[GOAL] Ideology vs Pragmatics

[Stevan Harnad]

Summary for those who haven't the time for quote/commentary:

CC-BY and text-mining rights are:

(1) urgent in a few fields
(2) desirable (but not urgent) in most fields
(3) impeded by publisher policy in virtually all fields
(4) incomparably less urgent than free online access (Gratis OA) in all
fields (which faces far fewer publisher impediments)
(5) not worth the UK's paying publishers extra money out of scarce research
funds for the UK's 6% of worldwide research output
(6) and certainly not at the expense of the UK's not mandating Green OA in
all fields


(I also suspect that CC-BY and text-mining rights for the UK's 6% would not
be much practical help in the fields where CC-BY and text-mining rights are
urgently needed.)

Double-paying publishers pre-emptively for Gold CC-BY, as Finch/RCUK are
proposing to do, in preference to mandating and providing Gratis Green OA
at no extra cost, is not only a waste of UK research money and unscalable
(because unaffordable) to other countries: it also creates impediments to
mandating and providing worldwide Green OA (by incentivizing hybrid Gold
and longer publisher Green OA embargoes).

So the issue is not whether CC-BY is desirable, but whether to give
priority to pragmatics (mandating Gratis Green OA globally) or to ideology
(pay pre-emptively for UK Gold CC-BY now, regardless of the consequences).

 Now the quote/commentary:

On Tue, Oct 9, 2012 at 10:50 AM, Ross Mounce <ross.mounce at gmail.com> wrote:

*[Stevan Harnad:]* most fields don't need CC-BY (and certainly not as
>> urgently as they need access).
>>
>

*Ross Mounce*: citation needed!!!  Who (aside from you) says that most
> fields "don't need CC-BY"?
> *I* argue that we clearly *would* benefit greatly from CC-BY research as
> this explicitly enables content mining
>

You have given evidence of the urgent need for text-mining in a few fields.
That was uncontested.

But if you think text-mining is urgently needed in all fields -- and more
urgently than Gratis Green access is needed in all fields -- the burden is
on you, not me, to provide evidence for this much stronger assertion.

Pragmatically, Gratis Green OA can be provided at no extra cost and can be
mandated globally. Gold CC-BY costs a lot of extra money and cannot be
mandated globally. (Indeed, even in the UK the RCUK mandate will fail if
not fixed.)

*[Stevan Harnad]*: 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.)
>>
>
> *Ross Mounce:* I agree with the first half of the sentence BUT the second
> half your assertion: "most publishers still insist on copyright transfer" -
> where's the evidence for this?
>

Institutional Repositories can and do provide tags for licensing rights.
The problem is with publisher policy.

Others today have been posting further information on the current status of
publisher policy on data-mining rights.

I think I can summarize it thus: Most articles cannot be deposited CC-BY
today, but if they can be, go ahead. Nothing is at issue there. The issue
is about the UK paying extra for those that cannot be.

But regardless of whether they can be deposited as CC-BY, the author's
peer-reviewed final drafts should all be deposited immediately upon
acceptance for publication -- and made Gratis Green OA immediately (as 60%
of journals already endorse), or after embargo, if an embargo is being
complied with. (During the embargo, Institutional Repositories should have
the email-eprint-request Button to provide "Almost-OA" during any embargo.)

Sale, A., Couture, M., Rodrigues, E., Carr, L. and Harnad, S. (2012)  Open
Access Mandates and the "Fair Dealing"
Button<http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/18511/>.
In: *Dynamic Fair Dealing: Creating Canadian Culture Online*(Rosemary J.
Coombe & Darren Wershler, Eds.) http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/18511/


 *[Stevan Harnad]*: Green mandates don't exclude Gold: they simply allow
>> but do not *require* Gold, nor paying for Gold.
>>
>
> *Ross Mounce:* Likewise RCUK policy as I understand it does not exclude
> Green
>

*RCUK Policy<http://roarmap.eprints.org/671/1/RCUK%20_Policy_on_Access_to_Research_Outputs.pdf>
: **"…papers must be published in journals which are [RCUK]-compliant…
journal [is RCUK-]compliant… if…(1)… journal offers [Gold OA, CC-BY].. Or
(2) where a publisher does not offer option 1… journal must allow… [Green
OA, 6-12]"*

*Finch Report:<http://www.researchinfonet.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Finch-Group-report-FINAL-VERSION.pdf>
 *"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]…"


*Ross Mounce: *[There are] associated costs of Green OA like institutional
> repositories, staff, repo development and maintenance costs.


Most UK institutions already have repositories; they are used for multiple
purposes. But one of the purposes they are vastly *under*used for is OA --
because most institutions have not yet mandated Green OA (or their mandate
has no effective compliance monitoring and verification mechanism). This is
easily fixed. RCUK can help by first fixing its OA policy.

*Ross Mounce:  *Gold is preferred but Green is allowed. Glad we've made
> that clear...


No, RCUK has definitely *not* made that clear -- and that's mostly what
this ruckus is about. As soon as RCUK states clearly and unequivocally that
RCUK fundees must make their papers OA, but they are free to choose to do
so either via paid Gold OA or cost-free Green OA, the RCUK ruckus will be
over.

Stevan Harnad
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