this is important, let authors keep their copyright but require a (generally exclusive) licence whose terms, which can be quite generous towards authors, are not compatible with CC-BY. Thus, a more precise statement would be "most journals copyright agreements are incompatible with the use of CC-BY for manuscript deposit".

3. "Green mandates don't exclude Gold: they simply allow but do not require Gold, nor paying for Gold."

This is a perfectly valid, factual statement, which certainly needs no backing citation.

In fact, Ross doesn't seem to contest it. What he seems to disagree with could be (but it's not entirely clear) Harnad's interpretation of RCUK new policy as "excluding" Green. But I even don't remember Harnad writing that it "excluded" Green, only that by favouring Gold over Green, RCUK policy will be harmful to OA. This is clearly an opinion (with which I totally agree), certainly not a "wild assertion".

Marc Couture