[GOAL] Re: R Poynder Interviews I Gibson About 2004 UK Select Committee Green OA Mandate Recommendation

[Richard Poynder]

Thanks for the clarification Jan. 

 

I wonder if anyone from BMC could update the list on how popular the Open
Repository service has proved, whether users are currently growing or
decreasing, and how many users there are at the moment etc.?

 

By the way, this is what BMC founder Vitek Tracz said to me in December 2004
(http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2006/05/interview-with-vitek-tracz.html). 

 

RP: One further complication that could perhaps retard progress is that the
OA movement has forked, with advocates disagreeing over the best way
forward. While OA publishers like you advocate OA publishing (the so-called
"Gold Road" to OA) supporters of the "Green Road" like Stevan Harnad argue
that it is sufficient for authors to continue publishing in traditional
subscription-based journals, but to then self-archive their papers. Does
Harnad have a point? 

 

VT: I do not think so. Self-archiving is of course very desirable, but the
issue is quite simple: publishers are not really going to allow authors to
self-archive in an easy way, and authors are not going to do it unless it is
completely painless. 

 

RP: I'm told that around 93% of journals currently do allow self-archiving?


 

VT: They say they allow it, but publishers have merely created the pretence
of allowing it. They don't really. They say they allow self-archiving, but
authors can't just take their published papers and archive them: they have
to use their original manuscript, without any of the corrections and changes
made by the publisher. They have to mark it up themselves, and they cannot
use the illustrations created or amended by the publisher. In practice it is
really quite difficult to reproduce the published paper.  

 

If self-archiving were so easy why isn't it happening? Because in practice
self-archiving is impractical. That said, for those who want it BioMed
Central supports self-archiving by offering to help institutions create
repositories for their researchers' papers.

 

Richard Poynder

 

 

From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On Behalf
Of Jan Velterop
Sent: 29 October 2012 11:07
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
Subject: [GOAL] Re: R Poynder Interviews I Gibson About 2004 UK Select
Committee Green OA Mandate Recommendation

 

In response to what we heard in the market, Richard. That our offering was
launched so quickly after the Select Committee Report came out was more like
a happy coincidence. 

 

Besides, should we have realised the importance of repositories as a result
of the Inquiry, would there be a problem with actually offering concrete
assistance to repositories some time *after* we realised the importance of
repositories' role? Well, in our case the realisation came quite some time
before we offered the service. These things take preparation, you know.
Extraordinary, isn't it?

 

You may recall that we were convinced of the potential importance of
repositories as evidenced already at the BOAI, and the Bethesda Statement on
Open Access, both of which I signed on behalf of BMC.

 

The point I tried to make is that we argued for OA. And yes, we did try to
convince authors to publish in the fully and immediately open BMC journals.
Calling that "Lobbying for giving up authors' preferred journals in favour
of Gold OA journals" is spin. Were I to use similar spin, I could say
something like "the Green OA advocates are lobbying for authors to be
mandated to deposit their manuscripts in repositories, and be forced to
accept sub-optimal OA, with access delays, technical and usage limitations,
and problematic financing of publishing via subscriptions." 

 

But spin is not doing Open Access justice. It is Open Access I advocate.
Immediate and with full re-use rights. If 'green' achieves that, too, great.
Most repositories do have final, published, OA articles in their collections
as well. Open from day one. With CC-BY licences. 'Gold' is not antithetical
to repositories. I don't think it is good, though, to be satisfied with
sub-optimal solutions just for reasons of expediency. 

 

Jan

 

On 29 Oct 2012, at 10:34, Richard Poynder wrote:





 

On 28 Oct 2012, at 23:07, Stevan Harnad wrote:






Giving up authors' preferred journals in favour of pure Gold OA journals was
what (I think) BMC's Vitek Tracz and Jan Velterop had been lobbying for at
the time 

 

Stevan may think so, but that doesn't make it correct or accurate. What we
advocated (lobbied for in Stevan's words) at the time, and what I still
advocate now, is open access. Period. We argued that a system of open access
publishing at source is better than a subscription system, and we realised
that repositories would likely play an important role in achieving open
access. That's why BMC offered assistance with establishing repositories,
and the company still does: http://www.openrepository.com

 

I think it would be true to say that BioMed Central launched its repository
service in response to the Select Committee Inquiry?

 

http://www.biomedcentral.com/presscenter/pressreleases/20040913

 

 

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